The issues in the Middle East are serious. Commentary on them, though, is not. To hear the pundits tell it, the conflict is one between angels and demons.
Some food for thought:
1)Whatever else can be said about Israel’s response to October 7th, the one thing that cannot be said about it is that it is “self-defense.” Those of us who train, and train others, in self-defense know full well that if a civilian was to hunt down, hurt, and/or kill an attacker after the attack has occurred, as Israel has done in its pursuit of Hamas, that civilian could not legitimately claim that he or she was acting in self-defense. Much less could any such claim be made if, in pursuit of the aggressor, others had to be hurt or killed.
People act in self-defense only if they have good reason to believe that they must use violence to preempt an imminent threat of bodily harm, and the violence they use is proportionate to the threat posed.
This is not meant to imply that Israel is necessarily acting wrongly in its response to 10/7. It’s only to say that this is not self-defense, at least not in any sense of the term that it is characteristically (and lawfully) used by civilians.
2)As for Palestine, its supporters reply that the outrage over 10/7 misses the forest for the trees as the violence committed by Hamas is dwarfed by the amount of violence committed by Israel against the Palestinians over the decades and up until to the present moment. To this a couple of responses are in order:
First, maiming and killing people from a distance requires a fundamentally different kind of mindset than that required for killing them up close and personally. And killing them by carpet bombing from tens of thousands of feet in the air, or even shooting them to death while on the ground, is a far cry from carving them up with a knife, or bludgeoning them to death with a hammer, a pipe, or a brick, to say nothing of extinguishing their lives with one’s bare hands. The latter course of action demands a level of ruthlessness that one will not find among aerial bombers and snipers.
Bombing and shooting lack the visceral nature of stabbing, bludgeoning, stomping, breaking, severing, and gouging.
That this is the case explains why it is that even the United States Marine Corp has a martial arts program and requires its soldiers to train with bayonets. There’s no expectation that, in 2024, these are skills that Marines will be expected to use on any battlefields. Yet psychologically, training in hand-to-hand combat and bayonet fighting can develop a degree of ruthlessness that can never be had by simply learning how to shoot.
Second, an even greater, almost inconceivable, degree of ruthlessness is required to torture, rape, and parade for all of the world to see the naked bodies of those who one declares one’s enemies.
This isn’t to say that Palestinians don’t have legitimate grievances against Israel, or even that they would never be warranted in using violence, possibly even brutal violence, as a means of expressing those grievances. They are, after all, vastly outgunned by Israelis. Rather, the point is that while Israelis have undoubtedly killed far more Palestinians than the reverse, the mercilessness of Hamas toward their victims distinguishes them from Israeli soldiers.
3)The rival, partisan historical narratives continually being recounted in this seemingly endless debate are tiresome. Ultimately, it makes not a bit of difference which side “started” all of this, who did what to whom.
For example, suppose I lend offense against you, and do so repeatedly. The offenses are profound, as is intuitively obvious to all decent people. But I don’t see it that way. Or maybe I just don’t care. It matters not. I do not have an obligation to allow you, in your attempt to get justice, to harm me or my loved ones. I can and will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent this from happening. And you shouldn’t be surprised when I do.
You had better get it right.
4)Nor would or should either one of us give a damn as to why we regarded each other as mortal enemies, or if the stated reason was a pretext for the “racism” of one against the other. I don’t care a lick if you really wanted to kill me because, say, I’m a white Christian. I only care that you’re trying to kill me!
To repeat, it matters not who is to blame for this or that. Both parties need to see it the same way, and the party in the wrong, or most in the wrong, needs to want to make amends in order for any of this finger pointing to be anything other than noise, a prolonged exercise in moral preening.
As of this moment, those in the pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian camps are living in different realities.
Which means that, in principle, neither side should stop until either the other side is totally eliminated or surrenders unconditionally (whatever that would look like). In practice, terms of a “cease fire” may be found acceptable to both parties, but both must recognize that a cease fire is not a cessation of hostilities. Whatever “peace” could be said to arise from that is not a real peace, as it is tentative, precarious.
Simply put, as long as I know that you believe that your life would be simpler if I (and/or my family) were dead, and that you believe that I (and/or my family) deserve to be dead, then even if you agree, at the moment, not to make any more attempts on my life (and/or the lives of my loved ones), you will still be the enemy.