A month into the latest Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a majority of Americans still support Israel’s actions. Nevertheless, a significant percentage of Americans are leery of any further Israeli retaliation; the impact of the media, the UN, dishonest politicians, and clueless academics are taking a toll. This shouldn’t be so hard. Without a consistent worldview, people struggle with this calculation. America’s inability to recognize good from evil is ever-so-clearly highlighted by this conflict.
Surprisingly, many key Democrats: President Biden, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have publicly supported Israel retaliating and defending itself. They recognize a bully should be confronted after a sucker punch, and have resisted calls for an immediate cease fire. Good for them. However, behind closed doors (and as time elapses), there may be less stalwart support. As I discussed previously, American political leadership, not the American military, loses wars. war-in-the-middle-east-who-is-actually-spreading-misinfo.
Is President Biden worried about his anemic approval rating ahead of next year’s campaign? Is he softening the administration’s public stance? Secretary of State Blinken speaks as if the administration is the brake on excesses of Israel; he pretends they need his calming influence. Nonsense. Let us hope, the Israelis are not influenced by wavering, weak-kneed American politicians.
Gaza and Ukraine
The contrast between the view of the Ukraine war and the Gaza war is stark. The U.S. has supported the Ukraine war for two years with no seeming end. The war in Israel is just barely begun and already American politicians urge restraint and proportionality. Where was the talk of proportionality when Sherman marched through Atlanta or Tokyo was fire-bombed?
Good and evil are so clearly defined in both current conflicts. Ukraine is no paragon of democracy as many like to point out, but Russia is a far greater evil. Russia is a nuclear enemy with imperialistic designs. Russia along with China, Iran, and North Korea, are a force that must be thwarted in every instance. Abandoning Ukraine paves the way for more aggression from Russia and its allies. However, a never-ending war in Ukraine should not be the alternative. Yes, the Russian military has been degraded and has been shown to be not-so-competent, but the horrible impact on the Ukrainian citizenry needs to end. What will be left of this country? Russia has won wars in the past by sacrificing unfathomable numbers of its own citizens in order to wear down its opponents. Don’t let it happen again. Force Ukraine to accept a settlement to bring stability back to this region. Be consistent with concerns for those suffering throughout the world, not just those in Gaza.
Israel, on the other hand, is a paragon of democracy while Hamas is an evil force which has produced nothing good after twenty years of governing. Hamas showed their true nature on October 7. That evil should be highlighted repeatedly. Their cause of a free state is no longer worthy of support. End that sham.
In Ukraine, the numbers of dead and refugees are staggering. Why is more not said about this cost, only the cost in the Middle East? Call for a cease fire in Ukraine first, not in Israel. The civilians in Gaza are also suffering, but they are placed at risk by their own government. Call out Hamas for using civilians as human shields (a Geneva convention violation). Sanction Hamas in the UN, not Israel. Place the blame for loss of human lives where it belongs. Shame those (or deport non-citizens) who support Hamas and its actions.
Let Israel destroy Hamas as ISIS was destroyed. Doing otherwise shows weakness, and weakness encourages more terrorism and more wars. The cost will be even higher otherwise. Iran and Hezbollah make threats of expanding the war, but a credible U.S. show of force (two carrier battle groups in the Mediterranean) has kept them at bay. These militant forces need to be further isolated and not given credibility or cowed to.
Our policy should be to push for peace both in Ukraine and in the Middle East, but peace on the right terms with the right partners. How many wars does America want to entangle itself in simultaneously? Russia needs a way out of a military debacle. In addition, Ukrainian suffering should not be a tool for American national interest. Our interest should not be in simply degrading Russia’s military at the expense of Ukraine. Expand the peace process in the Middle East as well, but not with a two-state solution (which has failed repeatedly), not by negotiating with Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, but by continuing to isolate these radical Islamists and forging peace between Israel and its legitimate Arab neighbors. Build on the Abraham accords of 2020 along with the peace deals forged years before. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords).
These goals are achievable if the US pushes for them and good and evil is clearly defined in both conflicts.
Has Israel Gone too Far?
Israel has not gone too far. Here is the fact of war per a military expert speaking on CNN:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/opinions/israel-hamas-gaza-not-war-crimes-spencer/index.html
Noncombatants have accounted for 90% of casualties per international humanitarian experts in the modern wars that have occurred in populated urban areas such as Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqqa, even when a Western power like the United States is leading or supporting the campaign.
The Biden Administration clearly favors Israel in this conflict, but they are not willing to talk openly and bluntly about the moral problem of Hamas’s actions.
Hamas forces indisputably violated multiple laws of war on October 7 in taking Israelis hostage and raping, torturing and directly targeting civilians, as well continuing to attack Israeli population centers with rockets. Years of intelligence assessments and media reports have shown that Hamas also commits war crimes by using human shields for its weapons and command centers and by purposely putting military capabilities in protected sites like hospitals, mosques and schools.
Despite violations of the laws of war, there is still far too much support for Hamas and too much outrage at Israel’s actions. One-hundred thousand rallied in London recently (see left panel). Does the expert CNN hired agree with protestors that Israel has responded disproportionately?
On the other hand, nothing I have seen shows that the Israel Defense Forces are not following the laws of wars in Gaza, particularly when the charges that the IDF is committing war crimes so often come too quickly for there to have been an examination of the factors that determine whether an attack, and the resulting civilian casualties, are lawful.
So far I have seen the IDF implementing – and in some cases going beyond – many of the best practices developed to minimize the harm of civilians in similar large-scale urban battles.
These IDF practices include calling everyone in a building to alert them of a pending air strike and giving them time to evacuate – a tactic I’ve never seen elsewhere in my decades of experience, as it also notifies the enemy of the attack – and sometimes even dropping small munitions on top of a building to provide additional warning. They have been conducting multiple weeks of requests that civilians evacuate certain parts of Gaza using multi-media broadcasts, texts and flyer drops. They’ve also provided routes that will not be targeted so that civilians have paths to non-combat areas.
The Real Problem
Many of my posts recently boil down to this simple notion: people today struggle distinguishing good from evil, right from wrong. This Hamas/Israel war is clearly “good vs evil”, yet so many siding with Hamas believe they are supporting freedom and justice. Many are sheep and simply follow their peers. If they have a worldview of their own, it is not based on anything sustainable or true. They are lied to constantly. Their ability to think critically and analyze facts is virtually gone (thanks to our education system). Examining their own consciences and their own errors is a foreign concept; it is much easier to criticize than change ourselves.
Furthermore, too many follow celebrities, often political ones, without thinking for themselves. The most outspoken critic of American support for Israel has been Michigan Representative Rashida Talib. She defends the slogan from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea, a theme of Hamas and Palestinian activists.
From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.
Talib says this a call for peace and tolerance, yet the map on her office wall (see left panel) seeks to replace Israel with Palestine. Where is the second state supposed to be? Where is a homeland for the Jews? They should all be deported from Palestine? In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, she talks about “co-existence”, but where is the co-existence to be found?
Further, Talib, a Palestinian herself, has shown her overt bias by employing several with links to Hamas; she also has links to Hamas fundraising (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rashida-tlaib-s-hamas-links-funds-revealed-in-latest-scandal-report/ar-AA1iQYqJ ).
Representative Talib also continues to further the now debunked story of Israel bombing a Gaza hospital:
“Media outlets and third-party analysts have raised doubts about claims and evidence offered by both Israel and the Gaza Ministry of Health, and I agree with the United Nations that an independent investigation is necessary.”
Every news organization in the world has backed off this story. Yet, for her, it is one of Israel’s atrocities. She says nothing of the Hamas atrocities, nor of Russia’s atrocities, only phony atrocities of those she opposes.
Rep. Talib needs to be exposed for what she truly is, not what she pretends to be. The House of Representatives did successfully censure her, but her party was barely willing to push back (nearly 90% refused to censure). I am troubled by someone with her views remaining in government.
Former President Obama needs to be scolded as well. He drew a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas in a recent interview with POD Save America. Yes, Hamas has done evil and is bad, he says, but the occupation is unbearable for Palestinians. He is a fool and a liar.
. . . what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.
What occupation, sir? There have been zero Jews in the Gaza strip the last twenty years, including all the years you were president. It has been occupied solely by (2 million) Palestinians and governed solely by Hamas.
The citizens of Gaza were given a homeland by Israel, yet what do they have now as a result of their attack on Israel? Why is their fate, a fate tragically thrown away by the people themselves, matter more than the suffering of others?
Why don’t we hear from him of Pakistan deporting millions of Muslims back to Afghanistan? https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/01/pakistan-starts-mass-deportation-of-undocumented-afghans.
Why don’t we hear of the tragic war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen with millions suffering and displaced? Can we call it Islamophobia when these people suffer? https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen
Meanwhile [in Yemen], the humanitarian crisis has not improved; 21.6 million people need aid, including 11 million children, and more than 4.5 million are displaced
20% of Israel’s population is Arab Muslims (and they have representation in Israeli’s parliament). There are dozens of Muslim nations in the Middle East with virtually zero Jews in any of them, but we are told the world’s one Jewish state must absorb more Arab Muslims or create them a homeland. Why hasn’t more been done by other Middle East nations the last eighty years?
President Obama should know there is no moral equivalence between the two sides. One side indiscriminately kills the women and children of its enemy, still holds women and children, even infants, as hostages, places its own citizens at risk from enemy attacks, and diverts humanitarian aid for its fighters while the other warns enemy civilians before it attacks, provides citizenship to people of all faiths, and has surrendered land for peace already. President Obama pretends even-handedness with his criticism of both sides and his carefully measured words. They are lies peppered with half-truths. Don’t look at other facts! He gives comfort to evil, but he looks like a statesman so he basks in the acclaim. Please, tell us more. We miss you so much!
He influences many others to support the same narrative. So many trust Obama: if he says it, it must be true.
Hamas supporters in New York tore down posters of kidnapped Israeli citizens. It is becoming the new way of making a statement of support for Palestine. A Queens man confronted another tearing down posters, and he backed down quickly while insisting there was nothing wrong with his actions. NYC-construction-worker-confronts-man-caught-shredding-israeli-hostage-posters. If I put up a flyer around the neighborhood, whether for a lost dog, for a person in peril, for a political candidate, etc. isn’t it inherently wrong when another tears down that poster?
A Cornell University professor said of the Hamas October 7 attack: “It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.”
cornell-professor-exhilirated-by-cornell-attacks-apologizes
The professor later apologized when his actions were highlighted, adding, he: “unequivocally opposes and denounces racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, militarism, fundamentalism, and all systems that dehumanize, divide, and oppress people.”
We are all against hating others for their race, religion, or nationality, but please explain why you felt exhilarated and energized at the death of so many Jews? Most people condemned Hamas’s actions, but not you nor Representative Talib. Why not?
Ironically, American education institutions may be the dumbest of them all. If you claim genocide in Israel, check your facts first.
A genocide can occur when one side is disproportionately stronger than the other. The terrorists have no air force whatsoever and Israel has complete air supremacy. Israel could have pre-emptively destroyed Hamas or Hezbollah in Lebanon at any time since these forces were created. It has not. Why have they restrained from attacking the weaker force, despite the weaker forces continually targeting them? Perhaps they have held back all these years.
Not only has Israel restrained from eradicating hostile forces on its border, it has also allowed millions of Arabs to remain in Israel.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israeli-arab-statistics
According to the study, 156,000 Arabs lived in Israel in 1948. They comprised approximately 19% of the population. In 2001, 1.2 million Arabic people populated the area. Because of increased Jewish immigration to Israel, the proportion of Arab residents remained at 19% in 2001.
The number increased since 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_citizens_of_Israel
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2019 was estimated at 1,890,000, representing 20.95% of the country’s population.[4] The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship
The Arab population keeps growing at a proportional rate. What kind of inept genocide is Israel conducting?
And why does GW University praise martyrs? Do they mean the martyrs whose deaths are celebrated even by their own families? This man will be well reward by his government if his family killed many Jews before dying themselves. This is not martyrdom in the least. Why are American universities promoting such an ideology?
Oppression and Marxism
The crux of Hamas activism is in Dr. Rickford’s apology above: the word “oppression” belies the argument. The Left seeks to divide the world into two groups, the current manifestation is: oppressors and oppressed, a modified version of the classical Marxist division: bourgeoise versus the proletariat. These divisions have never naturally manifested. Still, Marxists continually fine tune their precious theory; they must divide us into two classes for the revolution to proceed. Despite countless failures, they still believe Marx had it mostly right.
The oppressors are always evil and the oppressed are always well intentioned people fighting for freedom. Anyone with ideas Marxists don’t like becomes an oppressor and anyone they align with is oppressed. An individual’s unique situation or their true intentions don’t matter, only your group identity matters. Barrack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, despite being rich, powerful, famous, and influential remain in the oppressed class. Because I criticize these folks and don’t buy into Marxist theory, I must be an oppressor. My personal lack of great wealth, power, fame, and influence don’t matter.
Despite being a minority and despite having suffered as much as any race of people throughout history, Jews in America and Israel have been labeled oppressors. As a group, they are more successful, better educated and more affluent than the population in general, so they are not allowed to join the revolution as an oppressed group:
U.S. Jewish adults are, on the whole, a comparatively well-educated group. Nearly six-in-ten are college graduates, including 28% who have obtained a postgraduate degree. By comparison, among U.S. adults overall, about three-in-ten are college graduates, including 11% who have a postgraduate degree.
Palestinians, as a collective group, are less successful and less wealthy than Jews, so they are placed among the oppressed and make common cause with other oppressed groups. Palestine must be supported not because the cause is just but because they fall into the oppressed group. This tortured logic is needed just so we can divide us all into two opposing groups and further a revolution by one side?
The Palestinian cause may indeed be just, but the means of achieving it have not been. Many, including Israel itself, have supported a Palestinian state, but the current Hamas government has betrayed that trust. The cause today is evil. America has to do better than to be tricked into supporting such evil. We have to recognize good from evil to make the right choices.
Dave https://seek-the-truth.com/about/
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