28 December 2023
Israel – Hamas War Illustrates the Human Dilemma
Israel and the world were outraged by the 7 October 2020
attack by Hamas operatives on non-threatening Israelis in areas surrounding
Gaza. The raid killed 1200 Israelis and took over two hundred hostages.
The Israeli government justifiably resolved to retaliate by
attempting to extirpate Hamas with violent force. However, it undertook a
military campaign of bombing and other destruction of large areas of Gaza,
resulting in the deaths of at least 20,000 residents of the Gaza Strip.
Owing to its professed mission of assassinating all Jews in
Israel and eliminating the Israeli state, Hamas merits being forced out of
power in Gaza. However, the utter destruction of civilian life in Gaza is not
proportionate to the murderous 7 October attack. Moreover, by retaliating in
such an indiscriminate manner the Israeli government adopted behavior as
reprehensible as was Hamas’s.
A curiously damnable fault of Israel is their complicity in
the continued existence of Hamas as the ruler of the Gaza Strip. Israel not only accepted Hamas’s dominance in
Gaza, presumably under the authority of the Palestinian Authority; it has
subsidized Hamas’s budget in order to strengthen its ability to resist the
insertion of Hezbollah into Gaza’s affairs, if not its replacement of Hamas as
Gaza’s government. That was another
illustration of the misjudgment of Israeli intelligence, this time missing the genocidal
inclination of Hamas’s leadership.e
Although it is clear that Hamas cannot lead the peaceful
confinement of Arab Palestinians, the government of Israel has demonstrated
through its blessing of aggressive Jewish settlements in the West Bank its
inability to control elements of its own population who do not respect the1948
terms under which formation of the Israeli state was internationally
sanctioned. Regardless of ethnic
definitions of justice, there will never be peace in the eastern Mediterranean region
without the imposition of international force.
It cannot be denied that the U.S. must take the lead in establishing
that force; however, the current alignment of American politics does not
promise that such a policy will be adopted, at least following the 2024
Presidential election. Both possible
outcomes will produce blind acquiescence to policies determined by Israeli politics owing either to
the strength of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. or to disregard for the relevance
of world affairs to the well-being of individual Americans, in particular to that
of their leader.
International ambivalence is not a rational attitude in the
modern interconnected world. Personal
well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of just about anyone else on
the planet and no nation or affinity group can pursue its own goals without
considering their impact on other groups.
There are no absolutes; there are no isolated human experiences. A broken toe will compromise one’s whole
body. Diplomacy constitutes responsible behavior
in our interconnected world. The
responsible resolution of the Israel-Hamas War and of the conflict in the
entire region from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will mean sacrificing
many abstract religious and ethnic principles. It is necessary to posit a spiritual world where those principles can be honored
absolutely. But in the material world
where I am writing they only cause strife for those of us whose afterlife is nothing more than the notion that those who outlast us will remember us.