This essay serves as an explication of my views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. As of the time of writing, Israel is engaged in the general bombing of Gaza in response to a terrorist attack on October 7th, 2023. In that attack, Hamas militants went over the wall to attack several Israeli military targets and went on to commit war crimes against Israeli civilians, killing hundreds and carrying hundreds as hostages into Gaza. In retaliation, Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, including food, water, energy, and medical supplies, and destroyed half of the buildings in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 30,000 Gazans, of whom most are innocent civilians, and many of whom are children.
After the attack on October 7th, all of the world was united behind Israel in condemning the attack, including the Arab states and many people in Palestine. If the Israelis had used the diplomatic capital to push for a permanent resolution of this conflict then, it is likely that a general resolution could have occurred with the consent and sympathies of the major Arab states. Such a resolution could have included the dissolution of Hamas and the return of the Israeli hostages with the support of the Palestinian people. Many diplomatic avenues existed by which Israel could resolve this attack without going to war, but none of these avenues were even attempted.
Instead, the Israeli government did exactly what Hamas wanted them to do. Israel launched a war nominally against Hamas, but which they well knew would be a general war against the whole people of Gaza. This has forced the people of Gaza, and the Arab states, into a position of desperation where they have no partner for peace. There is nothing that the innocent people of Palestine can do to avoid being bombed by the Israelis. Calls for them to evacuate into the desert are obviously unreasonable, and calls for them to leave Gaza entirely come with the implication that the Israeli government will never allow them to return to Gaza even after Hamas is destroyed. Israel has done such things in the past. Nor do the Palestinians have the consent of any neighboring country to evacuate into. The Israeli government has bombed hospitals, mosques, UN facilities, and the small evacuation area which the Israeli government directed them to evacuate into. And even if they could evacuate, why would they? So they can live and return to find their home and all their meager possessions destroyed? The Palestinians have nothing but their lives, and why should they not give these up in martyrdom to protest the long injustice that the Israeli government has inflicted upon? We Americans know the phrase “give me liberty or give me death.” The only choice they have is to roll over and die, submit to slavery in their own homeland, or to fight. Hamas has become enormously stronger as a result of the Israeli response than they were on the day after October 7th. The safety and independence of Israel had never been so secure as it was on October 7th, when the whole world rallied behind her. The safety and independence of Israel has never been so threatened as it is today as a result of the atrocities their government has committed since October 7th, which have caused humanitarians around the world to rally to the side of Palestine.
Since 2006, the people of Gaza have suffered immeasurably. Gaza is a concentration camp. The borders of Gaza are surrounded by a wall which is 20 feet high and dotted by automated machine guns pointed inward toward the prisoners. Entry and exit to Gaza is highly restricted by the Israeli government. Israel controls the airspace, seaspace, and borders of Gaza. Israel has imposed a blockade of Gaza which has lasted more than a decade. The Israelis have restricted the import of food, water, and gasoline into Gaza. Gazans are not allowed to participate in the global economy. In the course of nearly two decades, Israel has destroyed thousands of homes and made tens of thousands of people homeless. Israel has uprooted trees and ruined Gazan farmland. Gazans have no official government, and have no formal access to courts, police, or basic government social services. Gaza’s government can only be described as anarchy permanently imposed by the Israeli military. The only de facto government of Gaza is Hamas, which is an Islamist criminal gang. Gazans live in excruciating poverty. According to the UNRWA, 81% of Gazans live below the national poverty line, 64% are food insecure, the unemployment rate is 47%, the teenage unemployment rate is 64% (the majority of people in Gaza are below the age of 18), the GDP per capita is $1,049 (USD), and that was before the current war started.1
Since 2006, Israel has adopted a military strategy toward Gaza which they call “mowing the lawn.” Every few years, the Israeli military rains hellfire upon Gaza from the skies. In 2008, 2014, 2021, and now today, the Israelis invaded and/or used their air force as flying artillery with which to bombard the Gaza strip. This has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have no affiliation with Hamas or terrorism, who have not been charged with any crimes, whose names and existence probably were not even known to their murderers. Even before 2023, Israel caused billions of dollars worth of damage to Gaza’s already poor infrastructure. This has led to the destruction of thousands of homes and rendered hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Where are they going to live when all this is over? They have targeted mosques, hospitals, UN relief sites, refugee camps, journalists, and critical infrastructure such as water wells. The Israeli government has rendered any normal, civilized life totally impossible for the people of Gaza.
“Depraved indifference” is a legal phrase describing a state of mind which has no regard for the value of human life. People act with depraved indifference when they act with wanton recklessness and negligence to the point of not caring if the consequences of their actions kill or gravely injure other people or put them at risk of death or grave injury. Depraved indifference does not necessarily require the intent to kill, but an indifference to whether or not your actions cause death. For example, shooting a gun into a crowd of people as you drive by just because you thought it would be fun is depraved indifference.
The entire Israeli government is guilty of depraved indifference toward the people of Gaza.2 The United States government is the chief accomplice and enabler of this crime. Our tax dollars, the labor of the American people, are the chief material source which enables this destruction. Israel’s hatred, fear, racism, religious fanaticism, and territorial ambitions have caused them to justify an attitude of depraved indifference toward the people of Gaza. We are not supposed to care about all the innocent people suffering in Gaza. We are supposed to care only about justice for the victims of the October 7 attack, and only about the strategic security interests of Israel (including supposedly the need to eliminate Hamas), but not about the lives and health of the people of Gaza. Do the people of Gaza have any rights at all? Do their lives matter, too? The people of Gaza also have a need to participate in the economy, to import food to feed themselves, to participate in normal life like anyone else. The people of Gaza also have a security interest and a right to defend themselves from Israeli aggression. The Israeli government systematically acts to prevent the Gazans from realizing the means for achieving basic normalcy, basic rights, and of having a free and human life.
Is it a surprise that 16-year-old boys born into a prison, daily subjected to poverty, hunger, and humiliation, who have no hope for a better future, would join a terrorist organization? Is it a surprise that men, given a choice between slavery and war, choose war? The psychotic behavior that Hamas displayed on October 7th is utterly inexcusable, but it is also entirely predictable. How can we admonish the Gazans for choosing war when no path to peace exists? Why do we blame the people of Gaza for their evil government when their government is not a democracy, but we cannot blame the Israeli or American people for the evil policies of their governments? We should not blame any people for the actions of their government, but people who proclaim how democratic their governments are surely deserve much more of the blame for the policies upon which their countries embark than people who cannot participate in elections.
Hearing the justifications of American politicians, pundits, and Israeli apologists over the past six months has left me disturbed and disgusted with the quality of leadership in our country and their loose relationship to the moral reality of their actions. Their hatred of Hamas, their fear of terrorism, their desire for revenge, and their surrender to the powerful Israel lobby, has driven our leadership to act with callous disregard for the welfare of the civilian population of Gaza, resulting in the murder of thousands of innocent people. This issue has powerful Americans, world leaders, and Israeli soldiers justifying the targeting of hospitals, mosques, UN facilities, journalists, aid workers, and the wanton destruction of human lives including the lives of children. In addition to the death, hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless, starving, gravely injured, hopeless, and incapable of carrying on anything resembling normal life, with no end in sight. When confronted with these facts, our leadership can only respond with platitudes, indignant rage, censorship, and the police baton used against their own people. That our government cares more about revenge for an aggrieved Israeli public than for the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians or for the free speech rights of its own citizens, and that it cares more about funding the current war in Gaza than providing for our own citizens, speaks volumes about the priorities and headspace of our leadership.
I have heard countless allusions to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, demonstrating that the delusional baby boomers who run our society have never advanced beyond the thoroughly propagandistic Cold War education they received in the 1950s. They say we must destroy Hamas and rebuild Gaza in the image of Ohio just like we did to Germany and Japan, and that whatever innocent civilians die are like the innocent civilians of Germany and Japan. They say that Hamas is using the people of Gaza like human shields, and the death of Gazan civilians is like the deaths of Germans in Dresden. Do these delusional Boomers believe that the people of Dresden were human shields, that the Nazis bear responsibility for their deaths, and that our military had no other choice but to firebomb Dresden or let Hitler conquer the Earth? We targeted Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima precisely because we wanted to maximize civilian casualties. Of course what we did to Dresden was a war crime! What callous ignoramus, at this late date, believes that the nuking of Japan was morally justified? We murdered millions of people in Korea. We murdered millions of people in Vietnam. We murdered hundreds of thousands of people in South and Central America. We murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and the broader War on Terror. Can these delusional Boomers truly not see the victims of their imperialism? They can provide us with one or two platitudes about Munich, and that is sufficient to blind them to the millions of dead bodies on the ground. Is it supposed to console the aggrieved Korean mother that her child died because his death was necessary for the defense of freedom? The United States of course committed war crimes in Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo. The United States acted with callous indifference to the lives of innocent German and Japanese civilians, and that was evil and not necessary to the war effort. The Nazis are not to blame for every person who died in World War Two, as though we were powerless and had no agency. The fact that Nazis were evil does not justify the immolation of entire cities.
And today, as we daily see images of dead children, dead women, dead babies, blown up hospitals, arms sticking out of rubble, crowds of starving people being mowed down as they approach an aid truck, your reaction is to justify it with a platitude you memorized fifty years ago. Moral equivalence is evil; Hamas are Nazis; Hamas must be destroyed; Israel must do whatever it takes; We don’t negotiate with terrorists; they hate us for our freedom; turn Gaza into a parking lot. These bumper stickers are supposed to be your defense before the courts of God and man? This is what justifies the thousands of warm bodies on the ground? This is what you will say to the man whose wife and five children are dead, that we wanted to bring him freedom and french fries? Do you have any understanding of the situation? Do you realize where you are, what you have done, and what happens next? Not only do you show no guilt, no remorse, you do not even register that you have done something wrong, and that what you have done is illegal. Your actions reveal that you truly are incapable of political thought above the level of bankrupt platitudes which were disproven fifty years ago, and which anyone with a modicum of intelligence and individuation would have shot down in their own mind immediately. This is the mindset of the people who rule us. This is the Boomer Truth Regime at full throttle. This is the purest, finest, most chemically enhanced grade of baloney ever produced. This is scientific level baloney, far beyond the capacities of priests, lawyers, salesmen, and journalists. This is as removed from reality as any civilization has ever been. Our leaders and elders can do nothing but cheer on genocide and promote genocidal attitudes toward the people of Gaza. They are a disgrace to our country, and they are a disgrace to God. And these are the people who command the largest army in human history, with nuclear capabilities.
The war in Gaza must end today. The United States must defund Israel immediately and permanently. The United States must stop giving Israel a veto on the UN Security Council which protects them from accountability under international law. Israel must allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza right now. The Arab states should organize a military coalition to threaten Israel and protect the Palestinian people, in the event that Israel refuses to back down. We should encourage the Arab states to organize this coalition, and make it clear to Israel that we will not defend them if they are going to behave with such callous disregard for human life. Once the war is over, we must lay down the foundations for a final resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. We must not let the deaths on October 7 and the martyrdom of Gaza be in vain, but let their deaths inspire a new peace in the region. Israel’s behavior is unacceptable, and there must be severe consequences for what Israel has done. Israel must be compelled to surrender her colonies in the West Bank and Gaza, and to allow these territories to form their own state. This is the only path forward, and it is the path upon which we shall embark. But the first priority is to end the onslaught which still rages on.
The succeeding essays will be an attempt to explicate the conclusions and comments reached above.
“Gaza_15 Years of Blockade,” UNRWA, accessed June 6, 2024, https://www.unrwa.org/gaza15-years-blockade.
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: Norton, 2014), 798.