Gaza

I’m just trying to figure this out.

I understand Israel’s desire for revenge for the brutal killing of 1,200 of its citizens. Totally. I’d want to strike back, too. Everyone would. The history of their own survival during Germany’s Nazi regime is still too fresh, too raw, too horrific to not be uppermost in their minds when the loss of October 7th mirrors that of the holocaust.

Israel appears, however, to have lost the world’s sympathy. More of our college students risk injury and arrest every day, demonstrating for the more than 35,000 people, the majority of them children, in Gaza whom Israel has killed in retaliation for its 1,200 dead, a proportion approaching 30:1.

And it is not just the killings in Gaza and the accompanying starvation, it’s the systematic displacement of the Palestinian people. It looks to me as if Israel is intent to claim Gaza as its own while at the same time expanding their West Bank’s so-called “settlements.” This is not, as far as I know, their stated aim, but I am far too old to listen to anyone’s words while ignoring their deeds.

So yes, students are demonstrating. They know that America’s pledge to have Israel’s back includes not only financial support and trade, but also the weapons it needs to defend itself. The creation of Israel in 1948 by Britain and the United Nations was not without controversy.

(Picture from Wikipedia)

A devastated and almost annihilated people was given a piece of land as their own that was also inhabited by Palestinians who had lived there for centuries and who were now displaced from their homeland. War broke out almost immediately. Of course the newly created country of Israel needed protection from its surrounding neighbors. America has never wavered. Even though Israel, not satisfied with its 1948 gift, continually fought to expand its borders and is still fighting to do so today. The August 7th attack, as horrific as it was, has played right into Israel’s hands to justify its expansion. Israel will not stop its annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza until Gaza is no more.

So yes, our students are demonstrating. Against our continued weapons shipments to Israel, weapons used to kill children. Against the continued support of Israel via private enterprise doing business with what has become a pariah nation. Against their universities’—and by extension their own—involvement, business and intellectual, with Israel.

I understand our president’s reluctance to stop weapons shipments to Israel as well. What, indeed, would happen to Israel if we left it defenseless? What Hitler started, Hamas and Iran would finish. It is unthinkable.

So I’m trying to understand what comes next. What are the possible outcomes of the atrocities currently occupying so many people’s minds, in large part because of our students’ demonstrating (while the conflict in Gaza itself has mostly left our MSM’s daily menus, our students’ demonstrations have not)? Our Secretary of State is working on a ceasefire and the return of all hostages. So far so good. Stop the killing, and feed the people. Let me assume for a minute this works and everyone is happy. Hostages are all home and receiving psychological care. No one is hungry anymore. Students go home for the summer happy in the knowledge they were instrumental in ending the conflict. Gaza is being rebuilt, making some contractors immensely rich. The international community pats itself on the back for a job well done. Sounds about right?

It’s now 2026. Or so. Gaza’s surviving children are now 14, 15, 16 (or so) years old. Some of them have had psychological help in the immediate aftermath of their trauma (there are not enough psychologists in the entire world to treat all of them). And now they’ve had time to remember, rethink, regroup. And I’m trying to understand, to put myself in their place. Am I going to forget the whole war and what was done to me? The near starvation I suffered? Am I going to forgive the Israelis? Love them as my neighbors? Is that what my surviving elders have counseled me to do? Is that what, as an elder myself, I would counsel our surviving teenagers to do? How is a reconciliation possible after the inhumane brutality that has occurred? It is no good asking which side was worse even though the answer is obvious. 30:1.

I try, but I cannot figure it out. Palestinians will not forget. Israel will not go unpunished. The conflict cannot end. Palestinians will always lament their stolen land. Israelis will always insist it’s their ancestral land. It might be their ancestral land, but like America, the ancestral land of the many Native American tribes, this ancient territory has been conquered and populated by numerous other peoples beginning with Assyrians and Babylonians and Macedonians and Romans. And the British in more modern times who tried to heal at least some of the holocaust’s pain by creating a new country and gifting it to surviving Jews. Thereby displacing Palestinians and creating the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Who is going to cry “Uncle”?

Help me understand.