Operation Pillar of Defense
These are some personal thoughts motivated by the Operation Pillar of Defense [2]:
- The Palestinian situation is a question that involves everybody who wants to say something on any question of society, because Israel is a democracy and must play by the rules of civilization. I feel personally that I can't seriously raise my voice to discuss social tensions in Europe and condemn a policeman beating teenagers (http://goo.gl/SdFmP) while toddlers get murdered and burnt alive elsewhere by the regular army of a civilized society. On the theatre of the tragedy itself, there is a huge imbalance of casualties. While Netanyahu complains to Obama that people cannot sleep because of the stress of the rockets, on the other side, bereaved families lose not only their houses, not only their life, but also their hope. At the same time, the stress of the Israeli civilians propagates to the rest of the world as an increasing number of people unrelated to the conflict become increasingly disturbed at the images and the situation, that they are told are dramatic indeed but inevitable and justified. This cannot go on forever, whereas everything indicates it will (the Palestinian population keeps increasing, so even a cowardly silence and criminal patience will not solve anything).
- A large number of respected observers have reported that the present situation has been willingly brought to this point by Netanyahu's government, precisely because truce was on its way to be consolidated. Stallman suspects that some Israeli attacks provoked the recent surge of rocket launches from Hamas, that was later used as a justification for Israel to exert its so-called "right to defend itself". The situation thus appears to be the result of a coldly decided political agenda, setting a trap into which Hamas is eagerly falling into by attempting to launch still more rockets on civilians, which is a war crime.
- The state of Israel violates international laws, carries on with illegal colonization and is denounced by many intellectuals, activists and human rights organizations free from suspicion of personal interest and prejudice, as growing into an apartheid state. It has no practical pressure whatsoever from the rest of the civilized world and enjoys blind support from the United States both politically and militarily. Even so, it refutes the right of people worldwide to condemn its military actions and its treatment of the Palestinian people by exerting psychological warfare and blaming back their critics for having no empathy for the Israeli civilian victims (which most fully have).
- While Israel affirms that neighboring states will never recognize its right to exist, which is a matter of speculation that I personally think is not true, it, for a fact, refuses the membership of Palestine to the UN and threatens a "heavy price to be paid" would the rest of the world want to go in this direction. Indeed one will always find someone to say that Israel should perish. The denial of reality by a few cannot justify sanctions on a whole population. Criminals must be fought but terrorism cannot be fought by terrorism. Civilization must fight brutality bearing the weight of humanity, of empathy, of law and justice. It's been decades that the IDF has demonstrated its incapacity to contain and manage the situation and should as a result step out of the process. Thankfully, some Israelis save the honor of their state by opposing its current government's politics. Some are, as a result, harassed by the police or punished by the military.
- The belligerents are the same people. Many share the same genetic pool. The Palestinians are the people who stayed in the Middle East and got assimilated by the various cultures layered by the course of time while the Wandering Jews were preserving their identity at a high price, as recorded by History, waiting in their diaspora to return on the land of their Book. This is therefore a fratricide war with a plethora of cultural, political, spiritual, and religious ramifications that one can get lost into at leisure to divert from the main issues. The reality is that an enormous amount of defenseless and innocent victims pay the ultimate price of this cultural conundrum.