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I originally said I wasn't going to do this, but some things have drastically changed in the scope of this issue, and I feel like I can cover these changes respectfully.
I don't plan on writing this to change any hearts or minds.
I, frankly, am not sure why I'm writing this.
I'm an American idiot. I have no dog in this fight.
I suppose it's mostly to get this off my chest, because this issue has been bothering me for several different reasons since October 7th.
Before I start, I need to preface this essay with a few very important points regarding how I will be addressing different groups that are involved in this scenario, as well as making it abundantly clear that *none* of my positions on this issue are related to race, religion, or creed. To save myself an enormous amount of time (and a headache), I will be referring to groups as "they" in some cases. It needs to be understood that under no circumstances does the word "they" in this essay refer to Israeli Jews as a totality, nor does it refer to Arabs or Palestinians as a totality.
There are three main actors in this issue:
1. The Israeli Government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, an organization not opposed to terrorist acts.
2. Hamas, an organization not opposed to terrorist acts that usurped political power on the Gaza Strip in 2007.
3. The Israeli Defense Force, an organization not opposed to terrorist acts. They like them.
The word "they" will only refer to one of these three groups. The reason is because the Israeli government does not represent the majority of Israeli Jews, and Hamas does not represent the majority of Palestinians. The IDF is....well, we'll get there.
These are groups that carry out actions in the name of their people and religion, while not truly representing their people or religion, and are in fact making the lives of ordinary people much, much worse in the name of holy retribution.
I also will not be covering the extremely long and drawn out historical aspect of this issue. This essay will focus explicitly on the events of October 7th, and the following reaction.
I'm not a historian, I don't have all damn day, and I do not believe that you need to be an expert on the relationship between these two groups in order to recognize inhuman activity when it happens. There will be some points where I have no choice but to defer to history, but I will make sure to try to be as clear as possible, and provide sources. If you truly want to learn the origins of this issue, I will link you to the only place where I feel you can read an objective account of this long and storied, bloody history that has lead us to this point: Wikipedia.
Now that I've padded the landing for any terminally online reactionary lunatics who happen across this essay and want to brutalize me for it, let's get into this mess.
October 7th, 2023
The Bloodiest Day for Jews since the Holocaust
The title is not hyperbole.
Israel has described the events of October 7th as their September 11th.
Personally, I think that is downplayed. I genuinely believe that what Israeli civilians experienced on October 7th was several orders of magnitude *worse* than September 11th.
Purely from a numbers perspective: In 2001, America had roughly 285 million citizens. On September 11th, we lost 2,996.
In 2023, Israel had 9.73 million citizens. They lost 1400.
It isn't just the sheer gravity of the numbers. The difference between September 11th and October 7th is vast. The differentiation in brutality between these two events cannot be understated. One saw terrorist actors die at the same time as the victims, and the other saw terrorist actors not only gleefully murder civilians and record their murders for all of the world to see, but they also kidnapped 200 Israeli civilians and brought them back to the Gaza strip.
At the time of this writing, most of those hostages are still being held. Some have been released.
On September 11th 2001, the terrorists who took over the planes were only required to get up close and personal with specific people: the pilots. In order to take over the planes, they had to personally stab the pilots to death. This distinction is important when comparing the two incidents because the deaths of those 3000 some-odd Americans happened in an instantaneous explosion. The hijackers were not able to celebrate their success, or revel in it. The families of the dead were not unsure of their loved ones safety, or condition. It was known, almost instantly, that all the victims in the towers and the planes were dead. The towers fell, more died. The incident was a flash in a pan, where America witnessed a mass casualty event that would change its spirit forever.
The victims who experienced the attacks on September 11th, 2001 saw the nightmare end that same day. Well, they didn't, they're traumatized for life, but for the sake of this essay, I'll just assume you already know that. My point is that outside of how the American government reacted to 9/11, the terrorist attack that sparked our reaction started and ended on the same day.
October 7th of 2023 was not afforded the luxury of only being one bad day.
As of this writing, Hamas still has possession of Israeli hostages. The hostages range from infants to teenagers to parents to the elderly.
Aside from that, the attack on Israeli citizens by Hamas terrorist actors was personal.
It was more than personal.
It was revenge.
On October 7th of 2023, Hamas sponsored terrorist actors equipped themselves with body cameras, high powered long rifles, grenades, lighters, gasoline, and just about anything you can think of that would be an effective tool in carrying out a mass slaughter. They approached Israel by land, sea and air. These actors were completely indiscriminate, with survivors telling stories of grenades being tossed into hiding places that housed up to 20 people who were hiding from shooters, to houses being burned down while the owners were still inside of them, to patrons of a dance party being gunned down in open fields, to a Phillipine farmer being beheaded with a garden tool, to a particularly harrowing story about a single Hamas terrorist entering a home where a father and his two sons were living, throwing a grenade that killed the father and incapacitated the two sons, and then proceeding to open their fridge and eat their food and drink their water, while the children were screaming for their dead father.
I personally witnessed an unedited video where an Israeli woman was being forced into a vehicle by an armed assailant. Her pants were drenched with blood in an area that can only indicate a violent rape.
The stories of the survivors of these attacks perpetrated by Hamas terrorists are harrowing. The pictures and videos are even worse. I have personally seen uncensored content posted by various groups that has given me actual nightmares. I recently had a dream that there was an active shooter in my house. I woke up feeling 1/100th of the anxiety that a person living through this feels in real life.
I wouldn't wish this type of treatment on my worst enemy.
There is absolutely no humanity in an attack like this. No excuses can be made. No justification or reason can be had.
This is terrorism. It is indiscriminate killing of civilians who are not affiliated with Netanyahu or his government. This is collective punishment. Collective punishment is recognized by the International Criminal Court as a war crime.
Historical abuse is not an excuse to do war crimes in the modern day. Full stop.
So, lets talk about doing war crimes.
Israeli Leadership and the Treatment of Palestinians since 1948
I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to go into the history.
Unfortunately, I don't have a choice in this particular context. In order to understand why the attack by Hamas was driven by a desire to exact revenge, I have to explain why the desire for revenge existed in their hearts to begin with. Without going into extraordinary detail (which you can find in the above links if you're interested), the results of Israels treatment of Palestinian people, as a whole, is a formative and essential cog in the machine that drives the kind of hate that motivates someone to pick up a gun and murder teenagers born in 2006 who have nothing to do with anything.
As the UN secretary general so succinctly stated: "This attack did not happen in a vacuum".
Israel did not like that statement. At all. They suspended visa's for all UN members over it.
The UN Secretary General is 100% correct.
The Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and their policies towards Palestinian people as a totality, is at fault for the attack on October 7th of 2023.
This is a fact.
You cannot have a conversation about the terrorist attack in Israel on the 7th without acknowledging the long standing, systemic, asymmetric warfare and violence that the Israeli government has been perpetrating against the Palestinian people for the last 75 years in the form of Settler Colonialism. Specifically, Israeli Settler Colonialism, which is an ongoing phenomenon in the West Bank of Israel that is still taking place to this day. In fact, the rates of reports from Palestinians in the West Bank of settler colonial violence has drastically increased since the attacks by Hamas on October 7th. Seemingly being perpetrated by settlers that feel that the violence they witnessed on that day, gave them permission to exact punishment on Palestinians, on their own territory, by forcibly stealing land from them.
Israeli Settler Colonialism is a violent, heinous act. Stealing someones house, at gunpoint, and erasing their existence from entire neighborhoods to then replace the local religion and culture entirely, is ethnic cleansing. Full stop. This cannot be argued against. Israeli settlers in the West Bank carry out these pogroms in broad daylight, with the assistance and full support of the Israeli Defense Force. The people that are forced out of their homes and off their territory are then shoved into the Gaza Strip on the opposite side of the country, which the United Nations has described as the largest existing open air prison in the world.
The Israeli government maintains full, thorough, 100% control of all resources going in and out of this strip of land. They control everything, from food, to medicine, to fuel, to water, to electricity. The Israeli government is in 100% full and total control of the livable conditions on the Gaza Strip by way of resource distribution. There are two million people that live here.
Right now, as I write this, there exists an American man from Long Island New York, who currently lives in the West Bank of Israel, in an occupied house, that he stole from a Palestinian woman.
Israeli settlers exact settler colonial violence against Palestinians in the West Bank in broad daylight. They are completely unafraid, unconcerned, and unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie. The reason that they are so confident in their "right" and ability to usurp houses and entire neighborhoods, is because this process is politically and financially backed by the United States of America.
The richest, most powerful country in the world, and the tax dollars it creates from its labor force, are in full support of Israeli Settler Colonialism. We, as a nation, using our tax dollars, encourage pogroms that forcibly remove citizens from their homes.
Regardless of your religion, regardless of your perception of how the world works, regardless of absolutely any closely held belief that you have ever had in your entire life: stealing someones house is monstrous. Heinous. Horrific. It is impossible for an empathetic human being to defend or justify this.
You cannot commit violence, and then expect peace. This is a very simple calculation.
A calculation that the Israeli government seems incapable of figuring out. Or unwilling.
Meanwhile, Both Israeli and Palestinian civilians are learning this lesson the hard way.
Pretend for a second that the United States didn't occupy middle eastern countries for 20 years before this. Is it any wonder that the Arab world, as a whole, has a massive bone to pick with Western hegemonic power?
Can you, as a human being capable of empathy, at least understand the reason, while denying that the reason is adequate justification for indiscriminate killing?
I hope so. God, I hope so.
War Crimes: Then and Now
I wanted to believe that humanity has evolved. I really did. I'm not sure anymore.
As of this writing, the Israeli government response to the attacks on October 7th are significantly shifting the international communities perception of the scales of this conflict.
Even Joe Biden, who once proclaimed "I am a zionist" has shifted his cabinets focus from a full throat support of Israel, to a concern for the welfare of Palestinian citizens who are not in support of Hamas.
One of the most glaring problems with Israels reaction to this terrorist attack, is the inability of Israel to allow 3rd parties to corroborate not only their own claims, but the claims of their opposition. Every single day since October 7th, the Israeli government has been indiscriminately bombing the Gaza strip, with seemingly no concern for the existence of civilians who are not associated with Hamas, and are in fact, children.
Not just those innocent civilians, but Israels own innocent civilians, that are being held in the Gaza strip. Israeli leadership has made no indication that they have any intel on the location of those hostages.
The are bombing the Gaza Strip relentlessly and without caution, regardless.
I know I said this once already, but this point needs to be stressed to its breaking point:
Remember, at the very beginning of this essay, when I mentioned that Hamas usurped political power on the Gaza strip in 2007? They did this via an election. Thanks to George W Bush , Hamas actually held an election on the Gaza strip. Well, as much of an election that a terrorist organization could hold in good faith anyways.
If the median age on the Gaza strip is 18 years old, and the only election for political leadership that has ever been held on the Gaza strip took place 17 years ago...
Who is Israel bombing?
What evidence do they have that the 2.2 million people living on the Gaza strip, are all active Hamas supporters that are willing to pick up a gun and kill Israeli civilians?
Have they answered this question? To anyone? Have they allowed anyone to confirm or deny this claim, that over 2 million people are all violent terrorists? People who, for the most part, aren't even legal adults?
Does anybody actually believe this shit?
Seemingly, it doesn't matter what anyone believes. It doesn't matter that Israel won't allow anyone to corroborate their claims. It doesn't matter that the Gaza strip is full of children, due to Israels insistence on making the Gaza strip the most unlivable place in the entire world.
We, as human beings, who are watching this unfold, have absolutely no choice but to take Israels account as fact, and believe with no evidence, that their holy retribution is justified.
That genocide is justified.
This is not how accountability works. At all.
Israel is attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestine, and all we can do is watch.
My soul is sick.
There can be absolutely no ambiguity here. History, as well as basic human morality, denies these actions on the basis of humanitarianism.
Historical abuse is not an excuse to do war crimes in the modern day. Full stop.
Remember that line?
Israel doesn't. Israeli hardliners on every social media app apparently don't recognize that as a fact either.
There is a disturbing level of discourse happening on social media in the past few days, where people are actively utilizing their religion and history of oppression that comes with that religion, to justify what Israel is doing to Gaza, right now. Today.
Here's someone that nobody has ever liked, demonstrating the exact phenomenon I am talking about:
This is Amy Schumer.
I am pretty sure nobody has ever liked Amy Schumer.
She's a joke stealing hack, whose entire career is predicated on the idea that shes a funny woman in a world that doesn't consider women to be funny. The basis of her career exists on pure bullshit.
So it's completely and utterly un-surprsing that she is championing a talking point that nobody is falling for, because it falls flat on its face immediately.
Denying genocidal actions is not anti-semetic. Calling Israel an apartheid state that has been participating in active pogroms to remove people from their homes by force, is not anti-semitic. Criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, his cabinet, those policies against Palestinians that are designed to subjugate them, is not anti-semitic. Calling the IDF a terrorist organization is not anti-semitic.
Saying that Amy Schumer, a first world living rich person with all of the afforded luxuries and amenities that being a celebrity can bring you, is not at risk of being a victim of a second holocaust, is not anti-semetic.
Amy Schumer is fucking fine. Her life is not at risk. Her concern is entirely superficial, and the narrative that she's attempting to paint is a hollow and monstrous attempt at deflecting attention away from the actual genocide happening right this very second on the Gaza strip.
Unfortunately for anyone with a conscience, Amy Schumers narrative on this issue is far more widespread and popular than can be rationally explained away. There are way too many people attempting to force your eyes away from how Israel is responding to this attack, and make you feel that this response is justified, than anyone with a set of morals can comfortably sit with.
In fact, telling me, screaming at me, that what the Israeli government is currently doing in the Gaza Strip is justified, makes your religion and your history look completely insignificant.
Genocide is in your name? Your god has sanctioned this punishment?
Collective punishment?
I cannot, in good conscience, acknowledge your god or religion, if that's the case.
I don't care if you are Arab or Jewish. Hamas or the IDF.
You are a fucking monster.
What now?
I don't know.
I'm just an American idiot who is experiencing a very unique iteration of the trolley problem.
Except, there is no switch to change the direction of the train. The train is seemingly unstoppable, and the tracks are comprised of nothing but the bodies of people who have nothing to do with any of this.
All I can do is watch.
I remember being told, as a child, that the middle east was a powder keg. That people who lived there hated the US because we were free. I remember being told that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was simply too complex for our smooth western pea brains to understand. I cannot help but think that this was simply an extremely effective line of propaganda that was designed to keep westerners, who finance Israels apartheid, from ever questioning the national support we give them to exact war crimes and displacement of Palestinians.
My soul is sick. I don't know what to do. Writing this was the only thing I could think of.
Historical abuse is not an excuse to do war crimes in the modern day. Full stop.
I don't care if you were abused 1000 years ago, 100 years ago, 10 years ago, 1 year ago, last week, or yesterday. I don't care what your religion is.
Genocide is wrong. Killing civilians is wrong. Bombing hospitals is wrong.Stealing houses is wrong. Holy Retribution is only justified in movies and comic books.
Never real life.
Are we really still trying to convince others of this?
Have we evolved at all?
Or did we just evolve the weapons from sticks and rocks, to sticks and rocks with global targeting capabilities?
I don't know.
All I know is that none of this is conducive to the evolution of human beings in a progressive direction.
It makes me wonder if we, as a species, ever really moved forward at all.