[Note: I’m about to make a mistake. I am commenting on the Israeli/Hamas conflict on the internets for the whole world to see.]

Basic to the Israel/Hamas conflict is the general matter of who has the right to reoccupy ancestral land. In the Levant, possession of the land has changed hands many, many times over history. Today, Russia is claiming that it has the right to “re-absorb” Ukraine back into what is now the greater Russian empire. The Chinese Communist Party claims that Taiwan belongs to the mainland Chinese. Conflicts over entitlement to territory is a persistent threat to global peace, especially now that nuclear-tipped missiles can cross great distances in a short time or can suddenly pop out from under coastal waters.

The bloody war between Hamas and Israel drags on. I think a few forget that the conflict between Palestinians and Israeli Zionists has been raging for many years. The current war is only the latest outburst and a particularly bloody one at that. The right of requital, or the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is the guiding theory there.

Prior to this war I’ll admit that I was somewhat biased toward Israel because, even as a non-theist, I find their culture generally agreeable. But the bombing and mass extermination of civilians in Gaza as well as the embargo on food and medicine getting into Gaza is beyond any justification. Having been a victim does not give anyone the right to victimize other parties. An eye-for-an-eye is a specious argument.

Destroying whole buildings, neighborhoods, cities or territories with weapons where civilians may be present could be an indiscriminate attack. A quote from Indiscriminate Attack in Wikipedia-

“In international humanitarian law and international criminal law, an indiscriminate attack is a military attack that fails to distinguish between legitimate military targets and protected persons. Indiscriminate attacks strike both legitimate military and protected objects alike, thus violating the principle of distinction between combatants and protected civilians. They differ from direct (or deliberate) attacks against protected civilians and encompass cases in which the perpetrators are indifferent as to the nature of the target, cases in which the perpetrators use tactics or weapons that are inherently indiscriminate (e.g., cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons), and cases in which the attack is disproportionate, because it is likely to cause excessive protected civilian casualties and damages to protected objects.” Source: Wikipedia.

“Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited both by the Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol I (1977) and by customary international humanitarian law. They constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the perpetrators can be prosecuted and held responsible in international and domestic courts.” Source: Wikipedia.

“In 1977, Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the deliberate or indiscriminate attack of civilians and civilian objects in international armed conflicts; the attacking force must take precautions and steps to spare the lives of civilians and civilian objects as possible. Although ratified by 173 countries, the only countries that are currently not signatories to Protocol I are the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Turkey.” Source: Wikipedia.

What about the Geneva Conventions relating to civilians? There have been 4 Geneva Conventions. The Fourth Geneva Convention covers humanitarian protections of protected civilians in a war zone.

Even if a nation is not a signatory or it hasn’t been ratified, from my western point of view the Geneva Conventions seem to outline the shape of decency, kindness and humanity.

Irrespective of the Geneva Conventions as at least an optional guide, neither combatants are concerned with the guidelines. Whether or not the Geneva Conventions could even include organizations like Hamas and others is unclear (to me).

I’ve noticed that social media is filling up with anti-Israel content. I’ve given up trying to understand who the more righteous party in this conflict is. I am unable to support either side. The attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was obviously a savage orgy of murder. Hamas had to have known that this act would provoke a retaliation that would affect Palestinian civilians.

I’ve long admired Israel because it has built a modern thriving civilization from the ground up. But, it has done so on homelands claimed and occupied by others. As an outside observer I’m sad for the Palestinians for their long suffering under Israeli control since 1948. The Israelis have built an apartheid zone and have confined a large number of Palestinians to the tiny Gaza strip and the West Bank. On the other side, however, numerous extremist groups have taken hold and shelter in Palestinian territories with the aim of killing all Israelis and have been doing so intermittently for years. These groups have received support from Iranian leaders and other players making the conflict a proxy war. Iran wishes for nothing less than demolition of the state of Israel and installing a far-reaching Islamic caliphate. They seem prepared for the long game. Just connect the dots.

Now, the US has bombed Yemen to prevent the Houthis from further attacking international shipping. A coalition of forces, principally the UK and US, has been intercepting drones and cruise missiles aimed at Israeli targets and ships intending to transit the Suez Canal. The Houthis, who have been engaged in a lengthy civil war in Yemen, have been building their military bona fides to further their ties with Iran, or so some say. The boldness of Iranian provocation continues to rise. Who knows what will happen after they test their first nuclear weapon?

From within the Hamas frame of reference, perhaps a big provocation followed by a big retaliation might rally Islamic nations against Israel and its sponsors?? As I understand it, what isn’t helping their cause is the bad taste Palestinians left in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon in the past. There is a sense that to accept Palestinian immigration is to accept a population carrying militancy with it.

Israel’s response to the attack was to retaliate with shock and awe in Gaza in an effort to exterminate Hamas once and for all. From within the Israeli frame of reference, there is a certain cold military logic to their strategy in greater Gaza. However, whatever support Israel may have had from the 10/7/23 attack has withered. Israel cannot shake the historical facts of its founding- that it was established by displacing Palestinians from their home territory. Palestinians are still furious about Zionist colonization. Palestinians were simply removed from their homes and driven out. The same thing is happening in slow motion in the West Bank. While the world’s attention was elsewhere, Gaza was cemented into an open-air prison camp far short of liberties that we in the US take for granted.

Unfortunately for Israel, Hamas represents a political belief system strongly coupling homeland with Islam. Extinguishing a belief amounts to long term Wack-A-Mole. Palestinians are in desperate straits and have no place to call their own. In their abysmal location in Gaza, why should they stop the struggle?

Unfortunately for Hamas, the State of Israel in its present location is a long-held dream come true for Zionists. Israelis have nowhere to go even if they did give up the land. Israelis will fight to the death rather than handing over what they believe is their ancestral homeland. Israel is a nuclear state and will likely use their nuclear weapons if state collapse is threatened. Isn’t that what every nuclear state threatens to do?

What we see is a never-ending cycle of retribution. One side is brutalized and eventually strikes back.  Many take the view that past Israeli or Palestinian victimhood does not justify continued victimization. The killing of non-combatants is simply unjustifiable and must stop. The Palestinian death toll is over 33,000, most of whom are reportedly women and children. The Islamic world will not soon forget this assault on Gaza and the role of the US.

The role of the US in this conflict is troubling. We’ve always been supporters of Israel. Israel and Turkey are claimed to be the only countries in the Levant resembling a democracy. There is strong political support from Jewish and Christian Zionist communities in the US. The magnitude of this translates into hard support for Israel in terms of funding and weapons. Israel’s soft power is US backing in international matters including military support.

For the US to support the Palestinians would be taken as an affront to the Israelis and would be political suicide for any US administration taking such a position. Israel enjoys considerable support in the US and such a stance would not survive. Obviously.

I am a supporter of the Biden administration and the direction he has taken the country generally. I agree there is a logic to long term support of democracies around the world. However, Biden’s public and unwavering support of Netanyahu’s Israel has been, I believe, a strategic mistake during this conflict. There are indications in the news that there is a quiet effort behind the curtains to convince Netanyahu that the mass killing of Gazans is the wrong choice. Recently Biden and Netanyahu have spoken and signs that the severity on Gazans lightening is apparent.

I’m an American and I agree with and support our democratic values emphasizing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So, to militarily and politically support a nation that is exterminating civilians, democracy or not, is immoral.

US policy toward both the state of Israel and Palestine/Gaza/West Bank must undergo major recalibration to a more balanced approach in the region. The Palestinian demand for the return of their homeland did not suddenly fall from the sky. It has been there from the beginning. The State of Israel is the result of documented actions taken by the United Nations following the expiration of the 1917 Balfour Declaration. US President Harry Truman was the first head of state to formally recognize Israel as the legitimate Jewish state in 1948. Truman did express misgivings, however.

America’s credibility in backing a righteous path has been damaged by our own expeditionary zeal in post WWII. The big skeleton in the American closet is that in our history is full of examples of appropriating territory from the Native Americans and our appalling treatment of them. Plainly, they were here first. Settlers pushed them off their land, encouraged by the government, and confined them in ever diminishing remote spaces. The point is that the US can hardly lecture Israel on the way their state was formed. Israel is a technologically advanced nation with many accomplishments to their credit. But, in the political choices made before and after 1948 leading to nationhood, they have set themselves up for this conflict.

In history there are endless examples of conquest and defeat. Lands are taken by invading armies, people die and the social order tipped over. Over time, conquerors are eventually conquered themselves, people die and yield to new military and political forces. Borders and power shift, people die and settle for a time, but eventually a new order arrives, people die and things shift again. This has been seen in history all over the world and it will continue to happen. The Palestinians have lost their homeland and might just have to live with it as so many others have done in the last 10,000 years. Perhaps one day what is left of the Native Americans population will reclaim North America after some kind of large-scale apocalypse wipes out the colonist population.

It is difficult to see how Israel and the Palestinians can come to some sort of armistice without Israel surrendering some land and the Palestinians committing to less than full repossession of the land.

Taking the cosmic viewpoint, the human inhabitants of Earth are wrecking the biosphere, raising the temperature of the atmosphere, altering the climate, and while all of this is happening, murdering each other over beliefs and notions. Normally I might have said “let ’em go at it”. But we’re all on the same small speck of dust in empty space. There is nowhere else to go.