Hey Israel: Enough is Enough

This was started in October, but I never quite got into the swing of it. I get so sick of hearing about the so-called Israel-Hamas War, I turn it off or binge on one of the streaming services. Now, three days after Thanksgiving, there is a truce in the Israel-Hamas war. But let’s be real. Israel isn’t fighting just Hamas, they are waging war on all the Palestinians in Gaza. What’s the body count now in the Gaza Strip? Almost 15,000, 14,854 to be as exact as possible, but it will hit 15k soon. Even in a cease fire people are dying from their wounds, but prisoner are being exchanged.

Hamas said they will release 50 Israeli hostages during this pause in the shelling and bullets. They say 26 have been released already as the Israeli government is setting 150 Gazan Palestinians free. And now there is news the cease-fire … err. pause … will be extended for two more days. The government of Israel and the news media shamelessly exploited what should have been intimate moments, the tears and emotions of former hostages being reunited with loved ones. We should all be ashamed.

That isn’t all the that’s taking place, as far as war goes. There is fighting going on in the West Bank.

Really Israel, enough is enough. How much of Gaza City do you want to destroy? How many Palestinians do you want to kill? Their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the world’s worst war mongers, rivaling the former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević who was tried for war crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, in the Hague, Netherlands.

Yeah, I went there. All we need to do is watch — or read — the news coming from Israel and Gaza and the similarities are striking. Non-combatants are being killed by the hundreds every day. I hesitate to label anyone in Gaza “innocent,” other than young children. Palestinians have always hated the Jews of Israel and while they may not agree with the current actions of Hamas, there has been animosity and war going on ever since Israel became a nation in 1948.

So when I see a Palestinian on TV telling the camera that he and his fellow Palestinians are peaceful, I take that with a grain of salt. We see Palestinians running around those bombed hospitals with their injured, many of them children, looking for any doctors or nurses to care for their wounded — and then there are the others crowding up, shouting indecipherable slogans for the cameras … what are they helping? We also see crowds of Gazans scrambling over collapsed buildings frantically looking for any survivors. No one is hamming it up for the cameras as people look for anyone still breathing under tons of broken cement walls fallen down around bomb craters … and again I have to ask Israelis, What is enough? When will there be enough?

Makes me wonder … Actually I don’t wonder. Like I said. Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the world’s most vile war mongers. I have thought that for decades. How Israelis continually vote for him is beyond me. He is the brainchild behind that crime against humanity called their West Bank policy. How many Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes in the West Bank so Israeli families can moved in and take their homes and olive groves?

At least 500 Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev/Naqab region near Dimona are being forcibly  evicted by Israel. Most Israelis do not have clean hands when it comes to this. It isn’t in the West Bank, but it is the same policy: force out Palestinians who have lived on that land for decades and don’t know anywhere else as home.

Back to the West Bank. Israel had no claim to it until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel took it from Jordan. The international community considers the occupation of the West Bank by Israel to be illegal by international laws. Why isn’t our government — going back decades — on the right side of this issue? If Israel is one of our closest allies we have an obligation to push Israel into leaving the West Bank completely.

I remember when the holy city of Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Palestine. Like the Berlin, Germany of the Cold War, Jerusalem was divided into East and West Jerusalem. Then Israel decided they would annex the entire city. Then in December 2017 President Donald Trump relocated the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, saying he recognized the city as Israel’s capitol.

In the White House statement about the move, and this would be funny if it wasn’t so cruel, the statement said the Trump administration “… remains committed to achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace agreement.”

If our government believes “Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a necessary condition for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” Then they have either ingested too many psilocybin mushrooms, or we are just a cruel and unjust nation.

We put too much blame on the Palestinians — I mean Hamas and Hezbollah — and not enough on Israel for the decades of war and violence.. I’m not excusing Hamas’s attack on October 7. For that Hamas needs to be punished severely, wiped out even, but not by killing nearly 15,000 non-combatants.

After members of the terrorist organization Black September murdered 11 Israeli athletes (and one German policeman) in Munich, during the 1972 Olympics, Israel created a special unit of Mossad assassins who were given the task of killing every person involved with the terrorist attack. The point is the Israelis could mount a similar action against the people that attacked Israel on October 7. There is a lot of CCTV footage, plus that of the attackers who shot their own videos showing them “heroically” murdering women and small children, along with some unarmed men and that video can be used to identify the attackers

I don’t hold Israel the least bit at fault for those attacks, regardless of what immoral actions Israel has instigated in its 75 years of existence.

One thing that irritates the hell out of me are the anti-Israel people who claim the Jewish state is engaged in genocide. This is the dictionary definition of genocide: “noun, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.”

Israel is not trying to exterminate the entire population of Palestinians — but they are callously murdering thousands of non-combatants with their calculated bombing of Gaza. Saying Israel is an apartheid regime … I wouldn’t go quite that far, but if a government treats one group of people like second-class citizens, as Israel is treating Palestinians, yes, I guess it is apartheid.

For at least 50 years I’ve considered Amnesty International to be a fair organization that gives us accurate information, the facts. If Amnesty International says Israel is an apartheid regime then I can’t disagree.

This is a total reversal of my previous post on the matter, when I said Israel should engage in total war. They have and now they are long past the time when they should have stopped. Plus, total war is always uglier than restricted war warfare..

During World War II Germany was on its knees before mid-February 1945. The once celebrated Luftwaffe was no longer existent and the industrial might of the Nazis was 90% destroyed. Dresden could have been a legitimate target, but not in the city center where the carpet bombing took place over several nights, from February 13, 1945 to the 15th. And then again in April of that year, the month Hitler committed suicide.

Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful old cities in Europe until the Allied commanders decided to send 772 bombers from the United Kingdom and 527 from the U.S. Army Air Force to level the city of Dresden. There was no reason to do that. The war was just a few months away from being over. The bombing of Dresden was pure vengeance for the war that Hitler started, just like the continued destruction of Gaza. There’s no need for that, but Benjamin Netanyahu wants to pound his vengeance into the Palestinians.

Ever since the Israeli-Palestinian war began anti-Semitism and anti-Muslin/Arab hatred have been on the rise all over the world, including here in the U.S. At Cornell University Jewish students are afraid of going to classes. In Vermont three men of Palestinian descent were shot by a lone gunman. The shooter is in custody.

It’s very sad to see Americans threatening other Americans because of their religion, ethnicity or skin color. Hate has been a staple in the U.S. ever since the first Europeans invaded the Americas. What we can do, what I can do, is stand against bigotry and hate. Maybe one day the governments will agree.