Meanwhile on the International front....

I've seen some ignorant shit but this takes the cake. Everybody in Israel knows someone who was killed, taken hostage or directly impacted by October 7. Hell, a huge percentage of the Jewish diaspora can say the same. Someone in my wife's family was killed in the attacks and a friend of my son's was abducted from the music festival after his hand was blown off. He's a high-profile hostage whose parents have been very visible in the media and as it turns out I know people who know his family, completely separate from my son's personal connection to him. The Jewish world is that small. And more Jews were killed on October 7 than any day since the Holocaust, including all of Isarel's wars with Arab States. Also, to describe Israel as as "war zone" for the last 50 years is absolutely false. To reduce the trauma that the Israeli public and the Jewish diaspora is experiencing to "Likud propaganda" is beyond ignorant and offensive.

With all due respect, either learn something or sit this one out

 

Thank you for posting this. I saw his ignorance earlier but didn't have time to formulate a proper response. You nailed it.

 

Forty-some years ago I was riding on a bus through the Galilee when a young guy in uniform with an automatic weapon sat down next to me. We struck up a conversation. He was from Detroit and had emigrated to Israel. He was on his way to the Golan, where he was stationed. Nice kid, we had a great chat.

One of the things he told me before we parted was that Israel was never going to give up the Golan and the West Bank. It seems to me that he was not there as a defender but a a zealot who had left his home country to fight for an expanded, greater Israel.

I also had a chance to talk with a midlevel IDF officer, another immigrant, from South Africa. I asked him something about Palestinian interests, and he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

I was in the country on a graduate reporting project, so I got to see more than the average tourist. Certainly I was a guest, but even then armed soldiers were a common sight all over, along with checkpoints and random interrogations. And that was in 1980-81, a period of relative quiet. I wouldn't call it peace.

I'm sorry that members of anybody's family has suffered in any way. There's been a lot of suffering over that patch of ground. I feel very bad that it's happening. But I'm not surprised by any of it. If you think Israel was at peace before the Hamas attack, we are in disagreement.

 

You described it as a "war zone." The presence of armed soldiers are a reality in a tiny country with compulsory military service and reserve service until you're 45. It would be jarring to someone who didn't grow up with it but the country is the size of New Jersey and -- at the time at least -- only had a peace agreement with one immediate neighbor. There is also a higher level of security infrastructure than what you may be used to. That's a lot different than being in a "war zone" with violence constantly surrounding you. My experience having lived there about a decade later and then on multiple subsequent extended visits was that daily life was very normal (and I was there during a period punctuated by a war -- the Gulf War of 1990-91 -- which was obviously an outlier). And I guess you're free to extrapolate the attitudes of 9 million people from conversations you had with two soldiers more than 40 years ago.

Now what you said in the post I responded to is NOT that some Israelis are intractable about peace with Palestinians (and that soldier was correct that Israel will never, ever give up the Golan. That would be suicide) or that they may have handwaved an inevitable crisis for years. What you said that I responded to was that any notion of October 7 being the equivalent of Pearl Harbor is "Likud propaganda." Which is actually insulting. To put things in perspective, in a country of Israel's population (9 million vs. 300 million), it would take thirteen 9/11s or Pearl Harbors to have the numerical equivalent. Plus, Pearl Harbor was an attack on U.S. military targets -- only 68 civilians died that day out of about 2500 U.S. deaths. And it happened on a naval base that's a 6-hour flight from the West Coast in a territory that wouldn't become a state for nearly 20 more years. On the other hand, October 7 happened in people's fucking homes in a part of a country the size of New Jersey that was maybe an hour's drive from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv -- the nation's two major population centers. Comparing October 7 to Pearl Harbor is no exaggeration -- mathematically and circumstantially, it's a significant understatement. If you don't get that, your personal experience talking to Israeli soldiers who were immigrants from English speaking Western societies 40 years ago doesn't move me an inch.

 

Thanks for these posts, X-Hack. You're offering some good perspective and sentiments. Remembering that the Hamas attack was done, purposely and calculatedly, in people's homes, and not to a military installation, is a good, hard-hitting point.

 

The "purposely and calculatedly" part is another thing that seems to be ignored here. This wasn't one massive act of violence like a car bomb or, I hate to say it, even 9/11, where the object is to blow something up and take out as many people as they can.
This was wetworks-style murder on a massive scale. They invaded homes and tortured people for hours. They kidnapped children after murdering their families in front of them. From the sound of it, they likely sold some of their hostages to other terrorist groups.
Far as I'm concerned, anyone capable of doing those acts forfeits any consideration of empathy or sympathy.

 

Are there people empathizing with Hamas? I don’t mean 20-year-old college edgelords.

 

"Supporting Hamas" and "supporting innocent Palestinians" are two entirely different things that are being conflated.

 

Yes. There have been a lot of large protests in a lot of cities around the world stating as much.
Hell, there was one in front of the Democratic Party headquarters in DC — while members of Congress were inside — a few weeks ago. Six Capitol Police officers were injured.

Police and protesters clash outside Democratic HQ during a demonstration over the Israel-Hamas war

 

Opinion | Over 60 Journalists Have Been Killed in the Israel-Gaza War. My Friend Was One.

 

Nothing in that story supports your claim.

 

When I get time I'll collect some links to coverage of the couple hundred other massive protests that have taken place in the U.S. and Europe over the past two months. It's a big job.