Israel and Gaza
I started to write a long piece about Israel and Gaza yesterday, but eventually gave it up. I've been incredibly busy trying to get my graduate school applications off and study for a GRE retake so I don't have a lot of time. And the Israel/Gaza conflict is not the kind of issue one can say much meaningful about without spending a lot of time researching and writing.
There's one small aspect of it that I'd like to address today, and that's the news that Israeli bombs landed on a UN school where Palestinian civilians - including women and children -were sheltering leading to dozens of deaths. Israel is taking heat for this, and it's leading to intensifying international pressure on Israel to stop their attack on Gaza.
Well, here's some footage of the school in question. It was taken 2 years ago.
YouTube
So you can see that Hamas using this UN school as a launching pad for attacks on Israel is nothing new. Israel formally protested over this event to the UN, which did what the UN does best. That is to say: nothing.
Hamas is very good at using their civilian population not only as a shield, but as a sacrificial lamb. The blog A Soldier's Mother (written the mother of an Israeli soldier) goes into detail about both the most recent controversy over the school (Hamas was launching mortars from it again before Israeli retaliated) as well as the larger issue of the way in which Hamas treats their children. She points out that they get a lot of mileage from geuinely tragic photos like this one:
But that they would get considerably less favorable press if photos like these found more widespread distribution:
There are several more such images in the original blog post. Now I don't agree with every conclusion that she draws. She repeatedly takes the parents to task for allowing their children to take shelter in the school while it was being used to fire mortars at Israel. Where else were they supposed to go, exactly? Where else is safe? But her central point - that Hamas deliberately sacrifices their children for the sake of demonizing Israel - remains. I even have to ask, honestly, which pictures are more tragic in the long run?
Just as Hamas willingly sacrifices their own children, their Arab neighbors seem very willing to sacrifice all of Palestine for their own causees. The Arab nations make a general show of protesting Israel, but have done next to nothing of real benefit for the Palestinians. Egypt didn't even want to take over Gaza when Israel withdrew. "Hey Egypt, want some free land?" "With those crazies living there? Hell no!" I can't really blame them (would you want to try and run Gaza?) but it makes their sympathy for the Palestinians a lot harder to believe. For most Arab nations the primary function of the Palestinian crisis is to make sure that their popualtion has someone to hate more than the leadership of their own country. Matters are even more complicated when you consider the fact that - after successfully training Hezbollah to fight Israel to a standstill in Lebanon back in 2006 - Iran has been backing Hamas heavily in recent months. Hamas rocket attacks on Israel have penetrated farther and farther with the aid of sophisticated rockets from Iran as well as military training.
Hamas is thus functioning as a proxy army for Iran against Israel much as the way the Americans used the Mujahideen against the USSR in Afghanistan. If Israel had waited longer to respond the attacks would only have grown worse. If they stop their attack now, Iran will be pleased with their proteges and farther rearm them to inflict yet more damage down the road.
The Arabs and the Persians have a long history of bitter rivalry (see the Iran/Iraq war for an example) which is why Arab rhetoric against Israel has actually been relatively light this time around. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab states know full well that this is a proxy conflict between Iran and Israel, and they have very little love for Iran.
One final thing that should be brought to the attention of the general public is the wave of anti-Semitic violence sweeping through the world and especially Europe in protest of Israel's actions. At first blush this may seem natural, but you have to stop and realize that Judaism is a religoin. Israel is a country. If the conflict is really political and the Palestinians just want their own territory (which is what their apologists say) then why are synagogues in Europe being defaced?
I feel badly for the innocent Palestinians. Despite their stupidity in electing Hamas (can you really elect a government that is at war with your neighbor and act surprised when you end up in a war as a result?), they have had the short end of the stick ever since the British Empire decided to give the Palestinian Mandate to the Jews and the Arabs at the same time. (Oops). They are treated as canon fodder by their own government and by their allegedly sympathetic Arab neighbors. I don't know what the solution to the Middle East crisis is, but I am learning that it's not about who had what land 2,000 years ago. It's about perfectly mundane power struggles between Israel, Arab states, and Iran today. Expecting Israel to just sit and take a beating from Hamas isn't just wrong because no nation has a right to endure military assault without response, but it's dangerous because these days it plays to the hands of a resurgent and dangerous Iran.
