War now or War later: Levantine options are varying degrees of bad

When good people do nothing in the face of great evil, evil wins. What is happening in Gaza today and has been happening almost nonstop for the past 80 plus days, is calculated mass murder, torture, and depriving human beings of food, medicine, warmth, security, dignity and life itself, with the goal of either evicting every last Palestinian from Gaza, or at the very least having Israel dominate the strip completely and replace the Hamas-led native government with an Israeli military regime. Such a regime would have one mission, to make local Palestinians’ lives so miserable that they would pack up and leave of their own volition eventually. The Gazan War’s end is being planned now in the corridors of power in the United States and Israel; a marriage of pure evil, two nations who have truly earned this moniker! 

Part of that "deal" most likely includes buffer zones, some permanent Israeli military presence on the periphery, denial of any reconstruction material entering Gaza, stricter control of all border access points, maybe even rebuilding a few Israeli settlements inside the strip, certainly the demolition of all tunnels. But all that has to wait until Israel has full control of the whole territory, which is some time away. 

Only time will tell how this ends

But when people watching on their television or smart devices the day to day tragedies unfolding in Gaza and see for themselves the casualties pour into half destroyed hospitals, or see the few that remain standing and haven’t been leveled or turned into Israeli army barracks, when they see the terrified tear-stained faces of little children crying and casualties sprawled half dead on hospital floors lit by mobile phone torches, when the people of this benighted planet see all that and do nothing but post condemnations on social media or march in pro-Palestine rallies, and then go on about their lives without any more thought, then this world deserves to implode! This world deserves to have its environment wrecked by its own miserable dominant species. Call it poetic justice. I say to hell with humans who allow evil to thrive in their midst while they guard and preserve their own precious first world comforts. Damn such a world to hell and damn this species to oblivion.

 

Israel is a rogue state that needs to be stopped in its tracks. Many have foretold Israel's collapse, the collapse of its armed forces, its security apparatus, its government, its institutions, even as I write these words plane loads of dual Israeli citizens are probably taking off to their plan B country. (Growing up in the Levant, I know all two well the value of a second and even a third passport and a plan B!) Israelis that remain will likely be the most hardline and hard core of extreme Zionists and ultra right wing religious zealots, which will only make Palestinian lives in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, not to mention the lives of Israeli-Palestinian-Arab citizens, more of a living hell than it already is. 

Ironically, both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians no matter where they live are being brought to an eventual clash point, some call it an inevitable civil war, a point where all state institutions simply collapse due to the immense pressures placed on them. We already see this is the West Bank where the PA is all but extant and a mere irrelevance today. But, if Israel thinks her institutions will survive much more of the battering ram war on Gaza, they are sadly mistaken. Their army's elite forces have already taken a rare drubbing and actual real casualties are still being understated. Israeli citizens forced to relocate from their homes in the south and north of the country will not be patient for months to come, nor will the families of Israeli civilians and soldiers held by Hamas, while Netanyahu plays Nero and pours more bombs over what's left of Gaza's civilian infrastructure.

 

The genocide committed against the Gazan civilian population proves that this state is based upon and built on the premise of ethnic cleansing and forced eviction of non-Jews from Palestine, a rogue state that ignores all international laws and conventions regarding the treatment of civilians and noncombatants in times of war. 

The Palestinian deaths attributed to Israel’s bombing campaign and its land offensive are heavy weights on the souls of every Jew around the world and every Jew that ever lived, as this state acts in their name, much like the chains carried by Jacob Marley’s ghost that he forged in life. "Man kind is our business..." 

Because this obscene Zionist state claims to represent the Jews of the world, even though I know many Jews who vehemently disagree with that claim and strongly oppose this state’s actions, so the world will not simply judge Netanyahu and his Cabinet and military leaders in future war crimes tribunals, they will judge everyone. 

 

“Not in our name!” should be the angry cry from every member of the Jewish faith world wide.

 

As for those out there who think and hope that if they sit still the ‘evil one’ would simply ignore them and move along without doing them any harm, you are fools! Evil if allowed to fester and grow will engulf us all eventually and turn all that is good and prosperous and happy to ruin.

 

Must I say it?! Must I say that the world should unite against evil?! Is it something that needs to be said at all?! Or is it something that is universally accepted as a given, an absolute duty of all the good people of this world?!

 

I can understand the fear that infests the hearts of the Lebanese, the threats from Israel are serious and terrifying in light of what they have already done in Gaza. But, sometimes there is no escaping the inevitable. Deep down every Lebanese knows that the big one is coming sooner rather than later, the major showdown, the last and final war with Israel, there is no escaping it. 

Hezbollah simply represents too much of an existential threat to Israel, even if it does nothing. For Israel to allow Hezbollah to continue to exist is unthinkable. So for those who call on us to keep our heads down and not to invite Israel’s wrath, I say I’m with you, I too want to spare Lebanon destruction if we can. But I ask you, even if we are spared now, this year, or next year or the year after that, do you really think Israel would allow Hezbollah to remain at full strength and fully in control along the southern border…? I think not.

 

There are no good choices here. In fact, all choices are bad but to varying degrees. 

 

Israel calls this war its second war of independence, an existential fight, and in the later it may very well be right. No one in the Levant wants Israel to be on their border, not in Lebanon, not in Jordan, not in Syria and not in Egypt. 

 

Palestinians never had a war of independence of their own because every war inflicted upon them or every war they have had to wage to defend their right to exist and their right to fight their occupier ended with a Palestinian loss and no independence. Maybe this time it will be different, or maybe I’m too much of a dreamer.

 

The soldiers of the Qassam Brigades fighting in Gaza, the boys who built those tunnels and who continue to put up a good fight, who daily replay the final battle from "Saving Private Ryan", and inflict major casualties on their Israeli enemy, did no one ever ask why they fight so hard and so well and so desperately? They do so because theirs is the fight of those who have no choice! When you have no choice, when you are a lifer, a prisoner with not hope of parole, all you have is time, time to think, time to study and learn, time to plan. That is Hamas' secret, they had the time to prepare well and the motivation to strike and fight for as long as they can or for as long as it takes the world to grow a pair!

Israel left Palestinians without any good options, Gaza besieged for 17 years their backs to the sea, forgotten by the normalizing Arab world. The West Bank ruled by an aging president with no claim to legitimacy not to mention public support, who's Palestinian Authority allows Israeli forces daily free rein to enter areas under its control and arrest or kill any one they choose. 

But for how long can Palestinians keep fighting for? even I ask myself that question… but I know no answer to it. Surely, a point will come when they will weary and tire and all resistance will collapse? Maybe that's what Israel is banking on, but I shouldn't be too confident, resistance has a way of finding new reserves of strength.

 

Maybe, one day, the majority of the world's countries and people will realize how vital it is to come to the aid of the Palestinians if only to prevent this from happening to other dehumanized and dispossessed minorities too powerless to oppose the forces marshaled against them. This fight isn't just for Palestine, it is for all the human values that we take for granted in our modern world, a world that no longer tolerates what happened to native peoples in America and Australia, a world that united once against Apartheid and white minority rule in South Africa and brought a whole system crashing down. This is all of humanity's fight.