Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country is “embarking on a long and difficult war” as it deals with an unprecedented hostage crisis after Palestinian militants launched a surprise land, sea and air attack from Gaza, killing hundreds and infiltrating into Israeli territory.
Saturday’s shock attacks by Hamas led to the deadliest day in decades for Israel and come after months of surging violence between Palestinians and Israelis with the decades-long conflict now heading into uncharted and dangerous new territory. Questions are also swirling over how the entire Israeli military and intelligence apparatus appeared to be caught off guard in one of the country’s worst security failures.
Israel’s political-security cabinet convened late Saturday and made a “series of operational decisions aimed at bringing about the destruction of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, in a way that would negate their ability and desire to threaten and harm the citizens of Israel for many years to come,” according to a statement from the office of Israel’s Prime Minister.
That is honestly an incredibly naive and oversimplified view of things. Which mostly comes from the general lack of challenging media (because not having a villain who kicks puppies makes things confusing) and our lives inside content bubbles.
Let’s break that down on a few points
Someone just kidnapped somebody you care about, stripped them naked, beat them, who knows what else, and is parading their body around in the back of a pickup truck as others defile it. And now you have been told you should just drop it because a counter attack to stop those responsible is “unjust and a waste of life and resources”. Maybe you would be fine with that, but it should not be hard to realize that most people aren’t.
And… that is because the reality is that they also had a reason to feel they had to do that. You did absolutely nothing, but your neighbors or your government commit similar atrocities and so forth.
We really don’t.
Even before the ongoing hell that is global warming, there were a lot of parts of the world that just don’t support human life. People find ways to make it work but getting supplies and resources there is an ongoing challenge.
So… let’s move people to the more hospitable regions. Well, population density would increase such that you more or less require a city. And ignoring the ecological impact of that, what about the people who are there? Do you evict people, tear down their family home, and a few months later let them know they now live in an apartment complex with a couple hundred people who do not speak teh same language as them and have customs/rituals that may be outright offensive? And I am not talking about “they don’t hate gay people” and more “they play music at 7 am on a Saturday”
That is what this always boils down to. We should be living in a utopia. But to achieve that, we would need the world to be a utopia to begin with.
The reality is that the world is shit and so much of what is done is in retaliation for what was done. And while it is easy to be a kid in their mom’s basement talking about how people should just drop it… it is a lot harder to do so when it is your loved ones who suffered most recently.
And this is a “perfect” example. it is easy to focus on the fascist government locking an entire ethnic group in an open air prison when you live off scraps from reddit. And… that is 100% accurate.
But if you do a bit of research into the origins of israel you see a giant mess of basically The West helping a persecuted people relocate and telling the locals they would live alongside them. And neighboring countries (what few who were coherent enough to have a say because of how borders were drawn in the region) mostly didn’t care because… EVERYONE hated and persecuted the Palestinians. But as other construct nations gained a sense of being and Other Reasons, various (generally “arab”) nations rallied behind the concept of the Palestinians as an excuse to restrict israel’s growing military might and funded terrorist attacks. Which led to israel using even harsher responses and an environment where blatant fascists could take power.
And that is how you get an environment where both sides can say “Well, this is massively fucked… but the Others are assholes so…”. And neighboring countries are perfectly happy to stoke the flames but will never actually step in to stop anything.