I have been trying to come up with an understanding of the Gaza war, along with everyone else. I was moved in a slightly different direction by Peggy Noonan’s recent article, The October Horror is Something New.

First of all, I’m not sure Peggy is still “ok” – like all the old guard, she is getting, well, old.

I have spent much of my life as you have, hearing regular reports of fighting in the Mideast, so when news broke last Saturday of what was happening near Gaza my mind started to process it as a continuation of the past. Within hours, as the facts of the October horror began to emerge, I understood no, wait, this is a new thing. And I felt a foreboding.

Hate to sound nit-picky, but it is unlike Peggy Noonan to publish such sentences: why the missing comma in the first line? And what’s with “Mideast”? Isn’t that Ohio? Last, “I understood no, wait,” – where are the commas?

That sets the stage for me – she is upset, and, in her old age, frightened. But her tenderness did affect me: I am in deep sympathy with Israelis – the sadistic violence on their own, and our own, was borderline psychotic, and we must first show empathy, next, analysis.

Because hey – it’s not something new. It’s fucking war. Like US soldiers pissing on piles of corpses during Bosnia-Herzegovina. The US and French stand at the top of homicidal mania in war – just read your history (except it’s been banned). Again, for the simple-minded, I am NOT taking sides here, and am still in deep sympathy with the Israelis, and mortified by the nature of Hamas’ actions. But look, it’s fucking war, perpetrated by the human race, inherently violent and perverse. If you want to judge by levels of violence, then I lose interest.

More than 1,300 Palestinians have also been killed in numerous air strikes on Gaza that Israel’s military is carrying out in response, and Israel has imposed a total blockade on the territory, denying it food, fuel and other essentials.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396

So, Netanyahu is going to take revenge, and I will place bets that his revenge will not be any more humanitarian than Hamas’. In the above quote, “other essentials” means food and water. The Gaza Palestinians will slowly die of hunger, dehydration, disease – yes, babies too 😉 He has never been a kind man, and Peggy backs me on that. He is a power-mad despot, who leads the arch-right Zionists in his own Jihad against the Palestinians (an imaginary word, since they do not have a State).

I have been troubled by, angered by, Israel for years—expanding settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s high-handedness with American political leaders, his party’s embrace of an ignorant populist nationalism.

People just can’t be empathetic to two sides of a conflict. One has to be worse. Can’t even have a balanced discussion. Can not. My point is, no matter the horror, Israel is not guilt-free. And for the simple-minded: Hamas is not guilt-free.

Here’s another Peggy “slip”. In a clumsy recall of Nancy Pelosi’s attempt at showing solidarity with Native Americans, she writes:

as an American Catholic I am experiencing it as a renewed sense of loyalty to kin.

WTF? Kin? Is this the “harlot of Jerusalem” Roman Catholic thing the priests used to joke about? Peggy Noonan is far removed from Israel. Now, my best friends in this life have been Jews – both of them. One, the son of a Holocaust survivor. Nonetheless, I am still just an onlooker. I sympathize with any mother whose baby was decapitated, regardless of Nation or Creed.

Another thing I am always surprised at is how people make this an attack on Jews. Yes, Israel is a Jewish State. Hamas is an Islamic terrorist organization. So at some deep, historical level, this is about Jews v. Muslims. But that thinking obfuscates the real thing: it’s about greed, power, and control, at the highest political levels – everyone, including the US, wants to control the Middle East – don’t be confused, and don’t think any of the parties are moral in any sense. This is so much more about a land-grab than some righteous religious Truth. There are Jews, and there are Israelis – there are Jews who do not share the Zionist goals of the current populist, right-wing State. But it’s not a fine point – this conflict is not about religion: it’s about power. And people are the cannon fodder. Quick history:

Britain took control of the area known as Palestine after the ruler of that part of the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in World War One.

The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other, smaller ethnic groups.

Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a “national home” in Palestine for Jewish people.

This stemmed from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a pledge made by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Britain’s Jewish community.

The declaration was enshrined in the British mandate over Palestine and endorsed by the newly-created League of Nations – forerunner of the United Nations – in 1922.

To Jews Palestine was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.

In 1948, unable to solve the problem, Britain withdrew and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel.

It was intended to serve as a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, as well as a national homeland for Jews.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396

A Haganah (Jewish Underground) fighter just before the start of the Israeli War of Independence 1948

Maybe still not clear.

While the State of Israel was established on 15 May 1948 and admitted to the United Nations, a Palestinian State was not established. The remaining territories of pre-1948 Palestine, the West Bank – including East Jerusalem- and Gaza Strip, were administered from 1948 till 1967 by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.

https://unctad.org/topic/palestinian-people/The-question-of-Palestine

That’s interesting, but, in reality Palestine (called Phillistia in your Bible) was always just a region, and the inhabitants were never just “Palestinians” – rather, everyone is a Palestinian: Jews, Muslims, Christians

The region of Palestine/Land of Israel was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. In the Bronze Age, the Canaanites established independent city-states that were influenced by the surrounding civilizations, among them Egypt, which ruled the area in the Late Bronze Age.

During the Iron Age, two related Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah, controlled much of Palestine, while the Philistines occupied its southern coast. The Assyrians conquered the region in the 8th century BCE, then the Babylonians in c. 601 BCE, followed by the Persians who conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late 330s BCE, beginning a long period of Hellenization in the region. In the late 2nd century BCE, the Hasmonean Kingdom conquered most of Palestine and parts of neighboring regions but the kingdom gradually became a vassal of Rome, which annexed the area in 63 BCE. Roman Judea was troubled by large-scale Jewish revolts, which Rome answered with by destroying Jerusalem and the Second Jewish Temple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine

What a mess – since the very beginning, ca. 3000 years ago – even the Roman Catholics attacked Noonan’s “kin”, and you might stop and think of what Roman soldiers were capable off.

In conclusion, fuck the powers that be. Stop being little boys with adult weapons. The World, which you SHARE with the rest of us, is sick and tired of your struggle to annihilate one another, or, control one another, or whatever motivations grant you clearance to kill, maim, and torture, the very people you were supposed to protect. You’re all fundamentally idiots. In the hands of rational beings, this would be considered a humanitarian crisis – not cowboys and indians (the indians lost that one.) When Hell freezes over, a joint State of Muslims, Christians, and Jews could be created, and called, inclusively, Palestine.