Thoughts on the Middle East Conflict Despite the Mediterranean sun, it’s raining missiles in Israel. Scrambling to refuge at the deafening sound of the sirens and hearing the boom of rockets must create a discomforting atmosphere. I imagine the distress escalates to frustration when confronted with the Anti-Israeli headlines permeating the social media and foreign press, which often fail to mention the reality for the population living in Israel (regardless of religion, ethnicity and nationality). I reckon this must be even harder on the Arab-Israelis, and my heart goes out to the majority of nationalist non-violent Palestinians whose voices are often silenced. I have no intention of deciding which side is right or wrong, give a lecture about this ongoing conflict or indicate how one should filter information from the medias interpretation of events. Instead, I simply wish to offer another perspective, raise questions and encourage an open exchange of thoughts. In Tel Aviv, the people have 90 seconds to take refuge at the first sound of a siren and generally the alerts have a few hours of calm in between one another. Albeit far from ideal, this lifestyle is manageable and the people continue with their daily routine, kids go to school, etc. However, the southerners are faced with a mere 15 seconds to take refuge and are bombarded with several alerts every hour. Often 15 seconds is not enough to put on a t-shirt and pair of shorts, assuming you were asleep in bed. As the majority of the Palestinian population wishes for peace, it has grown tired of being hostage to the political and religious motivations of an organization that is supposed to defend its rights, and thus is progressively losing faith in it. It is plausible that this lack of confidence, an endless fight for power with Fatah and the loss of Egyptian support is forcing Hamas to play its final card in a last ditch effort to regain the faith of its civilian population by luring Israel into a ground offensive. In doing so, Hamas will likely restore Israeli hate amongst Palestinians and reaffirm the alleged usefulness of an extremist organization that employs violence as its primary mode of expression. Such an approach is all the more justifiable in the face of violence, regardless of who is responsible for instigating it. I pray for both sides that this does not happen. Given that Israel employs the world’s third most powerful army and Hamas’ operations are limited to radicals armed with missiles and rockets that hide amongst the civil population, it is conceivable that Hamas is strategically prepared to suffer an overwhelming military defeat. Such a loss would feasibly secure a coveted ‘media war’ victory, in which the world turns against Israel condemning its ‘disparate response.’ However, given the circumstances, what does one suppose a proportional response would be? Or does this sentiment presume that Israel is expected to ignore the missile attacks? I find it difficult to imagine that any government in the world would tolerate terrorist assaults on its people, for any period of time, before mustering some sort of reaction. Nevertheless, whatever you deem to be an appropriate response, the mournful truth is that the violence will rob innocent people of their lives. One side is defended by a highly trained militia that explicitly targets terrorists and at the same time makes a considerable effort to avoid civilian casualties. The other is comprised of fanatics blindly shooting at a country in hopes of killing some of its people. Yet, it is the latter who invariably suffers more casualties as it exploits its very own innocent civilians as human shields. The resulting imbalance of such disregard for human life (or failure to love their own more than they hate Israel) makes it unreasonable to condemn actions based on the number of victims. Moreover, all the fear, pain and tears suffered by the innocent people running for their lives do not justify one side over the other either. Regardless of which side is ethically superior, to me, a media war victory for Hamas is a tragedy for the non-violent Palestinians, since several of the shortcomings of a terrorist regime lie precisely within it. If only Israeli air strikes are reported with no mention of the rockets and missiles constantly fired into Israel; if the ‘good guys’ are chosen based on the number of lives lost; if exploiting innocent civilians as human shields is validated by making use of the available resources; if blind violence is appropriate; if potential victims on one side are more acceptable than on the other; then doesn’t one deny the Palestinian people of the civic moral duty shared by everyone else? I truly hope that one day an autonomous Palestinian state will be formed, whose citizens enjoy freedom and elect capable leaders. However, giving up their ethical responsibility to one another, consequence of a media war victory, does them no justice at all. Written by Kate Levy and inspired by David Sadigh
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 06:02:29 +0000
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