The Arab countries thought there would be easy pickings to expand their land and power, and that the poor hapless Arabs living in the area called Palestine were basically pawns, used by them as a kind of guerrilla force against Israel. In mid-June there was a UN backed “truce,” and a comment from a British military analyst was, “(the truce) "would certainly be exploited by the Jews to continue military training and reorganization while the Arabs would waste (it) feuding over the future divisions of the spoils". As we all know now, the Arab forces proved to be a paper tiger and the newly formed Israeli Defense Force seriously tenacious, and at the conclusion of the war Israel had increased its size, leaving Gaza under control of Egypt and the area called the West Bank under control of Jordan.

In 1967, amidst Cold War intrigue and eschewing any “CoeXisT” pretenses, the Arab powers thought it was a good idea to place large numbers of troops and armaments at the Israeli border. Israel decided not to wait to be attacked but began preemptive strikes, especially against the Egyptian air force. The Arab militaries proved to be completely feckless, almost Keystone Cop-like, and Israel proved the winner in just six days, and now occupied the Golan Heights (Syria), the West Bank (Jordan), and Gaza and the Sinai (Egypt).

In Oct. 1973, Arab forces- especially Egypt and Syria- thought the military stars were aligned in their favor and decided to attack Israel with great initial success, but eventually history repeated itself and Israel proved victorious, though didn’t expand its area of control. The poor Arabs that lived in the region proved to be ineffective in their insurgency against Israel, mostly firing rockets into Israeli communities, and were not really a factor (again, in my belief, nonentities as far as the Arab powers were concerned). A cease-fire accord was put into effect after 20 days of fighting.

Five and a half years later (1978-79), the Camp David Accords, essentially a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, became reality, with Israel returning the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt along with other agreements. Another major aspect of the Accords were that Israel would cede control of the West Bank and Gaza to the indigenous Arabs (i.e. Palestinians) at some point in the future.

That point was 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, an agreement often termed “land for peace” and a “two-state solution:” In exchange for recognition of Israel and its citizens’ right to live in peace, the declaration of principles negotiated in Oslo centered on the process of establishing Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” There were those who predicted “If a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most extreme terrorist forces..." (Shimon Peres, prime minister of Israel in the mid-1980s and again in the mid-1990s, who nevertheless was an important proponent of the Oslo Accords and, up to his death in 2016, dreamed of “...lasting peace among all of its- Israel’s- citizens and its neighbors”).

The Palestinian players were Yasser Arafat (now deceased) and Mahmoud Abbas (still around at the age of 88), who represented the Palestine Liberation Organization which evolved into the Palestinian Authority (PA), the latter to be a governing body of the autonomous areas- the West Bank (about 2,200 square miles), and the Gaza Strip (141 square miles); as a comparison, Rhode Island is about 1,200 square miles. The transition from Israeli control to the PA began in 1994, with PA elections held in 1996. Yasser Arafat was elected president, and his party- Fatah- won control of their newly established parliament. At this point reasonable people who desired a peaceful co-existence between Israel and the indigenous Arabs (the Palestinian people) had a reason to be optimistic...but it all fell apart.

Antisemitism and Other Forms of Hate

I have a relative, about five years older, who had a troubled adolescence and young adult period: petty (never violent) crime, drugs, gambling, etc. He was not inherently antisemitic, but had friends who were honest-to-goodness American Nazi party types, this being the early 1970s when there really were such people. One day when I was probably 12, I was watching cartoons and one of these miscreant friends asked if I noticed a decrease in the visual quality of cartoons. I said I really hadn’t, but he assured me, “It’s The Jews!,” his theory being something about a decrease in frames per second to save The Jews! Money.

I guess I can understand some hate, for example a soldier who survived four grueling year fighting in the Pacific developing hatred for the Japanese (though it’s amazing how fast anti-Japanese sentiment dissipated after WW2). Otherwise, hatred for someone simply because they are black, white, Jewish, or whatever always eluded me. This doesn’t mean I have CoeXisT bumper stickers, because I fully understand there really are bad people in the world, and sometimes they are disproportionately represented among various ethnic, racial, religious, or other “identity” groupings. To realize does not mean someone is biased or prejudiced, it’s simply a recognition of the truth, and to pretend otherwise is silly and counterproductive. Nevertheless, hating is certainly one of the great human failings for obvious reasons, but even more so because the tendency to hate can, and is, exploited as a way for truly evil people to gain power: some ideologies and political powers, as compared ethnic or racial groups, etc, exist solely based on hate.

War Pigs

Though I was in the military, I never came close to experiencing war. I have witnessed profound “third-world" suffering and misery, so I have some idea what horror is, but that’s without people trying to kill me. Imagine the horror that ensued by Kaiser Wilhelm demanding Germany’s “place in the sun,” and all those generals on all sides sipping their cordials while ordering 1000’s upon 1,000s to go “Over the top” to their slaughter, simply because that’s what War Pig generals do. Not all politicians and generals are War Pigs, but history is replete with them, from every culture and part of the world. War Pigs share a variety of common characteristics, including greed, vanity, and a lust for power. When it comes to hate, it’s never clear if the War Pigs actually and truly hate their targets, but there is nothing like whipping up hate and division among a susceptible population to achieve their goals.

When it comes to war, the War Pigs likewise have a commonality of strategies. These include a casual willingness to force their own soldiers into slaughter, intentional slaughter of enemy non-combatants, and perhaps most despicable, willingly expose their own civilians to death and destruction. It would be naive and ignorant (two traits that often describe “anti-war" activists) to believe there are no intelligent and compassionate warriors- the objective of the military is to achieve victory, which by definition often comes at a terrible price. I believe history concedes that Union General Grant, for example, incurred huge casualties by his aggressive strategy, but that it was necessary to defeat the Confederacy. Similarly, almost 85 years after the terrible events of using nuclear weapons against Japan, there are those who believe it was unforgivable (some are sincere, others are newer converts who feel good about themselves for being “against atomic weapons”). Up to a quarter million people were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the unknown, of course was how many would have been killed had the allies needed to invade Japan. Estimates included over a half million allied soldiers and up to 10 million Japanese fatalities. As in many such situations, all scenarios are worst case, some worse than others.

Hamas, not Hummus! (a joke line from a rather rude- but pretty funny movie- Bruno)

The problem with reasonable agreements like the Oslo accords (mid-1990s) is that it requires reasonable people to make them happen. Almost immediately, radical Arabs/Palestinians under the banner of Hamas objected to any concessions to Israel, and violence (against Israel and Fatah) ensued. This, not surprisingly, led many Israelis to question both the wisdom of the “land for peace” and assurances that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority could quell anti-Israeli violence. To make a very long, complex, and often contradictory story short, the West Bank came under the control of the PLO/Palestinian Authority and eventually Gaza was controlled by Hamas, which refused to accept, let alone seek, any version of peace.

It would be difficult to objectively reject the following observation: Hamas is to the Middle East in the present as the Nazis were to Europe in the 1930s and early 1940s. During the Nazi build up, they could appear reasonable when doing so was advantageous for public relations, but their goal of total oppressive domination and a Jew-free “1000-year Reich” of “Aryans” was never in question. Similarly, Hamas has, once in a while, kind of implied they might stop attacking Israel, but ultimately, to quote a current leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, “Gone is the time in which Hamas discussed recognition of Israel. The discussion now is about when we will wipe out Israel.” Perhaps the only real difference between the Nazi’s and Hamas from a political strategy standpoint is that the former kind of kept their agenda hidden, but the latter is tends to brag about it.

This is a link to a fairly objective history of Hamas: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hamas

War Pigs of Gaza

There are various means to power. One can include bringing people together despite different backgrounds and elevating as many as possible through equal opportunity and providing an environment of security that allows people to realize their aspirations. The opposite of this is to incite hate and use it to foment anger and violent retribution between the various factions the War Pigs themselves created, and targeting groups most susceptible to exploitation; historically this especially meant impoverished people, more recently the privileged class as well.

I suspect some people inherently hate, but for most it is taught, and too many come to find hate and rage satisfying on an almost neurological basis, like gambling or drugs. Were white children in the antebellum south and later during the Jim Crow era born hating blacks, or was it enculturated in them by the racist powers in charge? Did the black Hutus naturally hate the black Tutsis to the point of slaughtering them, or was there some manipulation involved? Are Palestinian children born hating Jews, or are they taught to do so by the malevolent Palestinian elite as a means to power and control? To hate a particular individual is a common human trait; to hate entire groups based on an innate characteristic is, with few exceptions, a learned behavior. And the best thing is, when the controlling powers incite hatred, is easy to view the enemy not as human and kill them without a troubled conscience.

Hamas has been a pretend government with the primary function not to provide routine services to the people- water, sanitation, electricity, etc- but to use ostensible legitimacy to achieve their goal to “...wipe out Israel.” Why in the world would they use massive amounts of free development money to improve the lives of their citizens when it could be used to develop and enhance a military infrastructure? In doing so they can check off every War Pig box. Obviously, by their own manifesto, any killing of Jews is a triumph, and they have never been shy about inciting their own people to sacrifice their lives (children not excluded) in the Jew-killing strategy, especially promising ignorant people “martyrdom.”

By so brutally (and successfully) attacking Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas War Pigs clearly understood they were provoking a military response from Israel that would include civilian deaths on the Gaza side. This, however, is not a tragedy for them, but a also a triumph: every dead Palestinian is a public relations victory for them, and they made it extra easy by co-locating military facilities in civilian areas, like hospitals. They adroitly learned that it’s just as easy to exploit the educated and privileged outside of Gaza as it is to exploit the ignorant and impoverished people within. For the former, pampered and elite people living in Western societies with all the associated material comfort, echoing the Hamas narrative is fun and easy and provides the satisfaction of pretend outrage: celebrities, academia, college students, all the usual suspects who never lifted a finger to elevate average citizens of Gaza, can march about and chant mindless slogans and fill the voids in their lives. The adoring media can parrot everything Hamas with the justification that, as Hamas is the governing authority of Gaza, it’s not “according to the terrorists” but “as reported by the Gaza health ministry…” Privileged progressive Westerners enjoy invoking the officialdom of government- as long as it’s consistent with their narratives- as a smokescreen for violence. Fortunately, it’s likely the casualty figures provided by the “Gaza Health Ministry” are inflated because they like the optics of high Palestinian body counts.

Mindless Chanting and Privileged Ignorance

In somewhat of a bitter irony, entitled children march around elite college campuses demanding “decolonization (of Gaza),” apparently unaware Israel divested itself, including forcible removal of Israeli settlers, from Gaza in 2005. The Israeli prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, stated, “the end of Israeli control over and responsibility for the Gaza Strip allows the Palestinians, if they so wish, to develop their economy and build a peace-seeking society, which is developed, free, law-abiding, and transparent and which adheres to democratic principles.” They did not wish, and this noble thought was short-lived. Whatever moderating influence the Palestinian Authority had was lost as Hamas took over complete control of Gaza 2006-2007, a process that involved no shortage Palestinian on Palestinian violence and bloodshed. Israel now had on it’s Southwestern border a “government” with its primary goal being the destruction of Israel, a cabal of War Pigs with an exploitable and expendable population of around 1.5 million at the time.

The Gaza Strip currently has a population of about 2.1 million (a population density about half of NY City), a 40% increase since the Hamas takeover of Gaza. One of the favored words of the well-coifed elite is “genocide,” in that historically Israel has committed “genocide” against the Palestinians as well as during their current response to the Hamas initiated massacre of Oct. 7^th. It’s again ironic that a nation founded largely by people who were honest-to-goodness victims of actual genocide are accused of the same by people who want to wipe them out. Apparently Israel isn’t good at genocide because the targeted population is supposed to decrease, not increase by 40%. Here is a simple way for Hamas to prevent “genocide” of its own people: don’t have your founding principle the annihilation of your neighbor, and don’t slaughter your neighbors knowing- and hoping- your neighbor’s response will be a military one, and don’t use your own people as shields knowing many may well be killed; but of course that is want they want.

Progressives especially love chants that rhyme, and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” just kind of rolls off the tongue. Of course this means the complete destruction of Israel, though I suspect few of the Harvard darlings parading about yelling this vile slogan have any clue what the “sea” is, and even fewer the “river.” The arrogance of privileged people who proclaim Israel is the aggressor and justify its destruction (and barbarity against Jews) is impressive. Curiously, these are the same fragile weaklings who demand “safe spaces” and protection against things like words and statues and books; the easily offended class whose very meaning in life comes from being outraged.

At the very founding of Israel in 1948 the surrounding Arab states exploited the local Arabs by pretending their hearts bled for them, thereby justifying war against Israel. Certainly locals were displaced as things played out, but there was never a beacon saying, “Come to us for succor our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters, we welcome you into our countries.” From then to this very moment in time, the Palestinians have had the doors to their fellow Arabs and Muslims shut in their faces; the latter want nothing to do with them except use them as pawns for their own purposes. This is the Mideast version of what’s playing out in the US: the “sanctuary cities” who so love and cherish illegal immigrants until they actually arrive; all of a sudden they can’t get rid of these non-English speaking “people of color” fast enough. The truth is they are merely a means to power, and they only serve that function when they are anywhere but in the “sanctuary.”

I wonder, as the tide of WW2 shifted in favor of the allies, if the average German citizen came to regret supporting that odious monster with the hipster mustache as the ally bombs rained down upon their cities and homes. Was it worth all those fabulous years of snazzy uniforms, goosestepping, and hearing Hitler yell at them about Aryan purity and the international conspiracy of The Jews, or did they finally realize they were lied to and exploited for the megalomania of a handful of power-lusting elite. The difference between the Nazi War Pigs and the Hamas War Pigs is that the former never really expected the devastation that would be wrought on their country and people, whereas the Hamas leadership welcomes it, knowing that tyrants all over the world- and prissy, selfish progressives of the West- will cry the Palestinians are the true victims, and the cycle of hate and violence, that gives them their power and wealth, will continue.

Below are several links providing further historical perspectives and observations of the current situation:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/11/01/palestinian-activist-hamas-alone-is-responsible-for-any-bloodshed-in-gaza-n2630115

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/10/23/can-the-palestinian-authority-control-gaza-if-hamas-is-ousted

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/whats-israel-palestinian-conflict-about-how-did-it-start-2023-10-30/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hamas-founder-son-speaks-against-terror-group-seventh-century-mentality