By As it stands, Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas has so far done little to improve the continuous calamity that is Gaza.
Just today, we are getting news of a fourteen-year-old child losing her life after a typically heavy-handed Israeli raid erupted in violence. Israel is showing the Gazans who’s boss. Vote for Hamas? Pay the price.
And yet, who was it exactly that the Gazans were supposed to vote for? Previous attempts at establishing a measure of good government have failed spectacularly. If you feel that your very existence is under siege, who do you turn to? That’s right, the guys with the guns.
I have no love lost for Islamic hard-liners. However, when I look at Israel’s policies toward this region, it seems to me that at this point, it’s as if no one is even searching for an actual solution. Gaza is troublesome and unstable, and who wants to deal with that? Why not just bleed it dry? Demoralize it to the point of it fading away?
The horrors of European anti-Semitism have paved the way for a series of new horrors elsewhere.
For example, I don’t blame Jews for wanting to leave the beloved, albeit struggling, country of my birth, Ukraine. A Ukrainian gentile is privileged in a way that a Ukrainian Jew is simply not. Swastikas spray-painted on the walls of residential buildings say it all. This side of the issue must be considered if a solution to the conflict can one day be reached.
It’s easy to talk “peace” when you don’t have to worry about grenades flying through your window at any given moment, but I would like to try.
There have been atrocities on both sides of this ongoing debacle, and the ensuing bitterness has solidified into rock-hard contempt. Fundamentalist nihilism has blossomed alongside collective punishment and impotent diplomacy.
Things cannot go on like this indefinitely. A perpetually embattled Israel, surrounded by disgruntled neighbours, is not sustainable. Who wants to live like that? No one wants to live like that.
My question is, how many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian deaths will it take before there is a collective shift in thinking?
