Every Good Morning

Nothing about Israel* yields to simple questions let alone simple answers, but Israel’s actions in Gaza now bring to mind what Thucydides said about the relationship between the Athenian Empire and the Melians: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The Israelis responded to the horror of the October 7 massacres and hostage taking (over 1200 murdered; rape used by Hamas as a weapon of war) by defending itself and attacking Hamas within Gaza. The War has gone on for over 460 days. Gaza has been made into rubble. A handful of hostages have been returned. Many are dead. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed – the Israelis claiming that Hamas uses them as bases with civilians used as shields. Possibly over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 12,000 of that number being children. No one really knows the exact numbers. The Israelis often withhold food aid. When it does get through, criminal gangs often hijack the shipments. A Hobbesian world exists within Gaza: “The spread of disease, breakdown of law and order, proliferation of crime, rise of food insecurity and malnutrition, collapse of the health-care system, and continued cycles of displacement from one area to another have completely and utterly broken Gaza’s population. After enduring unimaginable suffering and loss, the people of Gaza are desperate for a future that does not include Hamas or Israel controlling their lives. They want the sacrifices that were forced upon them to produce a radically different future. And yet, as I write this, there is still no end in sight.”**

Countries can lose their souls. We’ve seen it in Russia and China. Who knows what awaits us in the US. Israel’s desire for vengeance and its refusal to see Palestinians as human beings is driving it toward becoming an apartheid state, the kind of place that encourages the ruling population, many Israelis, to very consciously see other human beings, Palestinians, as inferior, as subhuman, as disposable. What follows such a perception is the moral degradation of that ruling population.

Fady Joudah asks of Israel, “Your grand Inquisitor role/isn’t for doves, your better angel/is calling you/to let go/of holding on and to hold on/to letting go: Your misguided vengeance, / your unequaled pain, /why on my body?”#

Israel is the regional superpower in the Mid-East. It possesses as many as 90 nuclear weapons. It may have the best combination of intelligence services in the world. Its conventional forces are experienced and superbly armed. It can afford mercy. It can exercise restraint. In Gaza, it has shown neither mercy nor restraint.

In 416 BC, the Athenians were engaged in a bitter war with Sparta, the Peloponnesian War. The island of Melos was strategically important. The Melians wished to remain neutral. Athens invaded, killed every male and sold the women and children into slavery. Twelve years later, Sparta sacked Athens and wiped out the Athenian Empire. No nation endures forever. The Athenian Empire died because its neighbors feared its arrogance and ferocity.

As a result of its actions in Gaza, Israel has lost whatever sympathy and moral supremacy it may once have possessed. It retains its enormous power, for now, and thus it still has time to learn that mercy is not weakness, vengeance is not strength, and war crimes are never justified.

 

*I’ll encourage to do your research on the pogroms in Palestine before the creation of the Jewish State, about the Grand Mufti, about the cause and effect of the Holocaust in its formation, about the war of 1948 and the Nabka, about all the following Israel-Arab Wars, the Camp David Accords, the failure of the Camp David Summit, the Intafadas, the rise of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in a proxy war against Israel, the rise of the Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing, Hamas’ attack of October 7 and Israel’s resulting attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, renewed acts of terrorism against Israelis within Israel and the  Israeli settlers’ ongoing efforts to destroy Palestinian villages and homes and drive them from their land.

*The Atlantic. September 23, 2024

#From […], a book of poems, by Fady Joudah

 

© Mike Wall

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