Recently, Israel has sent troops into Gaza. And Israel has been using heavy weapons as part of that. When heavy weapons are used in urban areas, civilian deaths result. That's been sparking tons of criticism on Israel, but seemingly missed on that is that the Israeli action was prompted by the Hamas use of heavy weapons, in the form of rockets, on Israeli civilian targets.
I don't post here to be an apologist for Israel. I've never been that. But I am amazed by the degree of self righteousness that people in North American and Europe have exhibited over this event. Frankly,. the Palestinian voters who voted Hamas into office in the Palestinian Authority, and who support it now, might has well have pulled the lanyard on Israeli artillery.
For the simple reason that we do not wish to believe that its true, people in the western world simply refuse to believe that in their heart of hearts, members of Hamas are not liberal democrats. They are not. They adhere to a version of the world that is similar, if not identical, to that shared by ISIL, which is now operating to destroy Christianity in Iraq in the name of a Sunni Caliphate. Hamas, which is backed by Iran, wouldn't argue for a Sunni Caliphate, but it does imagine a Middle East that's a theocracy. That vision doesn't allow for a Jewish state in its midst. If it could effect its goals, which thankfully it cannot, things would be grim for the Jewish residents of Israel indeed.
If Hamas cannot bring about its goals, it can and does kill, and has been. And at some point, if you shell a country with an Army, that country is going to react. And if you hide your own guerrilla bands in a city, that city is going to be a target.
None of this excuses the indiscriminate use of force, nor does it even perhaps justify force. But it doesn't justify the excusing of a basic set of facts either, those being that to date there has not been a single Arabic nation on earth, save for the problematic example of Lebanon (formed as Christian state carved out from Syria originally) that has demonstrated the ability to function as a secular democracy. Twice in recent years, the Palestinian Authority being one example, and Egypt being another, chances for democracy have shown a high percentage of the population willing to throw in with theocratic parties that are troubling in nature. People a re instinctively democratic, and certainly the examples we've seen globally show that the fostering of democracy can take decades to be successful. There's nothing to suggest that the neighbors of such states will be willing to chalk up violent attacks against them to political infancy and just sit it out.
I frankly don't know what the solution to this problem is here. Gaza is clearly untenable as a political entity. It's an isolated city that's hopeless in its isolation. It can't be part of Israel as that would not work. Egypt wants nothing to do with it. Rationality would argue for buying out the residents and urging them to move elsewhere where things were better, which would be nearly anywhere, but long history has demonstrated that the Arab states are pretty intolerant toward taking in refugee populations. This is no wonder, given that almost every single Arab nation is ruled in a fashion that's simply a house of cards. So, for example, it makes more sense for Dubai or Saudi Arabia to bring in huge numbers of Filipinos, from their prospective, than it would to offer and encourage a funded new home for their fellow Arabs, who wouldn't take them up on that offer anyhow. But rocketing Israel isn't going to get them what they want either, which largely would seem to be Hamas' goal that Israel simply not be.
Additionally, there's more than a little irony, albeit one that apparently isn't very much appreciated, by populations in the western world lecturing Israel, when Israel remains quite aware that it came into existence as the greater European culture participated in a pretty dedicated effort to wipe the Jewish culture in the 1930s and 1940s. It'd be hard, from the prospective of people who have experienced that well within historical memory, to feel that they shouldn't act to defend themselves, and that others will not act to aid them. Again, I"m not an apologist for Israel, but to a certain degree it's hard not to feel that in recent decades proclivities that had seemingly died in 1945 have creeped back in a tad, and even if they haven't, it'd be hard for Israelis not to wonder if they have.
Finally, I have to wonder why it is that one population of suffering Arabs, whom I fully concede are suffering, and many of whom are completely innocent of anything, receive the attention they deserve, while another, differing mainly in their traditional stability and Faith, are ignored.
