Holy Wars...The Punishment Due, Part 4a
Israel vs Hamas and a long history of violent competition. So far, so good, so what?
In the name of complete transparency, this entry is the most difficult to write because of my many personal relationships with Jewish people throughout my life.
While I’ve had a number of Muslim students that I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to get to know in my classrooms, and I once had very polite correspondence with an Imam who hosted my Comparative Religion class fieldtrips to his mosque, there has been a much larger contingent of Jewish people throughout my life with whom I’ve been much closer, including my rescue mom, my childhood bestfriend, my ex-wife, my only daughter, my boss, and more friends than I could ever count.
But this blog is about me being as fair to everyone as I possibly can, to be as honest and impartial as I’m capable of being, and to take seriously all of the people who don’t share my worldview, so here goes…
Everything is entirely the Palestinians fault. Context and history aren’t important. The End.
Actually, this is complicated enough I’m going to need to do three entries on it. This first part, 4a, is going to look at the history of the conflict and the basic arguments for Palestinian and Israeli aggression towards each other, especially as they pertain to non-military targets.
Part 4b will look at the conflict from an International Relations perspective, as there is a serious risk of this conflict setting off a domino effect that draws Sunni Muslims, led by Saudi Arabia, into a direct war with Shi’ite (or ‘Shia’) Muslims, led by Iran. From there, that could draw in everyone’s' geopolitical allies, and Kaboom! - We’re in World War III.
1. Generalities
The most recent flareup of this long-simmering conflict occurred on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas (an acronym for ‘Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya’, translated as “Islamic Resistance Movement”) stormed Israel and just murdered, raped, and terrorized a bunch of non-combatants (+1,400 killed, 242 hostages taken, with many women, children, and tourists among the casualties and fatalities).
As I covered in Part 1 of this series, the Israelis have a historical and religious claim to this land as part of their covenant with G-d, while the Palestinians-as-Muslims also have a historical and religious claim to the land as a former province of the Dar El-Islam that has fallen tot he Dar El-Harb, which they understand as an eternal claim on the land they formerly held control over.
Israel is currently responding to the attacks, as are Iranian proxies, as is America by striking at targets in Syria and sending a huge military fleet to the region, all of which are all tied to each other via other global conflicts, energy and resource production lines, alliances, competition between religious sects (especially Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, the difference explained here).
2. History
Quillette traces the conflict back to 1917 and the Balfour Declaration: The 1917 Balfour Declaration was written after the British took over the territory of Israel/Palestine following their victory over the Ottoman Empire in World War 1. The declaration, according to Britannica, is the
Statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community.
This leads to negative interactions between Palestinians and Jews, which leads to the 1929 Palestine Riots, where Arabs, fearing displacement via increased Jewish migration to the area, kill 133 Jews and injure another 339.
Meanwhile, the persecution of European Jews culminates in the Holocaust during the World War 2, which leads to England giving the land to the Israelis via the UN, which sets off massive global migration of Jews to Israel. From the ADL:
At the end of World War II, the British persisted in their immigration restrictions and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were violently turned away from the shores of Palestine. The Jewish Agency and the Haganah continued to smuggle Jews into Palestine. Underground cells of Jews, most notably the Irgun and Lehi, engaged in open warfare against the British and their installations.
The British concluded that they could no longer manage Palestine and handed the issue over to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, after much debate and discussion, the UN recommended the partition of Palestine into two states - one Jewish and one Arab. The Jews accepted the UN resolution while the Arabs rejected it.
Palestinians resist and other Arab nations try to support their fellow Muslims. A series of guerilla attacks and wars culminates in the Israel launching the Six-Day War in 1967, which became a lopsided victory for the Israelis where they captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Golan Heights. From Britannica:
The Arab countries’ losses in the conflict were disastrous. Egypt’s casualties numbered more than 11,000, with 6,000 for Jordan and 1,000 for Syria, compared with only 700 for Israel. The Arab armies also suffered crippling losses of weaponry and equipment. The lopsidedness of the defeat demoralized both the Arab public and the political elite…In Israel, which had proved beyond question that it was the region’s preeminent military power, there was euphoria.
The Six-Day War also marked the start of a new phase in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, since the conflict created hundreds of thousands of refugees and brought more than one million Palestinians in the occupied territories under Israeli rule. Months after the war, in November, the United Nations passed UN Resolution 242, which called for Israel’s withdrawal from the territories it had captured in the war in exchange for lasting peace. That resolution became the basis for diplomatic efforts between Israel and its neighbours, including the Camp David Accords (1978) with Egypt and the push for a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
In 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed, setting the stage for continued, organized guerilla/terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Efforts at peace were made in the following decades, but they failed. From the ADL:
In 1988 in Geneva, Arafat announced that he would accept the existence of the State of Israel, renounce terrorism, and accept U.N. resolutions 242 and 338. Despite this declaration, the PLO continued terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Following secret negotiations with Israel in Oslo, on September 9, 1993, Arafat sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing terrorism, and pledging to remove clauses in the Palestine National Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. In return, Israel recognized the PLO as the “official representative” of the Palestinian people and began formal negotiations with the PLO. The Charter was revised in a vote by the Palestinian Authority Parliament in the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton in December 1998.
Around the same time in the 1980s Hamas is formed. From The Council of Foreign Relations:
A spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s, the Islamist militant group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006.
The United States and European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist organization because of its armed resistance against Israel, which has included suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
Israel has declared war on Hamas following its surprise assault on the country’s south in 2023, the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
Which brings us up to speed.
3. Hamas’s view of the conflict
Hamas won the 2006 election, and the world reacted to the Palestinian’s embrace of democratic elections by punishing them for voting the wrong way.
The victory of Hamas had immediate consequences: in March Israel refused to have contacts with a government led by Hamas and suspended the payment of revenues collected (VAT, customs duties, and donor payments that account for three quarters of the PNA budget) while it tightened security measures (restrictions on the movement of goods and persons, shutting off the border crossings between the occupied territories and the outside world) and resumed military operations, especially in Gaza.
The United States and the European Union, who had listed Hamas as a terrorist organization, also responded negatively to this victory of the Islamic movement and halted the transfer of international aid funds to the PNA. In March the EU urged Hamas to give up violence and acknowledge the State of Israel if it wanted the PNA government to continue receiving financial aid.
As a consequence of these measures, the GDP per capita fell by 27% in 2006 while personal income fell by 30% to the extent that, according to a report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine poverty levels have increased significantly during 2006. In June 2006, 2.7 million people (over a total population of 3.7 million) were living below the poverty line, of which 2.4 million were living in extreme poverty, without having the minimum income to meet their basic clothing, housing and food needs.
This is the foundation of the “Israel turned Gaza into an open air prison” argument. From NPR, nearly half of Gazans are children, and 2/3 are refugees or descendants of refugees.
Since 2007, Gaza has been under a strict land and sea blockade by Israel that prevents civilians, along with goods like food and medicine, from easily moving across the border, contributing to harsh economic conditions and high poverty levels.
So to recap, Hamas’ arguments are:
It was their land in the recent past. The Nakba (catastrophe) meant that 3/4 of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in 1947-1948. Their land was given to the Israelis by the English, partially because Europeans felt guilty for what the Germans did. None of that was the fault of the Palestinians.
They have a religious duty to not lose control of the land.
Hamas was democratically elected by Palestinians, whether or not the West likes it.
Life is really brutal in Gaza.
And to hear it from their own mouths, here’s a pro-Palestinian video:
https://twitter.com/CensoredMen/status/1718304210314314032
4. Israel’s view of the conflict
And to hear Israel’s viewpoint from their own mouths, here’s a pro-Israel video:
https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1717714566019256401
And here are the main Israeli arguments:
In addition to their religious and historical claims to the land, 7.5 million of the worldwide total of 15 million Jews live in Israel. If Hamas succeeds in their ‘From the river to the sea’ mission, it would be a massacre of half of the world’s entire Jewish population.
Israel has accepted a two-state solution multiple times. Hamas has only accepted anything like that once, and even then it was conditional on the 1967 borders and had no recognition of Israel.
Theoretically, no or minimal retaliation by Israel would be taken as a sign of weakness that would encourage future attacks, while retaliatory attacks also encourage future attacks, putting Israel in a bad position.
Israel is surrounded by Aran/Islamic nations that would love to destroy it. There are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world, and 50 Muslim-majority nations are already part of the Dar el-Islam. There is only 1 Jewish-majority nation.
Hamas struck civilians first and uses Palestinians as human shields, making it impossible for Israel to defend itself without causing civilian casualties.
Good. And on we go to Part 4b….
