But, Tom, answer me this. Israel, unlike Hamas, is not a terrorist organization, is it? If not, what is the difference?
There's plenty of blame to spread around concerning this vat of simmering bad blood laced with bodies.
As created, the State of Israel was a huge disaster that reeks of Euro-Colonialism. The assault of 1948 kinda sealed the deal.
The tensions that led up to Plan Dalet in 1948 began with mass protests and an uprising against British occupation and rule by Palestinian Arabs in 1936-1939. The Palestinians wanted an end to the stream of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, so that set the stage for the more systematic plan of ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948. But that was a long time ago. We can just unwind the cycle of ethnic animosity and score-settling back to those times. Europe saw Palestine as a partial solution to its "Jewish problem". Even Hitler was originally thinking of deporting all the Jews to Palestine before he conquered Poland in 1939 and discovered a population too huge to simply deport. After that, the Jews in Palestine were looking at a much more urgent need for a safe haven from the greater ethnic cleansing going on in Europe. I don't see it as just European colonialism, but also the aftermath of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.
But no, the ugliness of this week's humanitarian disaster is not on Israel, mostly. Hamas picked it. Israel responded. Like it or not, Gazans wouldn't be without power and water if Hamas hadn't attacked last Saturday.
Tom
Like it or not, most Palestinians in Gaza did not ask for or plan that humanitarian atrocity perpetrated by the terrorists running their unelected government. The last elections there were in 1994. How were they supposed to stop Hamas from attacking Israel? Like it or not, they had no choice but to be Palestinians born into that situation. More than half the population of Gaza is under 18, and all of them are essentially condemned to live out their lives in Gaza under a quarantine put in place by Israel. BTW, water is back on, but not because the Israeli government had a change of heart. It was put under intense pressure by its US allies to restore the water. Shutting it off was an act against the civilian population of Gaza, not just Hamas.
My view of the situation is that Hamas holds two groups as hostages--the Israeli and foreign citizens it just took from Israel and the civilian population of Gaza that did not volunteer to participate in the attack on Israel. There is no way that Israel can take its revenge on just Hamas, so it must decide whether it cares about the hostages more than it cares about getting back at Hamas and perhaps punishing Gazans for the actions of a government whose actions they neither controlled nor endorsed. Right now, the Israeli government seems to consider both groups of hostages as a secondary priority. The main priority is striking back so hard that Palestinians will never think about another attack, even though all historical evidence suggests that this punishing retaliation will do nothing more than stoke the fires for future acts of revenge.