How would you react if the people in charge of your city had built a tunnel shaft under your four-year-old son’s bed, then woke him often and indiscriminately to use that shaft, carrying guns, crates and what not at all hours of the night? Your mother-in-law is in the hospital and the same people have turned its lower extremities into a Swiss cheese of doors, shafts, and tunnels as well. There is no fuel to run the lights because they use that up at the missile launcher on the roof. You’ve had enough of this oppression, and you want to leave the hell hole that they brought on you and everyone else, but you’re not allowed to. A group that said they’d do so no matter what, they’re dead because they were gunned down a couple streets over, again, by the same people. They thought they had a clear path of escape but didn’t see the four snipers waiting for them. They told you some weeks ago that the attack in Israel was necessary to a free Palestine. They promised that the resulting war would bring allied armies to your borders and that a subdued Israel would be abandoned by the US and that they’d be suing for terms of withdrawal from your borders. You believed them. Now streets are filled with rubble, and the dead. All the local bosses are dead and have been replaced by various foot soldiers that up to now only followed orders. They’re still doing some of that, but the orders are coming from outside the war zone. The big bosses are phoning in the war. You’ve lost three of ten immediate family members in the past few weeks. You are told its all worth it to crush Israel. There is no other plan. These people are ‘your’ team.
If you were in this situation, what would you do? Stay the course and follow orders? Comply with the IDF and finish in the task of finishing their war of retribution quicker?
The brief account described here is fictionalized only in its personal level details for purposes of illustration. All the major parts are in the news, documented by photograph, video, even by Hamas sources. I realize there are issues with the premises. I don’t present the ‘other side’, even though what I do present is real and damning. It’s unrealistic perhaps to suggest that a people: men, women, children; are indoctrinated from before they can walk, that they could choose to cast off Hamas. Except that some of them have and untold others have died trying.
War is unimaginable suffering for all involved, Palestinians, Israelis. There is an aggressor; there is retribution. It seems to have never occurred to anyone to release the hostages to save some of Gaza. Don’t imagine that Israel will stop before they’ve completed a purge of Hamas. It was easy for Hamas to go in and exterminate a thousand unarmed Jews, (many of them activist that had lobbied for the Palestinian cause). Did you notice the bold threats from Iran prior to the Gaza action? It’s crickets now. War talk is easy. Somehow, Iran is now OK keeping it limited just to Gaza.
What is equally important is what has happened around the rest of the world. Suddenly, there are hundreds of millions of new literal ‘Nazis’ calling for death to the Jews. Sure, they use prettier terms, like ‘from the mountains to the sea’ or ‘Intifada’. These mean, ‘kill the Jews’, just in case you or anyone thinks this fig leaf covers the fact.
The new Nazi phenomena is significant on a couple levels. First, it uncovers an open secret about the left that’s been kept half hidden for years. It was their nature all along. Stalin killed far more Jews than Hitler, but that’s been kept quiet. The left is exposed, and it places in sudden conflict, its wing of progressive Jews. Leftist have led the false accusations of ‘Nazi’ against conservatives for years. In the blink of an eye, they’re screaming the very slogans of hate that they projected onto conservatives for decades. I can’t help but think there is some divine manipulation going on here. A trap was laid before them.
The other dynamic is the sheer mass hysteria that certain groups are prone to. The young come to mind. In history and academic practice, it’s been proven how easy this can occur. It worked for Hitler and it’s working now.
Sometimes I write a piece and discard it because its too out there, fanciful, alarmist, fearmongering. One such piece I wrote a couple weeks ago, described the pro-[Hamas] protestors taking their action to the next level. One moment they’re chanting, and within hours, they’re exercising direct violence on Jews. The stage is set for this. The left has put out target lists. Someone is going to throw a lit match into the powder. Once that happens, it could be far more consequential even than what has transpired in Israel and Gaza.