Words are inadequate, almost meaningless, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the preferred mode of communication is to kill people. We saw this Saturday, when Hamas fired 2,000 rockets into Israel as terrorists infiltrated the border with Gaza and murdered hundreds of civilians. A manifesto, written in blood.
But what are they saying? This carnage was committed to show ... help me here ... their readiness to ... ah ... run an independent country? Located ... umm ... where exactly?
They insist, as one sign at the pro-Palestinian rally in Chicago, one of several across the country, put it, to rule “From the River to the Sea.” That is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or all of Israel and beyond. That’s their game plan.
As for the rallies themselves, has a group ever murdered a thousand people on Saturday and then taken to the streets to declare their own aggrievement and victimhood on Sunday? That has to be a record of some sort.
If not that, what? To punish Israel? Mission accomplished. The Palestinian argument is they are treated poorly by the Israelis — no doubt about that — and are therefore entitled to kill anyone they can lay their hands on and call it “resistance.” Odd, but when the Israelis do the same thing, it’s called a war crime.
Not that the two sides are balanced. Hamas is a terrorist group; Israel is a nation, whether Hamas likes it or not. There’s a higher standard. In theory. In practice, Israel will, over the coming hours, days, weeks and maybe months and years, seek to avenge being caught asleep at the gate by leveling parts of Gaza, killing some of those responsible for the attacks, and a lot of others, too, while cutting electricity, gas and food to the area. That’ll teach ’em!
No wonder killing is the preferred language here — words just don’t seem to make much sense. Particularly from someone like me, a rare moderate, in the No Man’s Land between extremists blazing away at each other. Hamas won’t admit Israel has the right to exist, while Israel seems to think bare existence is about all Palestinians should expect out of life.
The images are heartbreaking. The politics, too. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who deserves blame for sowing the chaos that led to Israel being caught flat-footed, now can put that behind him. Which brings us to my favorite question to cut through the clutter:
So how does this end?
Because all conflicts end. The Greeks are not still fighting the Trojans, except in Emily Wilson’s excellent new translation of “The Iliad.” The British and French patched up their differences, so pronounced under Napoleon. Even the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, who seemed as if they would be at each other’s throats forever, eventually stopped, lessened their grip and looked in each other’s faces, let go, shook hands.
How does this conflict end?
Maybe it doesn’t. Having ground away for ... depending on how far back you go — 75 years, or 53 years — maybe it’ll just go on for another 50 or 100 years. An endless cycle. Close enough to forever for our purposes. The death toll isn’t really that bad, if it isn’t you or someone you love. A couple thousand dead? The United States lost 75,000 to fentanyl overdoses in 2022 and barely noticed.
Hope is premature. We’re still in the shock and grief portion of the program. Since I can’t expect Palestinians to recognize the humanity of Israelis, for Hamas to say, “Oh look, Israel was right there all along, a nation after all.” Or for the Israelis to keep from rolling their tanks into Gaza, which is what Iran wants, maybe I’ll do the dirty work for them.
Israel is the Jewish homeland, and has been for a long time — it’s in the Bible. And the Palestinians in Gaza number 2.3 million — they are human beings with a right to self-determination, not lifetime sentences to the world’s largest open-air prison.
How does this end? That’s a silly question. This never ends. Not anytime soon, in any way anyone can imagine. It just keeps going and going and going. Over and over and over. Each side talks past each other, kills each other, then mourns their own and buries their own and starts it all over again. Our job is to watch in horror.
