How To Begin?
For over a week now I’ve been trying to figure out a way to compose this article in a form that doesn’t alienate those who are open to hearing new information about this topic. On the other hand, I also feel that it’s vitally important that I don’t water down or omit key facts in an attempt to tip-toe my way through paragraphs of eggshells so as not to offend certain sensitive readers who are currently straddling the fence when it comes to how they feel about the subject matter dealt with in this piece of writing.
Finally, the answer came to me: It’s almost certainly not going to be possible to reach every heart that reads this piece of writing. I have a point of view about this subject that not everyone will agree with. I now accept this fact. What is within the field of real possibilities for me though, is to pledge myself to write this article from a position of love rather than from a place of resentment and/or hate, from the perspective of a heartfelt desire to communicate rather than from self-righteousness and/or vindictiveness. In this piece of writing, I want to write TO you, dear reader. I don’t want to write AT you. And so with this pledge as my compass, onward we go.
What I Can Say For Certain
I’m half-Jewish on my father’s side. I’ve been told that I have relatives in Israel, although I have never met any of them. They may be very nice people. I’d bet that they are nice people. Maybe some of them look like me? Perhaps some of them were killed on October 7th when Hamas conducted its military operation that left 1,163 people dead, most of them civilians. I don’t know and perhaps I will never know. What I can say for certain is that I sincerely hope none of my Israeli relatives, whom I have never met, were killed on October 7th. I can also say, for certain, that if they were killed on October 7th I hope their transition from Human life to whatever lies beyond it was as peaceful and as swift as possible. Lastly, I can say, for certain, that I wish the same for every single soul who passed away on that day.
Hamas’ Attack on October 7th, 2023
On October 7th, 2023, a Palestinian resistance organization named Hamas which began its formation 37 years ago, conducted a military operation just outside a region called Gaza. Gaza was and still is an Israeli-occupied territory whose 2 million residents have been held in captivity by Israel for almost two decades. Hamas’ carefully planned operation began with an attack on Israel’s white and red metal communication towers which are located about half a mile from Gaza’s border. “They knew exactly what they were doing.”, said Shai Asher, a 50-year-old member of the armed Kissufim Kibbutz Security Squad.” They had a flawless battle plan, executed flawlessly”.(1)
That day Hamas went on from their aforementioned starting point to undertake an undeniably brutal military attack which took the lives of 732 civilians, 37 of whom were children, and 373 Israeli security officers. (2)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The following quotes are from one of Israel’s most prominent news outlets, Haaretz: “Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian authority would be good for Israel. The purpose of the doctrine was to perpetuate the rift between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian authority in the West Bank. This would preserve the diplomatic paralysis and forever remove the ‘danger’ of negotiations with the Palestinians over the partition of Israel into two states on the argument that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t represent all the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s flawed strategy turned Hamas from a minor terrorist organization into an efficiently full army of highly trained dehumanized stormtroopers … This is solidly documented. Between 2012 and 2018 Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about one billion dollars, half of which went to Hamas including its military wing…
On March 11, 2019, Netanyahu explained the reckless step as follows, ‘The money transfer is part of the strategy to divide the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Anyone who opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support the transfer of the money from Qatar to Hamas. That way we will foil the establishment of a Palestinian state.’” (3)
Israel’s Condition of Origin: A Land Without a People For a People Without a Land?
To go into the details of the 125-plus years of history that have shaped Israel’s culture is, obviously, well beyond the scope of this article. That said, it isn’t beyond the scope of this piece of writing to attempt to synthesize the “condition of origin”, the core structural underpinnings of Israel’s basic ideology. An ideology that has, so far, not only fueled its inception but also, to a large degree, its longevity as a Middle Eastern state.
“A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land” is the central meme that carried Israel, as a state, through clash after clash for arguably 100 years, give or take 25 years depending on your politics. I feel I have to be completely straightforward here: However you slice it, the aforementioned proclamation infers that the millions of people, who happened not to be white people, living on the land that Israel proceeded to usurp by force, acre by acre, region by region, over many decades, is a racist proclamation.
I’m inferring here that the “condition of origin” of any undertaking will eventually, however long it takes, rise to the surface and either upend the undertaking in question or support its continued existence as a project that is structurally coherent and therefore justified as an entity with a valid possibility of a future that is not enchained by contradiction in time and space.
The Preamble to October 7th
During Benjamin Netanyahu’s fifteen-year reign as Israel’s Prime Minister, Gaza has been described as “an open-air prison camp for Palestinians”. Over the last two decades, the 2.2 million Palestinians who have lived in Gaza have been subjected to what Israeli authorities have referred to as seasonal “lawn mowings” (the periodic bombing, displacement, torture, and murder of Palestinians to keep them in a perpetual state of fear) by Israel, along with constant house searches, perpetual humiliations, and false arrests.
Many of these false arrests have been of children who have now spent well over a decade in Israeli prisons. (4) For twenty years the Palestinian population has not been allowed to leave or re-enter Gaza. Imagine, two decades of captivity riddled with poverty, joblessness, hunger, and absolutely no prospects for future change.
It was these conditions that eventually ended up spurring Hamas’ indefensibly violent attack on October 7th, 2023.
Israel and the US’ Reporting of What Took Place on October 7th
I realize that this is a very sensitive subject. I not only know in my head that it’s sensitive, I FEEL how sensitive this subject is in my heart. We all heard the ghoulish stories about systematic mass rapes, beheadings, and baby killings that supposedly took place on October 7th from news sources many of us have trusted for decades. The most glaring example is the series of reports by The NY Times which, if true, would have been enough to enrage any sane, decent, feeling person.
Friends, after spending many hours looking into Israel and the US mainstream legacy media reports about what happened on October 7th it’s become clear to me that the narrative we heard, over and over, was concocted to justify the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women, infants and children in Gaza over the last four months. (5a and 5b). In the citations section of this article you will find two clips that discuss this issue in more detail.
Over the last four months, 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been bombed, shot, burned and starved to death by the Israeli military as of today. (6) Those numbers are from NPR, by the way.
The Space of Possibility
Was there/is there a possibility other than imminent spiritual and/or material collapse for a state with a contradictory condition of origin? In the name of heaven, yes! For those of you who have read up to this point, this is where we come together. The people of Israel, the people of other Middle Eastern countries, the people of the United States, the people of Australia, the people of Europe, the people of Africa, the people of South America, the people of Asia, etc.. None of our conditions of origin are without contradiction. Let he who is without contradiction cast the first stone, I say.
I’m not suggesting we start developing crippling guilt complexes here. Nor am I proposing some sort of half-assed global new age Kumbaya in which we magically bypass everything that sucks and go straight to the unicorns and rainbows part of the film. No sir. What I’m proposing here is alchemy. We’re in the shit my friends. I know you all smell it, so don’t even try to front. And it’s gonna heat up well before it cools down, be forewarned. This phase of pre-human history isn’t for the timid. The people of Palestine need help. The people of Israel need help. You and I need help! And the way we each begin is by looking at ourselves. Without preconceptions. Without blame. Without fear. To overcome contradiction we need to face ourselves. I need to face myself. No from the on-high talk here. We’re alive now. This is our chance.
This out-of-the-box domain, this rarely trodden region that I’m speaking from now, is The Space of Possibility in which and from which so-called miracles have a chance to emerge. What was it that the singer Seal said some 30-plus years ago? “But we’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy.” That’s the space of possibility that he was singing about there! Same ol’ same ol’ ain’t gonna get us through this. I think at this point almost all of us are aware of that, at least. Something new is being demanded of us.
Yes, overcoming contradiction is possible. Yes, a path of reconciliation, no matter how dire a particular situation seems, is a possibility. Yes, there is another road open to us other than that of blame, repetition, and accumulative suffering.
I’m not gonna end this article by telling you what to do. I’ve given you my opinion about the matter at hand and I’ve hit you with the nexus of my philosophy about what I consider to be the way out of our predicament of collective and individual suffering. A predicament that we’re ALL in.
“Together we stand. Divided we fall.”
– Pink Floyd, from their album “The Wall”
CITATIONS:
1- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/27/hamas-attack-israel-october-7-hostages/
4- https://time.com/6548068/palestinian-children-israeli-prison-arrested/
5a- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8M9rc9PrWI
5b- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FCizyfRqfs&t=12s
6- https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war
