I used to be very pro State of Israel, and to some extent, I still believe tha my early support was not unfounded. My support had nothing to do with holocaust surivors, but more of a people who have, for centuries, undergone egregious persecution in western countries, and that today, they have their own country, even though they have to constantly fight to keep it theirs. And free. Then came 10/07/2023, or rather, the reaction to the most awful, horrendous murder of Jews (and others) since the holocaust.

I can understand the outrage, even the desire to wipe out, from the face of the earth, every member of Hamas, the terrorists who perpetrated this mass murder. But that doesn’t implicate every human being living in Gaza. I also understand it’s tough to root out these banshees that use miles of tunnels underneath Gaza city, and elsewhaere, to move men and equipent to attack Israel. They use ospitls and schools not only to store weapons, but to launch rockets at Israel. All of that I absolutely believe to be true.

Does any of that, though, give Israel the right to kill anyone that stands in their way in order to destroy an enemy they know beforehand, is not just standing around in the streets, in uniform, with rifles. It’s called asymmetric warfare. /sp, it becomes the civilian population which takes the brunt of the savagery passing for a military operation. This is just revenge, taken to an unimaginable scale.

That scale? According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 72,737 lives were lost since October 2023, until May of this year. According to UNICEF, around 30% of that total, or 21-22,000, were children. The IDF has mostly verified the Gaza Health Ministry numbers, but those number don’t reflect unrecovered bodies, buried in the rubble.

I understand defending yourself. I understand the need to make a statement to tell not only your enemy, but the world, that you will not be preyed upon anymore. And that’s fine when discussing a strictly military option where the enemy is hunted, even driven underground in this case, to be dealt with without having to demolish an entire city. The photos of the aftermath alone have had an affect on world opinion towards Israel. Have they becoe that which they have despised for so long.

We can criticize a government without placing blame on the citizenry, but in Israel, even though a majority of the population are exhausted with the war in Gaza, only a tiny percentage (2%) believe the army may have gone too far. That’s right, the Israeli population say civilian casualties should not be a factor in the planning or operations in Gaza.

Notice that currently, th news have mostly moved on from the destruction of Gaza because there’s no more horror to report Currently, the media are rooting for motre death and destruction in Iran, with yes, Israel partnering with the United States this time. and in the meantime there’s the Israeli invasion of another sovereign state: Lebanon. That, too, not getting much coverage but more than a million refugees have been created in the last few months. When will this end? When there’s no more people to threaten the Israeli state anymore, How many more deaths will that take?

I think were soon to find out.