Gaza: An American, Quasi-Educated Opinion
A Ground Invasion: Literally Last Resort
The number of Israeli airstrikes executed on Gaza has surpassed 7000. The conditions there continue to deteriorate from worst to worse, & as civilian deaths have climbed past 8000, the original compassion & shock following the tragedy perpetrated against Israel, now turns to horror at the tragedy that they themselves currently perpetrate; a very engrained pattern of harsh punishment as retaliation, but multiplied, has become all too common for civilians in this part of the world.
Unfortunately, Israel was created, for Jews, out of land that was occupied by Jews, as well as others in 1948. The vast majority of the non-Jewish population was forced off their land & a system was put in place that confiscated lands abandoned forcefully as part of the land to be part of the new state. The Jewish people did, & do, have a right to exist & it is unfortunate that to create their state, an entire group of people were subjugated & turned into refugees & their land taken, & if there is one underlying reason for the conflict to this day, this is the reason this situation exists.
So, what do we do now?
Solidarity with Israel, unconditionally, seems to be the American response, no matter world opinion or horrible humanitarian situation for Palestinian civilians.
We have heard the very troubling language used by top Israeli officials including wiping Hamas off the map & implicitly lumping culpability for the terror attacks together, both Palestinians & Hamas.
Hostage rescue, world opinion, civilian suffering, including all those non-Palestinians caught in Gaza by closing all borders & cutting off all utilities, seem to all take a back seat to military action. This from a nation that traded over 1000 Hamas prisoners to free ONE captured Israeli soldier
Hamas knew Israel would over retaliate, as evidenced by the brutality that was intended to provoke Israel.
The nagging question I have is given the obvious failure of one of the best equipped, surveilled, & militarized countries in the world to prevent the October 7 attack, was there conspiracy somewhere on the Israeli side in order to gain domestic approval for this obviously overly aggressive campaign now underway & without the US standing up to Israel, could continue to escalate until there is no turning back.
In fact, I think the senator menendez scandal timing cannot be a coincidence. The fact that Egypt shares, probably the most important, border with Gaza, and a senator accused of being a foreign agent for Egypt, and found with gold bars, and indicted, is far too connected and convenient to just happen to be a coincidence and while obviously I do not know the connection, I bet we will find out that there is one.
I also believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent war will also turn out to have been much more connected to the timing of this barbaric Hamas attack.
Biggest fear is that some alliance or very well funded international or other state actor is manipulating global events & at a time when our internal politics & governance status is in disequilibrium & unstable to a noticeably extreme degree caused the Russian invasion, the whole situation with Israel, & other events just to put us in a specific vulnerable configuration militarily, economically, & completely off-guard & overextended & like all great empires, we have to be complicit if we are to end.
Being very smart & not overextending or assuming operationally is
If you know much about the region, you know that Israel is contested by almost all Arab countries & has been a hot button & flashpoint of much of the instability in the middle east as a whole. Israel was created in 1948 & while the Jews definitely needed a place, a state, but there were many people native to the area, Palestinians, whom were displaced in order to create Israel. The concentration of non-Israelis where they are is because of the conflict between Israel's creation & the people displaced to do so. Other Arabs all over the mid-east generally feel solidarity with the, mostly Muslim, Palestinian descendants of those that used to live where Israel was created. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, & Lebanon have all committed to destroying Israel at some point, & only recently have several of these countries made minor western sympathies, & possibility
In fact, Saudi Arabia was close to making a deal with Israel, which this extended humanitarian crisis will threaten, which makes me even more suspicious of the timing, especially given the military failure necessary to allow Hamas to do the damage they were able to do.
Iran is open about their lack of recognizing Israel as a state at all, & they fund all of the groups around Israel that espouse destroying Israel as their main goal. These groups are all designated as terror organizations.
Rumors that China intends to dissuade Iran from joining this 'war', & hopefully they will & hopefully it will work, as this is the single most volatile & escalating possible action; Iran is the only country with the power to make this World War 3, by their action alone.
The border with Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria; that's where I'm paying attention; even with all this other stuff, the lynchpin will, I think be there. The single small, unknowable origin event that we can use to predict whether it's going to go very bad, if you are looking for it.
The longer the US allows this unspeakable horror to continue, the worse it is, the worse it looks, & the worse we are making it for ourselves: we will be avenged,
About 9-11,
We say we will never forget but we are already looking amnesiac, or ignorant, by not acting as if we anger, legitimately & righteously, the entire middle east, blindly & unconditionally, we WILL HAVE ANOTHER 9-11...
The supposed 'unity' government lead by PM Netanyahou, an often criticized, right leaning, veteran of Israeli government, elected six times to his post currante, & fueled by security concerns following the barbaric Hamas coordinated terror attack on October 7th, is pushing for & talking about invading Gaza with ground troops, called up & mobilized recently. Because of the situation & sentiment would almost certainly provoke Iran into this fracas, which would likely cause Russia to to side with Iran, having grown dependent on Iran to continue their Ukrainian occupation.
We can only hope that the invasion plan is a rouse to provoke some kind of outcome & not an actual plan; the tactic wouldn't be out of character for that state.
[All views put forth here are my own.
They are not formally fact checked.
The information here is thought out, but not produced, & draws only from my bank of knowledge;
the good is I have education or expertise, or at least experience, in all subjects put forward here;
the bad is I don't research or draw on any other source, so at times, I may be wrong or incomplete in my exposition, but the goal is to educate &, I suppose, also to entertain, but my unique style hopefully, undeniably has a fingerprint on my writing.
I even make up words & use incorrect grammar, but it is intentional & part of my style of having no definitive rules.
I was told I should be a professor, a therapist & more, so I try to just write- this disclaimer is to explain where it comes from, especially if I make mistakes!
I hope it's informative & enjoyable- thank you for reading & also, I love feedback, even if negative.]