Historical context necessary to assess Israel-Hamas conflict

[Oscar]

Historical context necessary to assess Israel-Hamas conflict

[ https://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/colu ... s-conflict ]

A writer from Regina offers his opinion that the war in the Middle East is leading Gaza and Hamas further away from a lasting peace.

Jim Harding - Published December 01, 2023

There’s been expected moral outrage over the horrendous violence in Israel and Gaza. We will never get beyond this if the complex historical context is ignored.

Densely populated Gaza shelters Palestinian refugee families driven from traditional lands. The 2.3 million in the 40-kilometre strip of land have lived under military blockade for 16 years. The majority, under 18, grew up knowing nothing else.

It’s called an open-air prison and incubator of rage.

In power since 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been candid that Hamas’s 2006 takeover of Gaza keeps Palestinians divided.

Repressive military control is also exerted in the West Bank, which is not under Hamas control. The two-state solution negotiated in 1993 has been abandoned, as Israeli settlements steadily expand.

There are seemingly irreconcilable narratives. Most Israelis consider Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 civilians as the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Those surviving Israel’s blockade, airstrikes and destruction of their homes, by one of the world’s best equipped military, endure layers of despair that most of us cannot imagine.

Israel justifies its levelling of Gaza as necessary to eliminate the terrorist organization Hamas. Civilians are told to flee south; then, this area is also bombed. Hospitals have become war zones. More than half the dead are women and children; terror has become the norm.

There’s an imbalance in some reporting; Jewish victims are more likely to have a face and story. Trying to report from the front-line carnage, journalists die in record numbers.

The world helplessly watched the depletion of essentials, while Israel waged total war. The United Nations called it collective punishment. It seemed like shooting fish in a barrel.

Observers ask whether Netanyahu’s endgame is to drive even more Palestinians out of their shrinking, obliterated homeland. Early on, on Oct. 18, Save the Children, with 400 international humanitarian groups, called for a ceasefire. Israel insisted this would undermine its right to self-defence.

Even the U.S., which funds Israel’s military ($3.8 billion annually), called for a humanitarian pause. Canada followed suit. As Gaza’s infrastructure was imploding, and pressure grew in Israel to negotiate release of hostages, Qatar brokered a short pause. [ https://thestarphoenix.com/news/world/i ... 58b66c3c0f ]

More aid arrived, captives rejoined families, and, perhaps, momentum grew for a full ceasefire. Global opinion was clear by Oct. 27, with 120 countries voting in the UN for an immediate ceasefire. Only 14, including the U.S., were opposed. Canada abstained.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are unfortunately, but predictably, on the rise.

No one can seriously believe that killing 14,000 and displacing 1.7 million (nearly 80 per cent) in Gaza will create the conditions necessary for lasting peace. Ideological blackmail on either side should not be tolerated. The consistent pursuit of human rights has to be our beacon.

We can only hope that Palestinians, with numbers approaching the Jewish population, but divided from each other under military rule, will become more united to pursue a path to coexistence. And that Israelis will soon reject the ethno-nationalist politics that are fuelling this conflict.

The geo-political reality has already changed, and not necessarily for the better. Israel’s supporters have advanced a questionable analogy between Ukraine attacked by Putin and Israel attacked by Hamas. Putin has neo-colonial interests, as does Netanyahu.

And all victims in this cauldron of violence, not only in Israel, will continue to claim the right to self-defence. Putin will use the obliteration of Gaza to advance his contrived anti-Western colonialism, to cloak his own ethno-nationalist, anti-democratic objectives.

It is hopeful that almost 300,000 Canadians called for a ceasefire and lifting the blockade, in the largest e-petition ever submitted to parliament. [ https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-n ... a45ab2e19c ]

If we want to see a path towards peace, we have to replace ideological justifications for violence with solid historical understanding. It won’t be easy, but making peace is never as easy as making war.

- -

Jim Harding was director of the School of Human Justice at the University of Regina and is author of After Iraq: War, Imperialism and Democracy (2004)

[Oscar]

Columnist In Two Saskatchewan Newspapers Whitewashes Hamas & Blames Israel For Palestinian Terrorism

[ https://honestreporting.ca/columnist-in ... terrorism/ ]

By HonestReporting Canada December 20, 2023

EXCERPT: "In his December 1 column published in the Regina Leader Post and The Saskatoon Star Phoenix in Saskatchewan, titled “Historical context necessary to assess Israel-Hamas conflict,” Jim Harding presented a case study in logical fallacies. Unfortunately, they are his own.

In the beginning of the piece, Harding didn’t pull any punches: “The 2.3 million (people) in the 40-kilometre (Gaza) strip of land have lived under military blockade for 16 years. It’s called an open-air prison and incubator of rage.”

What Harding omits to mention is that Israel left Gaza in 2005, while removing all traces of Jews (including buried ones). The opportunities were ripe for Gazans to pursue their own self-determination, with the prospect of turning the area – with 38 kilometres of coastline – into a competitive tourist destination, among limitless first-world growth projects.

But rather than converting Gaza into an economic miracle like Singapore, Gaza’s Hamas leaders have robbed it of peace and prosperity. Since taking power in a violent coup in 2007, Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group, has redirected foreign aid meant for Palestinian civilians, and used it to perpetuate war against Israel.

Hamas’ underground terror tunnels, for instance, built with immense amounts of concrete, could have helped construct Gaza’s infrastructure, rather than hiding Hamas’ hostages.

Billions of dollars by Hamas spent on weaponry, and terror tunnels that has earned it the moniker “the Gaza metro” – all of that international aid money that could have markedly improved the lives of Gazans.

That “incubator of rage,” as the writer put it, ought to be directed at those who have robbed countless Gazans of their life, potential, and spirit: Hamas.

“The two-state solution negotiated in 1993 has been abandoned, as Israeli settlements steadily expand,” the author said, but this is not true; these goals were not abandoned. Various attempts to offer a state to the Palestinians were rebuffed by its leaders, including but not limited to Camp David in 2000, and from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert between 2006 and 2008. . . . "

More . . . .

[Oscar]

LISTEN: WHAT ON EARTH

Below is a link to the January 14, 2024 episode of the CBC Radio show What On Earth. The first segment is about the climate impact, and overall environmental impact, caused by war and militarization.

[ https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... ng-climate ]

[Oscar]

COMMENT FROM QVEA Board of Directors. . . . . .

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 20:06:06 -0600, "Qu'Appelle Valley Environmental Association" <qvea2016@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear QVEA supporters:

Please look at the article "critiquing" the opinion piece done by QVEA Director Jim Harding, a version of which you received on December 20, 2023. It tells us a lot about the challenges of getting past and through the ideological
polarization that is so common today. This piece, which is quite clever, and shows some systematic monitoring of the mass media, takes various phrases from the Harding piece out of their context, to restate official positions and justifications for the protracted military action by Israel on Gaza, after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians.

What is most important about this, is that it implies that saying anything that does not restate or affirm the ideological position of the Israeli state, as presently controlled, is tantamount to being pro-terrorist, pro-Hamas and antisemitic. What this means is that other viewpoints, based on broader historical information, and information about the casualties of this war, that does not jibe with the official war justifying position of Israel, is not allowed without it being labelled as such. For instance, as an environmental group, QVEA is extremely concerned that this war, like that on Ukraine, harms not only the humans but further degrades the ecology. It also diverts resources from sustainable development into the carbon-intensive military industry. Reconstructing the destroyed built environment also has a huge carbon footprint. This and other warfare deflects attention from the urgency of dealing with the common climate crisis. Do these views in any way reflect antisemitism? Of course not.

Such an extreme view, which masks as a "critique," not only opposes free speech but free inquiry. This form of polarization has developed at other times and places, and as contributed to the escalation of conflict beyond any righteous claims. It is noteworthy that some of the extreme right-wing politicians presently party to the military actions of the Israeli state are openly calling for pushing Palestinians, now facing starvation and famine, out of Gaza, which would amount to a form of ethnic cleansing, something even Israel's biggest ally the US is not able to publicly tolerate.

There is not much point arguing directly with people once they encircle themselves with beliefs that disclaim any truths, based on consequences for other people, outside their own self-serving ideology. But we do need to try to figure out how to prevent this attempt to limit critical thought and discourse from gaining more traction across Canada, as we can see how destructive and counterproductive it can become, including across the US border.

- QVEA Board of Directors.