A prominent element of Middle East bloodlust is vengeance, not just for an hour ago, or a day ago, or a week ago,
but a decade ago, or a century ago, or a millennium ago. It's a recipe for eternal war.
Israel was attacked. That attack the casus belli for Israel converting Gaza into uninhabitable rubble.
Yet Palestine challenges Israel's right to exist.
That's not a dispute than can be permanently resolved with a few sweet words, and a pat on the back.
My terminology may not be ideal, but the notion that armed combatants would be spared by sheltering under hospitals is premised on two notions.
a) The enemy of those combatants is noble enough to respect the rules of international law, and common human decency and grant sanctuary there, and
b) those armed combatants are unethical enough to exploit that nobility for battlefield advantage.
In shirtsleeve English, it's Hamas saying: we're the bad guys.
Inexcusable.
Understandable.
No, I think you have it all wrong and have fallen for propaganda.
There is no history of conflict between Jews and Moslems.
To go back to the start of Islam, it was because the Jews were ordered by the Rabbinical Counsel to leave the Levant after the 2nd rebellion against Rome failed in 136 AD, and they went to Medina.
Which is in what is now Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed was a merchant in Mecca nearby.
He decided he liked Judaism and converted.
But his wife wanted women to be able to own property, inherit, divorce, testify, etc., so those are actually the only real difference between Islam and Judaism.
Then when the Meccans attacked Mohammed, the 12 tribes of Judaism were his soldiers, who defended and later defeated the Meccans.
Which they obviously would not have done if Judaism and Islam were on conflict.
If you read about the Crusades, the Jews fought with the Moslems, against the Christians.
If you read up on any Moslem kingdom, they always had Jewish Viziers, which is sort of a manager/administrator.
If you wonder how Jews got to Spain in order to later be harmed by the Inquisitions, it was because they came with the Moslem Moors.
Obviously the Jews lived under Moslem rule for over 1500 years, and preferred Moslems to Christians.
So then what happened in Palestine?
The Palestinians asked the Jews to immigrate in 1920, since the Palestinians were very poor from WWI.
There were practically no Jews in Palestine at the time.
But the problem was the Jews lied, immigrated in over 10 times the agreed upon annual limit, and smuggled in illegal weapons.
In 1946, the Menachim Begin blew up the British peacekeepers in the King David Hotel, so that no one then could stop his terrorists from wiping out hundreds of native villages like Deir Yassin, forcing millions of Palestinians to flee to places like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
So there was no history of violence until the massacres of 1946.
I also disagree that "Israel was attacked".
That is for many reasons.
One is that I do not believe Israel actually exists, since Truman simply pulled it out of thin air in 1948, and because they lost any validity for its massacres of civilians in 1946.
But Israel was not "attacked" because the conflict 3 years ago was started by decades of illegal starvation blockade by Israel.
That more than justified the desperate and suicidal push.
They were so poorly armed that they kill 1000 but took over 1500 losses in the process.
So again, it was actually the Palestinians who were the victims.
And they will continue to be the unarmed victims as long as the US keeps arming Israel illegally.
For Hamas to be "armed combatants", they would need things they do not have, like tanks, artillery, missiles, bombers, ships, etc.
Hamas is really just civilians with small arms.
And let me be clear about religion.
I actually am Jewish, so I know that no Jews are even supposed to be in the Levant.
Jews are supposed to be atoning for the sins of arrogance and pride, and not return to Palestine until the coming of the Messiah.
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