Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Unrighteous and Righteous Victims

I wish the Israeli response to the Hamas Oct 7 attacks was " we have had enough of this mutual savagery, let's bring it to an end through justice for all" but the response of "how dare they?! Let's obliterate as much of the Gaza Strip and perhaps of the  Palestinians as we can as we obliterate Hamas" was the more predictable and the eventual outcome.

When this is over, Israel would have lost at least 50% of it's global goodwill, as it's own hypocrisy, it's political and military savagery and the hypocrisy of it's Western allies becomes clearer to all.

Jews across the world would be more divided about the logic   of the unending conflict.

Can Israel eradicate Hamas?

It would be hard. 

A movement whose two founding leaders were killed within a short time by Israel but which continued smoothly anyway, the leader of whose military wing, Muhammad Deif, suffered seven Israeli assasination attempts with the loss of wife, child, eye, hand and leg but still fights from a wheelchair does not seem to be a movement readily destroyed by force of arms.

Will Hamas go the way of the fearsome Ukrainian Azov Battalion, eventually starved into surrender after heroically holding out in a steel works as their location was bombed from the air, the city around them captured by Russia?

If Hamas ceases to exist, would that be the end of Palestinian armed resistance to Israeli impositions?

In the calculus of war, what is otherwise evil becomes heroic.

The Hamas Oct 7 attack will go down in history as a historic tactical victory, even as they brutalized and killed Israelis far from the political  command centres at war with the Palestinians, such as the youth they caught at an open air party, gunning some down and abducting some.

What kind of hate enabled the unleashing of such terror?

In Israeli policy of similar inhumanities sustained across decades, what place on the scale of humanity do they see the Palestinians and themselves standing on?

What will Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank be a thousand years from now?

When this war it over, if it will be over, will it be possible to continue to keep the Palestinians prisoners in their own land?

What was Hamas thinking in carrying out such an audacious and savage operation?

I expect they anticipated the ongoing response.

What did they see as their gain and that of their people?

They must have realized that with that operation their leadership and all their identifiable membership are marked for death by Isreal and it's allies.

Writing this in an air conditioned room in Lagos, after which I will stretch on my exercise mat as I try to lose weight gained from too comfortable living, and then take a hot shower, patterns of existence far from the unfolding Gaza horror and the savagery exploded into Isrealis who thought the Other was safely contained behind bars, not knowing that Other had been scheming, distilling and concentrating hate into weapons of vengeance.

Thanks

Toyin

 

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 6:12 AM Sabella <sabidde@gmail.com> wrote:

The Unrighteous and Righteous Victims

1.    Israel, a State with intelligence and security services, a Navy, Air Force, Army, etc. is at war with HAMAS a non-state actor? That's not a war: It is a massacre, war crime, genocide, extermination and all that.

2.    One of Benjamin Netanyahu's decades-long goals is now coming to fruition: draw the US into the conflict…and then degrade Tehran.

3.    When this round of criminality is over, Palestinians would have lost a further 5-15 percent of their lands – forcibly taken/seized by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

4.    Despite decades-long huffing and puffing, it appears Benjamin Netanyahu can't take on the HAMAS -- "ordinary Hamas" -- without the help of the US, France, and others. Chai, a regional power indeed!

5.    CNN, MSNBC and their like are nothing but a mouthpiece for the Israeli government.  They report as if innocent Israelis are the only victims; and as if the pain and suffering of the Palestinians are not worth reporting.

6.    The White House and Benjamin Netanyahu have their eyes set on HAMAS, Hezbollah, and Tehran. Nothing would gladden their hearts more than the destruction of those entities.

7.    The humiliation, dehumanization, and iniquity against the Palestinians have been going on for more than five decades. You expect them to keep quiet for another five decades.

8.    The Israeli government created and made the Palestinians live in a concentration camp-like environment.  When the courageous ones amongst them protest, you expel them, jail them, or kill them.

9.    The expelled, the dead, the wounded, and the dehumanized will not "Thank God."

10. I was asked: "Which country turns off the electricity, water supply, and the internet while bombing women and children under the pretext of 'defending' itself?" Oh well, hegemonic powers should provide the answers. What do I know?

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

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