Gaza

I don’t need to reiterate the facts about the situation in Gaza. If you've been paying any attention to the news, no matter what station or side you adhere to, one thing is for certain: there is a full-blown crisis that only appears to be getting worse. What I do need is to process the why of it all.

I can look at the situation as a bloody massacare: a disporportionate retaliation, the death of innocent civilians and unnecessary collateral damage, the anger and frustration of the Palestinian people a natural outgrowth of a population recovering from an occupation followed by a strict embargo, Israel's blatant defiance of global pleas for a cease fire and misguided attempt at achieving its objective of ending quassam rocket fire and rooting out a terrorist faction with force that is backed by Iran and deeply intertwined with Palestine, the ensuing humanitarian crisis - all horrific.

I can see the situation as a necessary means of self-defense on Israel's part: a country that waited for eight years to act against rocket fire and now wants to defend itself against Hamas after they ignored a cease fire and targeted civilians, a group that uses dead Palestinians as sympathy and women and children as human shields, that preaches hatred against Jews and rejects Israel’s right to exist.

I could say that fighting until "the bitter end" is a testament to Israel's tenacity and persistence, or its stubbornness and pride. I could say that airstrikes are necessary, or they will only ignite anger and create an excuse for further aggression that only serves to entrench each side in the their deeply ingrained positons.

I could ask pointed questions to both sides: Why is it so hard for a Palestinian mothter to cross the boarder to be with the children she hasn’t seen in eight years? Why would Hamas smuggle weapons and launch rockets, well knowing that doing so would endanger boarders as conduits of food and aid to the Palestinians? Why, according to the Facebook videos from my friends, must Israeli Kindergardeners live in fear, and why must Palestinians who take refuge in schools be attacked? Why do we say people go to war to die but not to kill? I wonder, and then I remind myself that war, by its very nature, is brutal and immoral.

But amidst all the bloodshed and between all the perspectives, I mostly see the same things: politicians who give the same old party lines, an impotent UN Security Council, a Secretary of State who wanted to make peace in the Middle East her legacy and who will now have to settle for a patchwork diplomacy, and two sides that define themselves so much upon being embroiled in battle that their hatred for the other defines their existence as much as the protection of their people.

I could assert that I know about the situation because I read the papers and watch to the news; I listen to the conservatives and the liberals, the Muslims and the Jews. I could say I know nothing because I am not there, living it. I could say that Palestinians recieved text message in Arabic stating that they shouldn’t be near any weapons storehouses and the Israelis have done what they can to prevent civilian casualities, or they have done nothing at all. However, I am not sure that tragic civilian deaths halted bombings in Dresden, Hiroshima or Vietnam.

In the end, I watch the conflicts on the news with the same horrified detachment as most people: how atrocious, I think, how sad, they are still fighting over and over and over, and then I return to my comfortable, sheltered life, where I don’t have to take a stand, much less put my life on the line. I have the luxury, as do most of the pundits, opinions writers, and so-called experts, of sitting back and analyzing, thinking, mulling it over and refraining from being partisan. Yet in this case, I feel the jittery anxiety as if something personally disasterous beyond my control were about to happen, and I was unable to do anything about it.

I can only conclude that no matter how well informed I may be, I will never get to the truth of the matter. That somehow, in the minds of those who are shooting rockets and dropping bombs, the rest of the world simply doesn’t understand. I see that in the frustration of those being interviewed on both sides of a 20x4 mile strip of land and in the anger of people throwing rocks and assessing damage. I can’t understand the cycle of violence, the stale rhetoric, the tit for tat retaliations, the escalating offensives and the anger.

I can repeat contradictory truisms: violence is never the answer, violence is a necessary evil in order to achieve peace, violence only begets violence, an eye for an eye, turn the other cheek. I do not know what it is like to be so adamant in your opinions or to identify with one aspect of your identity so strongly that you will sacrifice everything for your nation or religion. I only fear, that with anything so intense, be it two nations or two individuals, love or hate, it won’t end when others try to extinguish it, but only when it burns itself out.