Israel and Hamas
Hamas's latest fundraising campaign. (2021)
by Jon Erii
I wrote these words after a skirmish in 2021. Today, it's worse, much worse, but the underlying problems are the same.
The world is tremendously sympathetic to the Palestinian people who have suffered since they were left on the wrong side of the border in 1948, encouraged by Arab leaders confident they would run the new state of Israel into the Mediterranean Sea.
Since then, we have witnessed continued power struggles, which have become a status quo and modus vivendi. A business model, if you will, where the Palestinian people regrettably have become the mere catalyst, i.e., the means, to sustain PLO in the first place and now Hamas, with money flowing from the more prosperous Arab nations, the European Union, and the United States. Israel, on the other hand, also receives billions of dollars from the United States of America every year.
It is a cycle: War, talks, negotiations, ceasefire, war, talks - over and over - year after year - etc. etc. The growing Palestinian population, crammed into a small area with extremely high unemployment, is worse off than ever.
However, from a fundraising perspective, it's just perfect. A suffering people. A sympathetic world and corrupt leaders cashing in. Perfect! The Hamas leadership doesn’t even live in Gaza and have access to whatever they need, while the people have nothing.
It is difficult to simplify the complex Palestinian/Israeli universe, but we must acknowledge that neither the Palestinian leadership, Hamas, nor Israel has a motive to change the situation substantially.
If the Arab neighbors and the Palestinian leadership had accepted Israel's right to exist years ago, a Palestinian state with the industrious Palestinian people would now live in peace and prosperity. However, Hamas, a terrorist organization, profits from denying Israel's existence. They adhere to and promote armed struggle. Leaders and opinion makers around the world who want to encourage peace must accept 1) Israel's right to exist, 2) there is suffering on both sides but more so, the Palestinians, and 3) the total disconnect between the interests of the Palestinian People and the interests of the Palestinian leadership. Otherwise, the same blah blah can continue for centuries.
The Jewish people and the Palestinians, who stayed behind in 1948, built the modern and prosperous state of Israel with pure grit. Israel will not disappear. Neither voluntarily, negotiated, nor through armed struggle, no matter how many manifestos Hamas brings about.
Meanwhile, the population of the United States and Europe, overlooking any historical perspective, tend to see local or international political issues through the lens of a blood sport. Without further thought, they pick a side and root for them. It is sad to see every political issue affecting human lives demoted to the likes of a Roman theater where you eat your burger while you watch people kill each other, then take a sip of coke.
We must distill problems to the essentials and then solve them. We must apply methods to domestic and international problems to resolve the accumulating issues. If not, evil will return and remind us that learning from history has never been our strong suit.
Survival is about creating solutions. A suffering Palestinian population should not be the solution, but apparently, under the present circumstances, it seems that it is.
We must change the circumstances.