Hunter: Third party should step in
Judaism and the State of Israel are not the same thing.
So says Yakov M. Rabkin, Professor Emeritus of History at the Université of Montréal. I highly recommend his article for a description of the context (pressenza.com/2023/11/why-so-many-jews-denounce-israels-war-on-gaza).
“Israel is a Zionist state. As Israeli society has moved steadily to the right, it has consolidated the support of right-wing extremists and racists, including antisemites, around the world, such as white supremacists in the United States.” Israel began as a “settler colony” in 1947. Ethnic cleansing began and continues to this day. America and Australia did the same.
I have yet to see any attempt at describing why Hamas made their attack or what they hoped to accomplish. Hamas wanted to provoke Israel to overreact, which Netanyahu is doing. The unmitigated violence has shocked the world. Hamas is expecting Israel to self-destruct. It’s possible. They are also hoping the world’s nations will find a way to force a stop to the so-called “war.”
I say so-called war because wars are only fought between nations. The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are wards of Israel. By law, it is the obligation of the controlling authority to ensure their protection and well-being.
Israel has not.
The United Nations has a long history of stepping into conflicts to stop violence. Either the UN, or perhaps NATO, should come in to stop the attacks and the killing and the destruction. The government of Israel has shown itself to lie outside the bounds of a civilized society.
As Rabkin explains, the actions of Israel are creating a rise of antisemitism worldwide. The ethnicity and religion of Judaism is being damaged severely.
Patrick Hunter
Carbondale
