Ben's Blog

November ’23

When we look at the Hamas attacks on innocent victims, it is important to put it in perspective. I would like to think I could not commit such horrific acts, but if I were forced to live under the same conditions as the people of Gaza, I don’t think I could say “I would never do such a thing.”

I think if I was a Palestinian in Gaza on October 7 and someone handed me a gun and said, “you can go and shoot the people who have oppressed you.” I cannot swear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would refuse. The only people who can say ‘I could never do that’ are those who have endured such inhuman conditions and have not taken a gun and killed their oppressors. I think that would be a very small coterie of people: Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, maybe John Lennon.

We are told at every opportunity that the difference between us civilized folks and those terrorists is that we do not deliberately kill innocent people (unless it is unavoidable. Then we worry about it for a while before we press the button) Where-as those terrorists set out to kill as many innocent people as they possibly can.

Yes, there is a line between those 2 positions, but it is a very fine line indeed. At the end of the day the innocent are all equally dead.

The Israeli army has been killing innocent people with impunity for some 75 years now, but the big difference is that they claim they did not set out to deliberately kill them. But they are dead non-the-less, and the Israeli army can calculate very accurately how many will be die before they start. They already know how many innocent lives will be lost in the present round of bloodletting. They are coldly calculating what the total should look like.

As you can see, it is a very fine line between civilization and barbarism.

As the Israeli revenge continues unabated, that line is becoming more blurry. The Israelis refer to the Palistinians in Gaza as animals and monsters. They are dropping bombs on public housing without warning. They say such things as, “We are more interested in inflicting damage than accuracy”. They have cut off all food, water and electricity to the entire population. They have not stated clearly that the bombing will not stop until they have achieved there goal, to annihilate Hamas. But is it possible to annihilate Hamas without destroying all of Gaza and killing just about everyone in it? Any Hamas soldier can just take off their uniform and become a normal citizen.

Netanyahu has dropped 1,000 bombs a day on Gaza, for 25 days now, that’s 25,000 bombs so far, with no sign of letting up. According to the Israeli Ministry of Truth, each and every bomb is targeting a Hamas commander.( that is an awful lot of commanders, don’t you think?)    The Ministry of Truth also tell us that Hamas is hiding in the tunnels. Both of those statements cannot be true. I tend to believe the latter claim. The Hamas army is waiting in the tunnels, unscathed. All those bombs are just revenge, plain and simple.

When we compare the barbaric acts of the adversaries here, it is difficult to say which is more barbaric than the other. But I think we can say that for the 2.5 million people trapped in an area 40ks X10ks, their options are limited.

Ironically, both sides are fighting for the same thing.

The Jews established their own state because they wanted more control over their own lives, and that is what the Palestinians want as well.

…and I might add, that is exactly what the blackfullas here on their continent want as well.