There’s history to Middle East violence

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/10/2023 (717 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When we see an atrocity committed, people inflicting violence on others, our visceral reaction is to see through a lens of perpetrators and victims. In the immediacy of the violence, our personal moral code screams out in protest, and it is very easy for us to cast the perpetrators as barbarous villains. Far too easy, and we fail to acknowledge the material conditions which brought us here.

There can be no mistaking that the Hamas raid which left many Israeli civilians dead and dozens captured was tragic, deserving of our deepest sympathy. There are some who contend that there are no innocent Israelis, that they are all complicit in the crimes their government has committed against the Palestinian people. But this is not so.

Just like it is wrong for Israel to restrict the power, water and food to punish all Palestinians (even more so than they already do,) it is also wrong to punish all Israelis for the crimes of their government. Collective punishment is always wrong, and a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

And if the statement above outraged you, remember the previous defence minister of Israel saying “there are no innocent Gazans” is just one instance in a long list of dehumanizing speech from their leadership in recent years.

We must lay out the context of this event, despite some journalists bafflingly contending that engaging with context is some kind of affront. David Frum is perhaps the most egregious example, tweeting his lament about people who want to provide context, as if he didn’t work for the same Bush administration that blundered into the disastrous Iraq war under pretenses that all desperately begged for context.

It was with a heavy heart I saw so many western politicians embracing a simple narrative in the wake of the Hamas massacre. Especially here in Canada, where so recently we saw our entire House of Commons give a standing ovation to a Ukrainian Nazi, all because they had embraced the jingoistic narrative of “Russia = bad, Ukraine = good.” So blinkered were they that nobody paused to think “hey, this guy fought for Ukraine in in the Second World War? Maybe we ought to consult Google.”

That context would have been valuable. Just as valuable is to remember the atrocious conditions the Palestinian people are forced to live with. And keep in mind that nearly half the population is under the age of 18. A land of children who never had a childhood, because most have never known anything but the occupation. Have never known a sky without the eternal buzzing of surveillance and predator drones, which might rain death upon them at any moment. Over 200 Gazans were killed by Israeli forces just this year even before the recent conflict, though such things are so commonplace that they pass by the global community without notice.

They’ve never known freedom of any sort. Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s macabre suggestion that Gazans ought to “leave” to avoid being caught in the coming retaliation, Gaza is an open-air prison which they cannot leave so easily. Not even to receive health care that is unavailable in Gaza, resulting in many watching their loved ones die waiting for permission to seek treatment elsewhere for what are often perfectly treatable conditions. But nobody bats an eye at these deaths, and the most generous reason one can offer is that humans are worse equipped to react to passive violence than active.

But now we see Israel’s active violence, ruthless as ever. Because even as many Palestinians try to flee, as Israel claims to want them to do, we see many being killed in bombings of the supposedly safe exit corridors. There’s no point citing the current death toll of Israel’s assault since it is sure to have gone up by the time this article runs.

Many seek to conflate the aggression of Hamas with all of Palestine, yet many Palestinians want nothing of this generational conflict. And even of those who do support Hamas, many only do so because they see no others means of resisting the occupation. But that conflict will be theirs now, as they watch their loved ones die around them.

And if one wants to charitably accept Israel’s stated rationale for this, it’s all to burn Hamas from the landscape, an organization Israel itself helped prop up in the 1970s because they thought it might be a counterweight to groups like the Palestinian Liberation Organization and leaders like Yassar Arafat. A former Israeli military governor in Gaza, Yitzhak Segev, has admitted as much. Despite claims to simply be defending themselves from hostile actors, context demands we remember that Israel actively enabled these actors in order to destabilize the region they now seek to purge.

What does living under such repression do to the psyche of not only the individual, but the Palestinians as a people? How would we ourselves react? Before we rush to our moral absolutism, we ought to admit that the least charitable honest answer is “I don’t know.”

There is no doubt Hamas is a destructive force, and the path to peace will be one that sees them removed from power. However, it is equally clear the Israeli government’s hardline policy of brutal occupation is the best recruitment tool Hamas has.

Until we understand that historical context, until our leaders stop turning a blind eye, we will continue to repeat this bloody cycle again and again.

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author.