I know it's the NYT, but this
opinion piece reads like raving lunacy.
For Israelis, the reality is this: Israel, a flawed but real and vital country, is fighting an evil terrorist group that has the power to stop the horror at any time, but hates Israel enough to persist and does not care enough for its own people to stop.
Yes, for me, too.
Yet what is happening in Gaza speaks for itself. People are starving, and as in any other crisis, the most vulnerable in society — the elderly, newborns, people with pre-existing conditions — are harmed first.
That "yet" is carrying a lot of weight. It's a crisis caused by some profoundly evil people. No one else on Earth has any idea how to fix it. And the conclusion is . . . who exactly should self-immolate in an utterly hopeless effort to end it? I know the answer will shock you.
Even after almost two years of war, Israel lacks a coherent humanitarian strategy for Gaza, switching aid on and off based on the calculations of Mr. Netanyahu, who is trying to balance keeping the political support of his right-wing coalition partners, who want the war to continue, and international pressure to stop it.
Of course. Israel has failed to develop a coherent humanitarian strategy to address the insoluble problem of barbarians at its gates desiring Israeli rape and murder more than their own survival.
After several hundred thousand tons of food aid entered Gaza during the second cease-fire, according to Israel — enough for several months, by World Food Program projections — Israel’s decision to cut off all aid in March pushed the strip into the dire crisis it faces today. Israel said that it hoped the blockade would disrupt Hamas’s ability to profit from the goods coming in, weaken the group’s governance and pressure it to capitulate in cease-fire negotiations.
OK, sounds reasonable so far, if the priority is not to end the conflict but to relieve the suffering of the people most devoted to supporting the conflict.
This was not just a morally wrong choice — humanitarian aid should not be a political issue — but a strategically foolish one that misread both Hamas and the international community. A humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza was never going to force Hamas’s hand. The group needs very few resources to operate: just enough to continue to hold the hostages, carry out guerrilla attacks and continue making statements to influence public opinion.
But no, it was morally insufficient, and also feckless, because Hamas is invulnerable to the suffering of Gazans and can easily subsist on what it steals from their aid, not only to eat but to fund its murderous program.
In May Israel sought to sidestep the U.N. assistance system, which it relentlessly criticized as ineffectual and compromised by Hamas with the poorly planned and even more poorly implemented system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. But after months of no aid, stocks in Gaza had run down and prices had soared; the foundation’s four distribution sites were almost immediately overwhelmed and exploited by profiteers, not to mention dangerous to access, with numerous casualties reported in lines for aid. The lack of aid has led to the death of more than 210 people by malnutrition since the start of the war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
So Israel tried the morally approved route again, but no dice, it wasn't enough, so everything is its fault again.
The Israeli-American plan to quadruple the foundation’s distribution centers will hardly address the grave situation. Even today the foundation faces logistical challenges, and the boxes they issue, both in terms of food quantity and diversity, don’t translate easily to nutritious meals.
Israel and the U.S. try quadrupling the aid. No dice again, because of logistical challenges and quibbles over how easy and nutritious the meals were.
Despite denials of the extent of the grim reality in Gaza, Israel established fixed humanitarian corridors, conducted and facilitated airdrops and allowed in small amounts of commercial traffic and daytime pauses in operations in some areas to allow for aid delivery.
But who cares.
Israelis must look beyond their own prism of pain and trauma, ignore the double standards at play and recognize the harsh reality in Gaza and Israel’s responsibility for it. Israel needs the courage to see what it sees. Then it must act.
No one else needs to solve this crisis. It's up to Israel to look behind its own pain and the evident double standards at play.
3 comments:
I think the logic is this: Often the most humane thing in a war is to end it, and the only way to end it is to win or to lose. You can always choose to lose. Winning, who knows how long it might take?
Unconsidered, of course, is what losing might mean for the people of Israel or for Gaza for that matter; or what winning might.
This has parallels to the recent anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most likely course of the war absent the bombings would have been an intense blockade of Japan, given resistance to committing to a full-on invasion, that would likely have caused millions of Japanese to starve, to say nothing of the continued slaughter in Japanese-controlled territory. Of course those with an axe to grind would now be blaming the US for the loss of life that resulted from not using nuclear weapons to potentially end the war earlier.
With the caveat that I have not read the entire NYT piece:
I have long believed that articles like this - in fact, much political writing - is done primarily to provide a way for those who believe X to continue feeling justified in believing X despite any evidence undermining that belief. More information is coming out about Hamas and/or the UN contributing to hunger in Gaza? Quick, explain why that doesn't matter and it's still good to hate Israel for the problems.
Some years ago I ran across the phrase "plausibility structure" and that is exactly what such writing is part of. A search on the phrase returns this AI summary:
A plausibility structure refers to the belief-forming apparatus that shapes what individuals find believable or acceptable within a given context, often influenced by their social environment and worldview. It acts as a filter, accepting information that aligns with existing beliefs and rejecting information that contradicts them. Essentially, it determines what seems reasonable or possible within a particular framework.
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