“No one is looking at us or the extent of this disaster or the crimes that we are experiencing in Gaza,” he said. Still holding his microphone, he slid off his flak jacket marked with the word PRESS and unstrapped his helmet.
“These protection jackets and helmets don’t protect us,” he said, flinging the equipment to the ground. “Nothing protects journalists. … We lose our lives for no reason.”
Why does “radical action” always mean “radical violence”?
“Radical action” can and should include radical kindness in which past wounds can be forgiven and a cooperative future can be built. Right now, all the violence is doing is ensuring that Hamas will be enumerated and maintained for generations by the people that Israel is considering to be sub-human and disposable. Radical violence creates radical ideologues and only ever begets further violence in the absence of total and absolute annihilation.
Radical kindness will specifically tell Hamas “yes, brutal terrorist attacks work, keep doing them”. That is unfortunately not an option. It’s also just a fantasy because it would understandably never be supported by Israeli population for this reason.
I’m interested in seeing alternative solutions that could actually work and be realistically implemented, but outside of understandable positions like “ease off with the fucking bombing and do more work on the ground” that don’t change the goal of what is being done I have not seen any.
If the citizens of Gaza aren’t offered anything better, why would they gamble what little they have on overthrowing the local oppressors? They don’t really have anything to gain by overthrowing Hamas and trying to do so would be putting their lives and their families at risk. If Israel and the wider international community can offer them something better than life under Hamas and the Likud, they’d be much more likely to eschew Hamas’ control.
This reads like “we don’t care about the hostages or their families. We must complete our noble work of eradication of the people we deem “hostile.” Also anyone that gets in our way is fully excusable and at fault for their own death by being around where we decide to kill.” Do you even possess empathy for anyone you don’t directly support? Wild.
It’s naive to say that kindness is going to stop violence from a group who in their founding charter call for the death of the opposing group. Hanas isn’t a good faith group and no amount of kindness will change that.
Any solution that will be durable requires that Hanna’s is not a part of it.
