Ask Bucko

We all know what happened on October 7 last year. Hamas launched a savage and sustained attack on Israel. It was deadly and it was an attack on mainly unarmed civilians. It was certainly a surprise, although the Egyptian government says it warned Israel beforehand.

In hindsight it appears to have been launched as a somewhat despairing blow, designed to achieve little in strategic terms, but to inflict maximum short term pain and suffering. It can be seen as some sort of ‘payback’ for years of oppression within both Gaza and the West Bank.

That does not excuse it. It was stupid and self-defeating, and needlessly cruel. To target non-combatants, out of a clear blue sky, on a national religious holiday plays to every prejudice against Muslims, against Arabs, against Palestinians. It was never going to achieve anything but condemnation and disgrace. And now Hamas must bear the responsibility for the unfolding catastrophe raining down on its own people.

The damage it caused

The attackers killed 1,139 people: 695 Israeli civilians (including 38 children), 71 foreign nationals, and 373 members of the security forces. This was a co-ordinated attack, which included 5,000 rockets being launched into Israel, followed up by multiple small force assaults, spread over several different areas. These included two musical festivals, and several kibbutzim; the attack was launched on a Jewish religious holiday in Israel. The attacks have been described as massacres.

Many cases of rape and sexual assault reportedly occurred, but Hamas officials denied the involvement of their fighters. Of course they denied it, but that seems to be a default position for them to take; they did not express any shame or remorse for their organisation’s savagery.

Another chilling fact is that Hamas had signalled its readiness to attack, and had released videos in the preceding months showing its preparedness and its methods. Egypt had also warned the Israelis three days beforehand. Israeli leaders denied being warned, but they as a group have a mindset which doubted the capacity of Hamas to launch such an offensive.

Israel’s response

It also unleashed the dogs of war. Hamas has gained nothing apart from an embellishment of its reputation for thoughtless violence, and yet the people it represents have suffered, and continue to suffer. They have seen Gaza become uninhabitable, and it has become clear that there is no safe place for non-combatants. The numbers tell the tale.

Those numbers sit at roughly 40,000 dead, so far. There are estimates of up to another 10,000 buried in the rubble.

The retribution was always going to be one-sided, as Hamas must have calculated. This was an attack by a rag-tag ‘army’ of fighters, hiding in a vast network of tunnels, with small rockets and small arms, a volunteer force aware of the pulverising power of the Israeli Defence Force, and its ruthless determination to protect the Israeli homeland.

Mona Chalabi, a Guardian columnist, has cited reports that up to 186,000 Palestinians will probably end up dying, due to disease, unsanitary conditions, the weather, a lack of medical care, and starvation. Considering the lack of a safe place to go, anywhere, her report might be hopelessly optimistic!

Of course we, those forced to watch the catastrophe, instinctively know this. Children, the elderly, pregnant women, families who have lost all hope as they have lost, in some cases, dozens of family members: Many of them will die.

Who will stop this?

Well, it won’t be the Americans. Their president is more concerned with whether he can hang on to power, even as he struggles to remember the names of other world leaders. He is very cross with Benjamin Netanyahu however, but not enough to stop arming his troops. American presidents do not throw away the votes of Jewish Americans on a matter of principle.

Fighter jets and bombers, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, long range artillery and two thousand pound bombs have been supplied in seemingly inexhaustible quantities by the world’s only superpower.

It won’t be the Europeans. They are doing what Europeans do best. Navel gazing, and obsessing about internal Euro politics, and football. The French and the English, the original authors of the 1920s land-grab which caused this disaster, are busy with tennis tournaments.

It certainly won’t be the Australians, because they are too busy worrying about a lone Afghani woman standing up for the Palestinian people, against her own party, and the Trumpian opposition.

Both sides of the Australian parliament are caught up trying to say nothing which could possibly cause offence to the Israelis, because that might cause offence to the Americans.

Conclusion

Israel was obviously shocked at the scale of the invasion, the heavy loss of innocent lives, and the failure of its intelligence agencies. It appeared that complacency and hubris had undermined Israel’s vigilance.

Notwithstanding Israel’s early failures, Hamas caused this so-called ‘war’. Israel has responded, and then responded more. Israel has responded so brutally, and for so long, that one is forced to ask, “when will enough be enough?”

If there is any consensus emerging around the world, it is about the motives of Benjamin Netanyahu. Early on, righteous anger, an eye for an eye, return the hostages and remove Hamas from power.

As the months drag on, and the dead pile up, and the entire territory has been reduced to rubble, what is the slaughter achieving? Nothing, except the suspicion that Netanyahu persists in his mission because it is accepted political truth that war unites a nation. Countries involved in wars do not remove leaders, because it weakens the nation’s resolve.

Mistakes have been made but total destruction of living space, every school destroyed, hospitals and clinics, loaded with the sick and dying, ruthlessly bombed.

A whole generation traumatised, if they are unlucky enough to have survived thus far. The Palestinians cannot go back and start again. They have nowhere to go. They have no means to re-build.

Jordan is full, Egypt is a desert. Israel will never welcome them.

Netanyahu is still in power, and Israel is not going to stop until he is removed. If he is not jailed for his crimes in Israel, he should be tried for war crimes in Palestine.

As well as trying to eradicate the Palestinians as a people, he has trashed Israel’s reputation as a civilised democratic nation. All for the sake of a corrupt old man’s political survival.