Ask Bucko

When Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, most right thinking people condemned the attacks as savage and stupid. They cost over 1200 innocent lives, and they achieved only grief.

No amount of searching for a reason justified the killing. Conditions in Gaza and the West Bank were terrible, but such wanton violence did not right any wrongs, nor did it invite any response other than severe reprisals.

Everyone, including Hamas, knew Israel would respond

No-one living in Gaza thought the Israelis would just let this outrage pass. Every Palestinian adult knew there would be terrible trouble ahead, and most of us, whether Jewish or not, living within or outside Israel, expected swift retribution.

Deterrence and revenge would be in the mix, but no-one expected the level of violence the Israelis unleashed. But many considered it to be, if not proportionate, at least understandable.

In those early days the Israelis were unapologetic, if occasionally regretful. Children were being killed and maimed, residential buildings were razed to rubble.

Most reasonable adults expected Israel’s rage to boil over for a time, and to then return to a simmer. Steps would be taken to take the battle to the militants. The tunnels would be emptied of terrorists, whose fate was necessarily already determined.

As time went on, the conflict continued, and the number of civilian deaths grew. Twenty deaths on a particular day, mainly women and children, sometimes for the trophy of one or two militant leaders.

How long would Israel continue the bombings?

The watching world began to wonder why Israel, with its almost mythical Mossad secret service, and its battle-ready army of reservists, could not defeat such a rag-tag group.

It was a classic guerrilla conflict, but it was being waged in the residential neighbourhoods. It was being waged in and around hospitals and schools, and as the number of refugees swelled, and they ran out of places to run, the Israelis bombed refugee camps. The Israelis issued warnings, but they were useless. Civilians continued to die.

Stories were shown on television of entire extended families being wiped out, entire neighbourhoods being obliterated into piles of broken concrete and twisted steel. Universities were bombed, hospitals were scenes of hand to hand fighting, and wounded children were being shot and mutilated, again, as they lay in their hospital beds.

Israel’s rage was seemingly never to be satisfied. Questions arose about why the remaining hostages were not being repatriated, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s motives were questioned. What was Netanyahu’s end goal for his country? Why was he so reluctant to call a halt to the carnage, and negotiate?

Netanyahu wanted the ‘war’ to continue

His stated aim of total destruction of Hamas was almost universally seen as impossible, and unnecessary. Hamas’ leadership had been decimated, its military stores depleted, and its support amongst the civilian population had evaporated.

It seemed to slowly occur to many that Netanyahu was deliberately prolonging the war. The damage had been done to Israel on October 7, and yet he continued to wage a bloody war against a defeated enemy, and two million civilians.

Netanyahu was facing charges of corruption, and the longer the war kept on, his judgement day receded into the future. It is a maxim that a country at war would be very foolish to change leaders. He was relying on that being true.

It is only a war if there are two armies fighting

Of course it is gilding the lily to suggest that Israel was involved in a war. It was armed by the USA, and it has rained down so much death and destruction that the Americans have lost face, due to Netanyahu publicly ignoring Joe Biden’s pathetic protestations that enough is enough.

The Palestinian people do not have a national army. They have an armed militia which engaged in terrorist activity, and the civilians were the sacrificial lambs.

History will decide whether Biden’s legacy is forever tarnished by his weakness and indecision in the face of a genocide. Certainly America’s position as an arbiter of a rules based order has been shown to be empty and powerless.

Is it a genocide?

The definition contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.

More and more countries are seeing what is happening, and whatever they call it, it is, according to the elements of the Article, a genocide. The world has been slow to react, because Israel is a first world democracy, strongly supported by the United States.

Why has no-one stopped it?

Netanyahu has surrounded himself with racist and genocidal cabinet ministers who would not get a ministry anywhere else on earth. Their statements about the suffering and the rising death toll merely highlight their callous disregard for human decency. Many of the cabinet have gone on the record denying the humanity of Palestinians.

Not only have they murdered thousands of civilians; they have made their cities uninhabitable; they have starved the population by refusing the delivery of aid; they have bombed schools and universities out of existence; and they have destroyed most of the hospitals. They have killed aid workers, journalists and medical staff. If that doesn’t satisfy the requirements of declaring a genocide, then what in God’s name will?

What for the future?

The surprising element of this shameful event in world history is that it will make peace between Israelis and their Arab neighbours impossible, for the rest of time. It is like sowing the fields with salt. Nothing will ever grow there. But Netanyahu might just get to avoid his day in court, if the spineless Americans continue to support him and his crimes. And laughably he continues to accuse his accusers of anti-Semitism.

Netanyahu deserves to be ranked with all the other monsters from history. We know their names, and he will sit comfortably with them.