Ask Bucko

When October 7 happened I was appalled and horrified by the wanton death and destruction. It seemingly came out of nowhere, but of course when we look back there was a backstory of mutual hatred, and a sense that the kettle had finally boiled over.

That did not excuse the carnage of that day. Mass murder and rape are never justified, and neither is the taking of hostages. We all expected Israel to strike back, and to strike hard. We expected there to be bloody retribution, followed by some sort of a hiatus, and an uneasy attempt to reset the status quo. Top of the list would be the return of the hostages.

Week after week we heard reports of a rising civilian death toll. To begin with Israel was defiant, and most of us in the West were still of the belief that once Israel’s rage had subsided, the two sides would be driven to the negotiating table.

Neither side could sustain the battle. Hamas would run out of combatants, and Israel would run out of armaments. Israel was the clear winner in the early days. Hamas had shown itself to be brutal and short sighted, and too badly led to understand the error of its methods.

The savagery of Hamas’ initial attacks, on unsuspecting non-combatants, had already lost the public relations battle. Whatever sympathy the rest of the world had for the Palestinians’ plight, prior to October 7, had completely disappeared as the details of the attacks, and of its victims, became known.

As time wore on, and weeks turned into months, the killing continued. At first, depending on the nature of the attacks, it became clear that Israel had abandoned any reticence about targeting specifically civilian targets.

The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) initially appeared regretful when news broke of a hospital, or a school, even a refugee camp, being bombed. They routinely described the deaths of twenty, or fifty civilians, mainly women and children, as being unfortunate, as the ‘fortunes of war’.

They were collateral damage. If Israel’s target had been a Hamas leader, then somehow the civilian deaths were justified. As time went on, the IDF hardened its stance. It released instructions to the Palestinians to evacuate certain areas, no matter how difficult or impractical such evacuations were. And so, in the blink of an eye, it was the victims’ fault if they were in the ‘strike zone’.

Eventually, as liveable areas within Gaza became rare, and the population huddled within so-called ‘safe areas’, Israel continued its merciless bombing. Thousands were confirmed dead, and reporting of the conflict, and the delivery of aid were both curtailed.

Reporters were targeted, and water and power were cut off. Then when limited food aid was permitted, after a global uproar, the IDF began to target relief workers. Israel had changed its objectives. At the very least the Israelis wanted Gazans out of Gaza; they no longer “regretted” civilian deaths.

Credible reports of IDF soldiers committing atrocities on Palestinians were made, and the Prime Minister’s rhetoric hardened and became less about ensuring the release of hostages held by Hamas, and more about completely removing Hamas from the face of the earth.

Netanyahu was protecting his job and seemed to want the conflict to drag on

Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister, and his cabinet included several far right religious zealots, whose alliance with Netanyahu kept him in power. These allies made it clear they would desert him in the event of a cease-fire, or a cessation of hostilities. Their desertion would mean his government would fall.

By a tragic twist of fate, the conflict coincided with the onset of a criminal trial against the Prime Minister, for corruption in office. It is well understood that the courts would not pursue the accused while he was leading his country in a ‘war’. So, many cynics believe that the Prime Minister has continued the war so as to delay his trial.

The United States enabled the war, and then its continuation

After the world cottoned on that the war was looking, at the least, like an ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Israel’s unremitting bombing and its actions to make Gaza unliveable, began to resemble a genocide. No water, no food, no power, eventually no intact buildings – all pointed to an attempt to destroy Hamas, but also to eradicate the Palestinian people from Gaza. There were 2.2 million Gazans living there before the catastrophe.

Most of the world assumed that the Americans would step in and force some form of peace, or at least a cease-fire. Joe Biden looked as if he would lend his personal weight to ‘persuade’ Netanyahu to moderate the damage, and to stop the killing.

Hamas appeared to be decimated, and the civilians were being punished and actually exterminated. The battle was won, and the whole world knew it. Biden showed his unfitness to lead, as Netanyahu made a fool of him, day in and day out.

Even through the worst examples of overkill, the US continued to supply the 2000 pound bombs that Israel was raining down on innocent non-combatants. When Biden stepped away from the upcoming election, Kamala Harris was expected to show some sort of commitment to a future peace.

That was the signal we all missed. America had finally, and perhaps permanently, lost its moral compass, and both Harris and Trump, the presidential candidates, were as bad as each other. Each was prepared to stand by and watch a first world-armed, and trained army demolish an entire population. Not only by force of arms, but through starvation, exposure to the elements, the removal of all the means of living.

And now, what? Trump wants to create a resort there. Netanyahu wants to stay out of jail. What do the Palestinians do now?

Well, Netanyahu has re-started his war, and hundreds are dying every week. From murdering 13 or 14 medics at a time, as they attempted to provide medical care to the wounded, most of whom were women and children; to declaring an ‘open season’ on journalists; to the unthinkable: Mass starvation.

We now have the spectacle of a demented US president and a genocidal Israeli leader in charge of the destiny of over two million innocents. Talk about repeating the 1930s; these two are the moral equivalent of Stalin and Hitler.