Like many people around the world I have watched Palestinian men scrambling like ants over the debris piles that used to be homes. Women are conspicuously absent. What surprises me is the number of guys taking selfies while posed amid the ruins. Others record the retrieval of each body from the piles of concrete and block and hover over them as they are rushed past the observers. It seemed logical to me that if the voyeurs put their phones away their now unencumbered hands might be able to assist in looking for the trapped or dead. Those self involved hands could realistically assist in clawing away the stucco, stone and timber, perhaps actually contributing something worthwhile to the rescue efforts.
There have been pro Palestinian rallies all over the world urging Western governments to intervene and force the Israelis to arrange a cease fire. Here again, men and women wearing checked shawls and scarves scream their support for the Palestinians and their cause while recording themselves on phones tethered to the end of selfie sticks. It becomes a scene of self indulgence and self promotion the importance of which is their “look at me” attendance. To me it is a practice that makes the rubber neckers who block traffic at accidents by slowing to stare at the carnage seem discrete and responsible. It is ghoulish. No one can realistically condone the slaying of civilians in the pursuit of military goals. Sometimes it really is necessary to take some lives in order to save many more. Hamas has done everything it can to swell the number of dead and injured. It places rocket launchers next to mosques, hospitals and school with complete indifference to who will die when the IDF retaliates. If Israeli bombs were not killing Palestinians then Hamas would have to do it themselves. They began the war with their cowardly assault on the Jewish settlers, who were there illegally in the first place. Both sides are to blame. Had Hamas used the hundreds of millions of dollars used to construct their vast system of tunnels then they might have actually done some good for their suffering people. The decision by President Harry Truman to drop two atomic bombs on Japan is still controversial. His decision was a difficult one for this humane man to make but he traded the lives of at least 100,000 Japanese to spare the American Armed Forces the one million projected dead and wounded GIs an invasion of Japan would have cost the Allies. Japan started the war, it was the price they paid. When the Allies fire bombed Dresden many thousands also died but it was done to shorten the war. The German government had begun the war and once again it was the price they paid. Hamas has already been caught smuggling war materials into Gaza hidden within the relief supplies. It is rumored that ambulances ferry Hamas fighters around Gaza,. People good and bad, innocent and guilty die in war and Israel is fighting a war. Pure and simple.