War is a tragedy

We are seeing an all too familiar tragedy being played out in the Middle East, yet again.

It is not just in Syria, where 40,000 people have been killed in a savage civil war and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee its violence.

It is not just the dozens of people who have already died in the conflict between the Palestinians in Gaza and Israel.

Anywhere you look, you see this kind of violence seemingly becoming routine. It is, as I said, a tragedy. It also is understandable.

In Syria, it is about power and who wields it. The Alawites, the Sunnis, the Shi’as and probably a half dozen interest groups are battling over who rules Damascus.

In Gaza, it is merely a rerun of something we have witnessed for nearly 65 years, if not centuries.

I know my progressive friend out west is practically foaming at the mouth over the Israelis bombing Gaza, but what choice do they really have? Really, tell me, because I want to know.

The Jews in Israel are survivors and descendants of survivors of horrors we here in North America cannot even begin to contemplate. We can empathize a little in the U.S., I suppose, because for 40 years we lived under the Sword of Damocles of a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War. Fortunately, that holocaust didn’t happen and its tentacles that stretched around the globe in proxy wars never really touched home.

But the Israelis today live with a holocaust that threatens them every day and they remember a Holocaust 70 years ago that wiped out six million Jews. Just as the Palestinians trapped in Gaza and the West Bank face their own fears of a holocaust.

Unfortunately, the Israelis never set out to kill all the Palestinians and drive them into the sea. The Palestinians and the Arab Muslim nations surrounding the Jewish enclave on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea have pretty much made it obvious, if not unequivocal, that they do intend to kill all the Jews and if possible drive them into that sea.

I guess it is hard to understand that war mentality, the siege mentality; such an existential threat would have on a people after 65 years. Especially if your enemies continue to fire rockets, missiles and bombs at you.

The Palestinians in Gaza basically triggered the latest round of violence with the seemingly incessant stream of rockets into Israel, with ever increasing range on such missiles.

I know the Gazans are trapped, but unfortunately, from my point of view, they are attacking the wrong enemy. They should be attacking the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Syrians who basically have kept them cooped up, stoking the Palestinians’ anger and letting countries like Iran and Russia smuggle in arms and other war material over the years.

I know that is not politically correct, nor probably approved by anybody, but it takes two to fight wars, especially if neither side wants to lose its existence.

The sad thing, apparently, if it was a state, a nation, that the Palestinians want, then they could have had that years and years ago. However, they have chosen not to accept that. The only way they would accept it, apparently, was if they cast out the Jews and unfortunately they have just as much right to the land as Palestinians, for in reality, they are Palestinians too, just not Arab Muslims. Seven years ago, the Israelis gave the Palestinians Gaza and the Palestinians turned it in to a prison camp, rather than develop it.

So, what we see today is only going to get worse and bloodier. The Israelis are not going to stop defending themselves and walk into the gas chambers again, and the Palestinians will not stop their asymmetrical warfare (regardless of the price that “civilian” women and children will pay in the blowback) unless they get the whole loaf.

Sad, isn’t it? Tragic and absolutely so human of us.