Nonstop Angry-Making Acts
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 11, 2023
Our already high collective anger ratcheted up markedly with threats from Hamas to start executing kidnapped Israeli civilians and display the executions online.
Clearly, our capacity at the audacity of inhumane acts in the name of even understandable political goals is beyond taxed and will provide justification for yet more retaliation to stop what by any definition would be see as terrorism.
Necessarily, emotional reactions are lagging battlefield developments and the attempts to parse the information to advantage. But as journalists entered attacked areas, more videos and images have emerged of Israelis being shot at point-blank by fully armed Hamas fighters, more reported of atrocities that Joe Biden labeled as “evil” yesterday.
We’re moving further from needed attention on political solutions and hearing a lot more unrepressed anger towards killing those who started the killing. A report that 40 babies on a kibbutz were slain, some beheaded, for example, was just beyond comprehension.
Still, as emotional it is to hear the stories of individuals who have lost track of family, particularly if they could be your own relatives, it is angry-making to see the official flailing about what to do that will be short of extreme retaliation. That American citizens (and residents of several other countries) also are among the kidnapped is only complicating the situation, of course, as is the secrecy of whatever backdoor channels of communication are being reported with Hamas through Qataris.
It is angry-making that Hamas sees no bounds to its violent responses, even at the certainty of putting Gazan civilians in harm’s way. It is angry-making to watch an Israeli government ready to send ground troops to flush militants door to door in occupied Gaza. It is angry-making to watch other governments sit back, to see an inept United Nations, and to witness a United States Congress unable to respond because of an insane, inside, partisan fight among Republicans over who should occupy the Speaker’s chair while the important issues of the day are set aside.
Sign of the times: A Tel Aviv parents’ group is advising that parents remove social media from kids’ phones before video of live executions hit those screens.
Watching from Afar
The efforts that are underway seem to be on pushing Hamas back into a Gaza that is being leveled, on watching for a second front in the Israeli north from Hezbollah, another group tagged for terror attacks, and, from a global perspective, to keep this war from exploding to a far wider conflict.
The effort is on containment, as if that will solve any of the issues that brought about these actions.
It is unclear what the Hamas intentions and prospects are for at least 150 kidnapped citizens who were whisked to hidden locations in Gaza except as bait for release of jailed Palestinians in Israel or, as threatened, as bargaining chips for an end to bombings that will kill civilians — and, already, some Israeli military captives, as well as Hamas fighters.
The Israeli Defense Forces say they are going out of their way to warn Gazan civilians of pending strikes around Hamas military areas as warnings, but with no food, water, or electricity, who knows how effective those warning can be.
A promise now to execute civilians in public puts the conflict on yet a more dangerous and threatening edge — even for those of us not directly impacted.
It is angry-making that a half-dozen journalists — observers — have been killed, and that Americans have so much trouble separating issues involving Jews from issues involving the minority coalition Israeli government.
Talk About Solutions is Muted
Though there are voices about addressing the underlying causes here and appropriate solutions of a separate, recognized Palestinian state, those are far more muted than the sounds of war.
It is angry-making to see violence without a point, without an end goal.
Somehow, in the end, rights to land ownership have become about the right to exist at all. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and allies are committed to pushing Jews into the sea. Israelis are committed to continuing land-grabbing efforts in occupied areas to expand settlements even in the face of world opposition. The big powers in the world are committed to using the Middle East as a gameboard to pursue world-influence chess. And the Palestinians themselves continue to live — without investment by other Arab nations — in refugee camps or overcrowded centers of poverty where resentment breeds.
If the Hamas goal was about making a political case for ending Israeli occupation, that effort has been lost. If it was about halting a pending deal for peace being struck between Saudi Arabia and Israel with U.S. help, that has been shoved out of the picture. If it was mostly about rising up as the occupied to strike out at the occupying forces, it looks at this moment as if that will be a Pyrrhic effort.
Amid execution threats from Hamas and statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel has “only just started” to punish Gaza, prospects appear bleak for the end to the angry-making sentiments we all are encountering.
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