What a morass has been made of Gaza. The Israeli invasion seems clearly designed to demoralize the residents of Gaza. How else could you explain the complete razing of a town because a few Hamas fighters used one or two houses for firing at the Israelis. This seems so wrong-headed to me. Removing all vestiges of hope from people only increases their willingness to support radical solutions.

On the other hand, as sympathetic as I am of individual Palestinian tragedies, the citizens of Gaza must accept the results of the actions taken by the government they have elected. As much as we would like to, we US citizens cannot escape responsibility for the disastrous policies of the prior administration because we elected them. The Gazans reap the results of electing Hamas as their leaders. No government can freely bomb another nation and not expect that country to act to protect its citizens. Citizens of Gaza who suffer from the actions of the Israelis acting to protect their country cannot escape their collective responsibility for their own stiuation.

So the demoralized Palestinians see no option but the radical Hamas. Hamas can only justify its existence by continuing to attack Israel. Israel defends itself by attacking Gaza and wiping out its towns, and the vicious cycle continues.

Palestinians and Israelis must awaken to the awareness that violence is insane and only perpetuates itself. Only then will their common humanity prevail.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Political Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or