The streets of Gaza are awash with blood. Gaza’s residents furnish the blood, but we – the American taxpayers – furnish the bombs which are spilling this blood. 20,000 lives worth of blood thus far.
When we watch war on television, we see the rockets take off, but rarely does Western media cover what happens when those rockets land. Ostensibly, it’s to protect us from images which might disturb us, but truth be told, we need to be disturbed by war.
Of those who’ve died thus far in Gaza since Israel began its bombing campaign on Oct. 7, at least 8,000 of the dead have been children, making Gaza, as UNICEF puts it, “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.” Even more dangerous than Ukraine, where, during nearly two years of fighting, around 600 children have been killed. Still 600 too many, I say.
To end the bloodshed in both of these wars – in Gaza, and in Ukraine – let us agree that whatever the differences between the fighting parties, there are no military solutions. There never are.
We need a permanent ceasefire and peace negotiations. In Gaza, and Ukraine.
Give peace a chance.
Byron Edelman is an anti-war activist in Washington state.
Accurate article, and I do not recommend anyone holding their breath. It could be fatal.
Nov 21, 2022 Webinar: Petroleum, Ukraine and Geopolitics: The Backstory
On November 18, 2022, the Montreal chapter of World BEYOND War hosted John Foster to speak about the role of petroleum in ongoing tensions and rivalries between the United States, Russia and China, that are playing out in the Ukraine War. With Western sanctions distorting markets and forcing up prices worldwide, Europe faces a severe economic crisis. Recent Western countries’ military interventions and sanctions on petroleum countries have failed. In an illustrated talk, including maps and photos, John shares the whole picture, highlighting Ukraine’s role and Canada’s involvement.
https://youtu.be/Pynn5qGLTjc?si=hL4T6ai7lhtTklk0
I wouldn’t recommend anyone holding their breath either. Justin Trudeau is not a good PM. He is too close for comfort with the USA, Ukraine, Israel and NATO. He only supported a cease fire in Gaza because of protests, Biden won’t do that.
Western Sanctions and military interventions have backfired.
Russia and China are now trading in their own currencies and the rest of the world should do the same thing.
Israel is attempting genocide and told the people to flee to South Gaza and now Israel is bombing there too and is stopping aid from getting in and people have very little food and no clean fresh water and are drinking seawater. North Gaza has no more functioning hospitals and the same thing will happen in South Gaza.
“Justin Trudeau is not a good PM.”
This is true. His initial appeal was his youth and energy and seemingly Left-leaning interests in improving environmental and social conditions in Canada.
Unfortunately, his tenure has proven he lacks conviction. Many on the Right (and I am certain the multitude of “F*CK TRUDEAU” bumper-stickers all across this country are funded directly by the PPC and CPC) hate him for a lot of reasons they can never precisely define.
I don’t. I just find him a disappointment. He is not so much a “wind sock” looking to capitalise on the current majority opinion; he’s a compromiser in one of the worst ways. He seems so eager to make everyone happy on all sides of Parliament that he ends up generating legislation and policy that is weak, watery, pablum. If he has a numerical advantage he doesn’t hammer home on it; if it’s a split vote he caters to his Left allies in the NDP and offers concessions to the opponent Conservatives to constantly not-lose.
This is the time of year for: faith, hope, peace and charity, for just about all faiths and people. We ask for a greater effort towards obtaining that, for the sake of human kind…
What is going to stop this Genocide if diplomacy is put on the back burner? How many Palestinians slaughtered, before we realize, that Israel has to be stopped, because they refuse to? All we hear is that this is a war, how is it a war when only one side is armed by the world? I see only one thing that might make diplomacy work and that is for the ICC to step up, to list the names of those committing WAR CRIMES and have them charged.
How do you negotiate with a country that wants to kill you? Both Russia and Hamas seek to eliminate their adversaries.
So in other words, keep up the killing because its working to bring a lasting peace? Israel is done talking and is engaged in actual genocide, do you suggest to allow this because of something hamas said? There’s no justification for genocide…none.
If Hamas agreed to recognizing Israel’s right to exist then there should be diplomacy.
By the way, there was no genocide in Gaza. Their population increased since 1968.
Curb your wokeness.
Generally speaking, if the Israelis have been attempting genocide, they’ve not done a very good job. The Palestinian Arab population is not much larger than in 1948, it is increasing faster than the Israeli population.
But this particular set of circumstances is not general, it is specific. And what’s going on looks a lot like an attempt at genocide (extermination of an entire population), or at least at ethnic cleansing (forcing an entire population out of a particular area).
“And what’s going on looks a lot like an attempt at genocide … or at least at ethnic cleansing…”
And this is a point that puzzles me on some Commenters on these boards, who claim “it is not” either of those things.
For me, reacting to a situation (east Ukraine, Gaza, Rwanda, East Timor, former Yugoslavia) where the appearance or claim of genocide is present, hold four possibilities :
1. The world reacts to stop the genocide, it WAS a genocide, and lives are saved by stopping the conflict.
2. The world reacts to stop the genocide, it WAS NOT a genocide, and lives are saved by stopping the conflict.
3. The world ignores the genocide, it WAS a genocide, and most / all lives are lost as the conflict concludes by its own goal.
4. The world ignores the genocide, it WAS NOT a genocide, and some-to-many (but not all) of the lives are lost as the conflict concludes by its own goal.
Thus I present : playing it cautious and the world reacting “as if” a potentially genocidal situation IS one, has better outcomes in either case (IS or ISN’T) than by ignoring or “hoping for the best”.
Those familiar with 9-1-1 emergency services protocols know that dispatch and first-responders will respond to an “unknown” (a disconnected, unclear, pocket-dialled, or silent) 9-1-1 call AS IF it is a real emergency.
The probability of being wrong (“it’s not actually an emergency”) does not outweigh the consequence of it being real & no help comes.
And you stop it how? How to you get Hamas to quit attacking Israel? And as long Hamas holds on to hostages, how do you get Israel to stop attacking Hamas?
Good questions. Let’s take a look.
“How to you get Hamas to quit attacking Israel?”
Establish a free and independent Palestinian state. The ASI withdraws to those borders found acceptable by Arab states decades ago, leaves the Palestinians the f-word alone for a change, and establishes peace treaties. And maybe stops funding Hamas as a counter to Palestinian unity.
“And as long Hamas holds on to hostages, how do you get Israel to stop attacking Hamas?”
The hostage question is becoming moot; after the murder of those 3-4 nice hostages what got free, by the IDF last week, and the blind flooding of Gazinian tunnels, it’s becoming apparent the “hostages” are worlds less important to the ASI government than this platinum-coated casus belli that ignoring their own intel on Oct 6th-7th the ASI gov’t absolutely gifted themselves.
I firmly believe that PM Netanyahu’s government would gladly, without hesitation, trade 1,000 Israeli lives, 10,000 even, for the “moral right” to exterminate 2-3 million Palestinians.
Now that I type that out; 100,000 dead Israelis for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza seems a trade the ASI government would seize in an instant.
“How do you negotiate with a country that wants to kill you?”
1. Find out why they want to kill you.
2. Do not do that thing that makes them want to kill you.
At the nation-state level, it’s seldom just one thing — and often the most-cited things are excuses used to make better propaganda than the real reasons.
So true.
‘More than one thing’, ‘most-cited things’, and ‘real reasons’, are all actual and discernable reasons. For Imhotep Blender to say “how do you negotiate with…” with such plaintive hopelessness is to immediately (and falsely) assume there ARE no reasons and none should be looked-for.
LOL. Let’s see. 1. The Palestinians want to kill the Israelis because Israel won a war 75 years ago and in the process kicked their grand parents out the new nation. 2. So your solution is to give back the land lost in that war! Real life does not work that way.
Now, Timothy, your explanation is either incorrect, imagined, or both.
I do understand that you want to rationalise the ASI as the “good guys” and place the Palestinians in this postmodern “Indian tribe” narrative where they lost to superior forces generations ago and therefore should accept their loss and die off, quickly if at all possible.
Unfortunately, the ASI was not smart enough to take their win(s) and go home. It is easy to find the “evaporation maps” of the Palestinian territories (https://www.palestineportal.org/learn-teach/israelpalestine-the-basics/maps/maps-loss-of-land/ as one) and see how for Palestinians in general, there has been a creeping loss of homeland.
For the Gazinese specifically, the last two decades alone, and the statements of ASI hardliners, clearly indicates the X-tinction Agenda (to outshine even that of Uncanny X-Men #270-272, New Mutants #95-97, X-Factor #60-62) and overwhelming desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza (death or displacement, “either is fine”) and take that land for the ASI’s own.
The way “real life works” is either you right the wrongs of your past, OR, you face the ongoing consequences of your wrongs.
Canada is finding a way forward with our Indigenous peoples; it’s not efficient or completed or will erase the past. But both sides know we’re all trying, and we’ve done well to avoid the violent standoffs (Oka, 1990) that have plagued our mutual past.