24A001 Gaza, et cetera by Jim Davies, 1/2/2024

Expressions of horror and indignation have been heard around the world about the awful scale of civilian deaths arising from the Israeli government's war on Hamas, the effective government of the Gaza strip. 2.3 million people live there, crowded in an area of 141 square miles.

The number killed - including children - appears to me to be about 1.4% of the population, as the IDF grinds its way from North to South. One in seventy. Such odds are way too high for me. When I was 6 my mother took me out of London, yet the chances of being killed by German air raids there was only about 0.33% or one in 300 - and then, only if resident for the whole of WW2.

The outcry, however, is hypocritical. War is hell, and it's what governments do.

Item: the Soviets surrounded and then crushed Berlin, in April 1945. Accurate numbers are hard to find, but about 300,000 civilian residents, out of about 3 million, died in the onslaught. That's 10%, or seven times greater than the Gaza one (and thirty times greater than the London rate above.) Yet except for the survivors, everyone cheered Zhukov's achievement. It's what governments do.

Item: Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris told the RAF in 1941:

The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger...

This was the first admission that civilians are deliberate targets, not just collateral damage such as in the Berlin assault and the purge of Gaza. The photo is of Cologne in 1945. It's what governments do.

Item: In August 1945 the US and British governments dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, killing everyone there - a total of about 250,000, nearly all of them defenseless civilians. It's what governments do.

Item: In February 1945, bombers of the US and British air forces incinerated the whole city of Dresden, Germany. Most of its civilian population was burned to death. It's what governments do.

Item: During all of WW2, the German government systematically enslaved and then exterminated about 6 million Jews, and were stopped from killing the other 5 million within the area they planned to grab only by the Soviet counterattack. That's genocide, and sometimes it's what governments do.

The IDF in Gaza has been accused of genocide (the deliberate attempt to kill members of a particular group of people, identified by religion or otherwise) but by comparing its action with the last four examples above, I'd say it's no such thing. The deaths taking place are awful, but collateral only; the target is Hamas. And Hamas has tried to prevent civilians moving out of the target areas and has purposely placed its batteries in hospital and other civilian areas.

And since many of the protesters live in Germany, Britain and the USA and yet support the ongoing existence of their governments, they are deeply hypocritical.

The hypocrisy goes further. Facing IDF attacks, the obvious thing for Gazans to do is to get out of the way, as Mum and I did from London. But they don't. Why not?

One possible reason is that they so fanatically support Hamas, and filled with hatred for Jews, that they don't want to. Possible, but in my view unlikely; for they have children. What other reasons? - (1) Israel has sealed off the enclave, for not unreasonably it doesn't want terrorists roaming the country. (2) Egypt, with which Gaza does have a common border, has said it will not admit refugees. Then, most surprisingly, (3) not one of the supposed supporters of Palestinian Arabs, and of Gazans in particular, has issued an invitation. Not even Iran. So hypocrisy, too, is what governments do.

The basic, underlying problem is that Moslems don't want a Jewish State in the Middle East. That's true of them all; mildly so in the case of Egyptians and Arabians, viciously so in the case of Hamas, the de facto government of Gaza. True also of Iranians and their armed agents in Lebanon. Why? - not easy to tell, for they all come from a similar root. But Islam was dominant in the area since the 8th Century and especially since 1483 when Moslems conquered Constantinople.

If so, it's a feeble reason to kill and be killed. But such is religion, and such is government.