South Africa’s claim of genocide is Israel’s claim of defending itself and taking revenge for what happened on October 7.
The high court at the U.N. is hearing a case positing that what the world is seeing in Gaza is genocide at the hands of Israel. Israel, of course, begs to differ, and its reasoning is not all unreasonable. No one has ever been able to crawl inside Israel’s head when it comes to how they behave. They live with deep scars and unimaginable hurt. A switch was long ago flipped when it came to how it reacted to animosity and aggression directed at them. They take no prisoners because they have been prisoners way too frequently.
The disconnect with all of that, the dissonance with regard to what’s currently happening in Gaza, is that, from what the world is seeing and hearing about the humanitarian crisis, the opinion could be formed that Israel needs to back off, needs to reevaluate its strategy and pay more attention to a distinction between civilians and Hamas fighters. It is currently easy for the rest of the world to believe that Israel is making little effort to honor that distinction.
What muddies the water is that Hamas makes it their vile practice to use civilians as human shields, to scurry around and plot strategy in tunnels underneath hospitals and other structures where non-combatants are liable to be present.
What is Israel to do? Sometimes, the claim is made, they just say, “Oh well… not much we can do except take them all out.” Israel claims otherwise, but the world is growing more skeptical that such care is being taken to minimize harm to innocents (there must be innocents, right?) who are just trying to stay alive and get through the day in one piece.
The U.S. is walking a steadily fraying tightrope. Without knowing what percentage of Israel’s military hardware is domestically produced, and without our (currently) unwavering support both politically and militarily, maybe Israel would be singing a different tune. Then again, maybe not.
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