For the last couple of days, I’ve been going back and forth on whether to write this post. It’s not something that’s directly in my wheelhouse, and few things turn me off to other writers and artists more than when they feel a need to publicly post their every knee-jerk reaction to the political issues of the day.
But there are a few reasons why I think it would be a mistake not to post my thoughts about the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, and the new war that has broken out in the region. First, it’s a major watershed event, certainly for Israel, and probably for the rest of the world as well, especially if it spirals into a regional and ultimately a global war (which seems increasingly likely).
Second, I’ve actually had a lot of personal experience in the region, having traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories, studied in Jordan, learned Arabic, and majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic from BYU in 2010. Longtime readers will recognize the influence of all of these studies and travels on my work, especially on my earlier novels such as Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home.
What the Hamas attacks have confirmed to me is that everything I learned in university about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a lie, sometimes of commission, but mostly of ommission. Compared to most schools, Brigham Young University’s MESA program is actually very ideologically balanced. But it wasn’t until after I graduated that I learned about things like taqiyya, which is a principal of the Islamic religion that it is virtuous to lie to the unbeliever in the service of Islam (and guess where all of us Kafirs get our information about Islam). Also, we never delved very deeply into the history and development of anti-semitism. As a result, when I traveled to the Middle East, I was shocked to discover that Mein Kampf is still one of the bestselling books in the Arab world. At the time, I thought it was kind of funny, but not anymore.
So the heinous attacks by Hamas on the music festival and the various towns kibbutzim in southern Israel haven’t shattered my illusions, so much as they have given me a great deal of moral clarity. And I have to say that after seeing what the Palestinians have done to these women and children, targeting, raping, slaughtering, and decapitating them, I cannot help but feel that Israel is justified in making sure that something like this can never happen again—even if it means violently displacing millions of Palestinians to bring this generations-long conflict to an end.
The two-state solution is dead. Land for peace is dead. So is any solution that would involve integrating these pre-civilizational savages into Israeli society. My younger, more naive self would argue “yes, but Hamas doesn’t represent all the Palestinians! In fact, Hamas is an authoritarian regime!” But my older, wiser self who lived through the pandemic knows that authoritarian regimes can only exist because the people living under them comply with their rule. The reason Hamas is has been in power in Gaza for more than a decade is because this wanton slaughter of Israelis is what most of the Palestinians want. Because of that, I don’t see how any lasting peace can be made, unless either Israel or Palestine is destroyed as a nation.
This is a huge shift in my own personal thinking on the conflict, because as recently as ten years ago, my sympathies lay mostly with the Palestinians. But the actions of Hamas and the Palestinian people this last weekend have forever shattered those sympathies, and none of the footage of the bombings in Gaza is going to win my sympathy back. Not after what Hamas did to those Israeli women and children.
And when I see the activists and protesters here in the US flying Palestinian flags and protesting “in solidarity” against the “occupation,” I cannot help but wonder: is this what they want for me and my family? Do the people who consider themselves part of the self-described “resistance” against capitalism, colonialism, and “whiteness” secretly want to force me to watch while they decapitate my children, rape and murder my wife, and finally murder me? Or perhaps it’s not so secret anymore, since these people are putting pictures of paragliders in their event fliers.
If you “stand with Palestine” after the events of this past weekend, I have to assume that you are either willfully ignorant, or a pre-civilizational savage who answers only to force. Perhaps both. Either way, I will never stand with Palestine again.
Sadly, war has occupied the holy land since the dawn of time and it looks like it will continue until the end of time. That said, while I think Israel should fight back the US should stay out of it; with our troops, with our resources and with our money. We need to fix our own house before we go bankrupt worrying about somebody else’s dwelling.
I tend to agree with you, JR. Israel can defend herself—I don’t want to see American blood shed for this, if at all possible. I also have a lot of other questions about who knew about this pending attack when, and whether the people who should have stopped it actually permitted it to happen in order to advance their own political agenda. But none of that takes away from what Hamas actually did with the rope they may or may not have been given, nor does it reduce the Palestinians’ culpability in these atrocities.
Regarding US involvement in this war, though, I do think we need to keep our eyes open about the increasing likelihood that this is going to spiral into a regional and ultimately a global war. Depending on what happens in the next few days, historians may very well look back on the Hamas attack as the “Germany Invades Poland” moment that kicked off WWIII. If so, non-intervention may actually make our problems here at home worse—though with the Mexican cartels in operational control of our southern border, and our petroleum reserves almost totally depleted while we continue to send unlimited aid to Ukraine—one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and the place where all our worst politicians prefer to launder their money—it may be that the only way we survive WWIII as a nation is to clean up our own house first, and soon.
That might be true, but at the moment we’re so weakened at home that we couldn’t withstand a global war. Even if we WANTED to be involved, we would have to fix the corruption here first.