I may not agree with what they're doing in Gaza and I suspect many members of the IDF aren't comfortable with it and don't want to be a part of it.
I'm not entirely comfortable with some of the past and present actions of the IDF too. Here are some of them that I've read about:
‘We go to the Barbir Hospital…Robert [Fisk] has known Dr Amal Shamma since the Israeli invasion, when she showed him babies killed by Israeli phosphorus shells whose bodies burst into flames each time they were taken out of water.’
'There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier & their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded....Israeli army equipment & empty bottles of whiskey.'
'There were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall....'
The previous two quotations were taken from Robert Fisk’s eyewitness account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre, an atrocity that was perpetrated by Christian Phalangists but orchestrated by the IDF and former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon in particular.
From Lara Marlowe (the source of my first quotation), one additionally learns that the Phalangists were flown in from the south in Israeli Hercules transport aircraft. They were given weapons, uniforms and US military rations. Then they were sent into the Palestinian camps to perpetrate the slaughter. The Israelis remained in contact while the massacre happened, watching with field glasses and dropping flares from fighter aircraft overnight so the Phalange could see what they were doing.
Now here’s Robert Fisk (again), this time on the Qana massacre: ‘Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disembowelled.’More on the Qana massacre (a very graphic description) can be found here:
Eyewitness
www.independent.co.uk
From Tareq Baconi's study Hamas Contained, one additionally learns that 634 Palestinian children were killed by the IDF between the year 2000 & Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9, while 551 died as a result of Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
And according to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel’s retribution for October 7th (Operation Swords of Iron) ‘has killed over 30,000 Palestinians so far; roughly a third were children.’ His book was published in October 2024, so more will have died since then.
But I also find the actions of Hamas (and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) utterly reprehensible and barbaric too. Here's a Hamas leader that was quoted in a Human Rights Watch report:
‘Our stand is not to target children, the elderly, or places of prayer-even though these places of prayer incite the killing of Muslims. Up until now we have not targeted schools.., nor do we target hospitals, even though they are an easy target. That is because we are working in accordance with certain values … we don’t fight Jews because they are Jewish but because they occupy our lands. So if children are killed it is something outside of our hands.‘
These claims are false. Prior to October 7th 2023, Hamas deliberately chose targets for suicide bombings where children were present. Examples include the Sbarro restaurant bombing (2001), the Matza restaurant suicide bombing and Kiryat Menachem bus bombing (2002), the Haifa Bus 37 Suicide Bombing and the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing (2003), and the Beersheeba Bus Bombings of 2004.
The hypocrisy of Hamas in seeking to provide Islamic justifications for their actions is further explored by Amy Chiang in this excellent article:
Set against the above backdrop, I therefore find Bob Vylan's cheerleading for the above kind of violence offensive and share your concerns about incitement.
When it comes to this intractable conflict, I have no idea how it can be resolved. Maybe reading Shlomo Ben Ami's
Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy will give me some ideas about that
.
So for the moment, I'm on the side of the innocent civilians on
all sides who have suffered and died as a result of it.
