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In reply to the discussion: I am going to take my leave from DU for a time: [View all]Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)By blowing the shit out of children.
Here's an Israeli in Israel:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025274142
http://972mag.com/how-can-you-possibly-oppose-this-war/93924/
By Dahlia Scheindlin |Published July 19, 2014
How can you possibly oppose this war?
Someone asked me an innocent question: What is the position of Israelis who are against the war?
There are obvious answers.
First, this is a disproportionate war that harms huge numbers of civilians. The IDF is bombarding an area that it has already imprisoned by occupation from 1967, and then through suffocating border, movement, import and export control since 2007. Its residents have been stateless since 1948. It is attacking by air, land and sea, while Hamas attacks civilians in Israel through rockets and now through terrorist infiltration, at an increasingly frenzied pace.
Second, escalation breeds escalation. The south of Israel has not been at peace for a decade, but in this war, the whole country is under attack. And Protective Edge made things even worse for the south; all the Israel casualties so far as of today two civilian deaths, numerous wounded (including children) and one soldier killed have been in the south. Code Red warnings in Sderot all these years were awful, but death is worse. On a good day, there is suffering in Gaza; now the death and destruction there is indescribable.
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Fourth, the political and social consequences of the war will be a disaster in the short, medium and long term. In the short term, Hamas could easily become stronger, having become the defiant face of military resistance against Israel as diplomacy crumbles.
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Here is my extremely unpopular answer. There is no such thing as today devoid of yesterday and tomorrow; it is a fiction. The measures of the last ten days grow directly out of the measures in recent years. They will have devastating consequences in years to come. My criticism of this war is not I told you so, because some of us have warned for years that the status quo is illusory. Opposition to this war means finding a different response to predictable situations, so that there wont be a next time, and in two years Israelis wont have to say this is no time to analyze the past.
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In the long term, I shudder to think about the souls of people who lost two, three, or 18 family members to Israeli bombs. The sobbing father who begged his child to wake up because he had brought new toys; the woman who told her sister in England to stay away and live, so that at least one of the family members would survive. I see what national trauma has done to the Jewish people more than 60 years following their darkest moments. The manifestations of Palestinian suffering in future generations will be terrible.
The fifth and final reason to oppose the operation is that previous wars have failed. Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 begat Pillar of Defense in 2012, begat Protective Edge in 2014. Hamas was not toppled, Gaza was not disarmed. The only thing changing is the accelerating pace of the wars.
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