When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping over 200, almost everyone in the world was very sympathetic declaring that Israel had the right to defend itself by any means possible. But no one could have predicted the scale and the extent of the Israeli response to being attacked.
Now, more than four months later, the extent of the Israeli response has surprised even Israel’s staunch supporters. As of now more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, more than two thirds of them are women and children. Approximately half of that number are children.
And the war is not over.
Israel has told the Palestinians in Gaza to go south. Now more than a million of them crowded at Rafeh, which is the southernmost city in Gaza. Israel again is ordering the Palestinians to go south so they can start the ground attack into Rafeh. The question is where south? There are no more parts of Gaza south of Rafeh. Israel will start the ground attack at any time, which will certainly increase the number of Palestinians killed.
The magnitude of the suffering and misery in Gaza is horrible. Most of the horrific images don’t make it to American media. But the images of thousands bodies torn into pieces and the immense destruction in Gaza are repulsive. And as if bombing civilians is not enough, now most people in Gaza are on the verge of starvation. The images of small children carrying their empty pots and crying because the food supply had been totally exhausted make you cringe at the brutality of this war.
Despite the brutal nature of this war, many still do not support a ceasefire – including the United States government. Last week the U.S.again used its veto power to stop a United Nations Security council resolution calling for humanitarian ceasefire. In almost any other conflict, the United States is almost always on the side of ceasefire. Here in this conflict, America is totally against that concept – even in face of the horrific tragedy unfolding in Gaza.
For some reason the ugly and horrific images of this war have not been shown on American TVs, conservative or liberal. There is an amazing agreement among the different factions of American media, with a few outliers, to avoid showing the intense and inhumane misery that the innocent Palestinians in Gaza are enduing.
The excuse is lumping all the Palestinians in one group. All of them belong to Hamas and all of them are terrorists, which is a false premise. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself against terror attack, but at what price? The indiscriminate bombarding of Gaza has left it a wasteland. The wailing of mothers who have lost their children and the gut wrenching cries of hungry children would melt any heart.
Just imagine the magnitude of killing and destruction. Thirty thousand people out of about 2 million in Gaza have been killed so far. Just to put the magnitude of this tragedy in the proper perspective, killing 30,000 in Gaza would be similar in scope to killing more than 4 million people in the United States. Please take a moment to reflect on that horrific number.
Many American writers compared the murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 to killing 6,000 people in the U.S. But we have not heard from them comparing these numbers to those who were killed in Gaza. Most of us look at these numbers and yawn. The immense brutality of these numbers does not register on the minds of most Americans. Why? Have we lost our humanity?
Or do we think that the value of a Palestinian child is much less than an Israeli one?
Our world is full of double standards. But this humanitarian crisis should make us all think and cringe at the scope of this tragedy. We should allow our humanity to dictate how we look at the world outside our shores. People are people. And innocent people in Gaza should have the same protection as those in Israel. We as humans should always think of others as equal in value. God did not create two classes of people; those who have value and others with none.
The dilemma comes when we try to reconcile the right of Israel to defend itself and the out of proportion collective punishment of the whole Gaza strip. There must be an element of proportionality. We should not blind ourselves from the tragedy and the suffering of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
I am sure the horrific images of the brutal destruction and killing in Gaza make us uncomfortable to look at, but we MUST look at these images and cry at the loss of human values because of political persuasion. Our humanity should be stronger than our political persuasion.
If we lose our humanity, then what would remain in us?