Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no way it could have been acceptable to keep Gaza under IDF occupation.
I didn't approve of the way Sharon handled the matter...he should have coordinated with the PA.
As to Gaza, I don't approve of Hamas...it's just that I recognize that there was no way to get them out of power there. What would you have advised? Having the IDF overthrow Hamas in Gaza by force? Yes, that might have temporarily removed them, but they would then immediately have regained power, with increased support, because no one in Gaza would have backed any alternative regime imposed by Israel and Gazans would have rallied around Hamas.
I am against Gaza being under Hamas control...it's just that I recognize that nobody from outside could possibly do anything about it. It's comparable to my attitude about the Warsaw Pact states and the Soviet Union. I was against their dictatorial policies, worked as(at the time)a member of Amnesty to help prisoners of conscience there, denounced those places as a mockery of the notion of socialism-but I didn't support calls for confrontation, especiially military confrontation, with the "Soviet bloc"-because I realized that, without causing a global nuclear catastrophe from which nothing and no one could ever really have recovered, even if they did physically survive, there was no chance of those states being brought down from outside(by contrast, there was always a pretty good chance that Hitler could have been stopped, were it not for the fact that the European right and American capitalists were big champions of his cause right up 'til the late 1930's)and it wasn't worth the massive loss of human life that would have been involved to try and bring them down.
Also, I felt that the shrill, arrogant calls my country's leaders made for everyone to be involved in the "fight against the 'Communist threat'" were mainly a diversion...this diversion having two primary objectives:
1)To discredit the entire Left, even the vast majority of the left that, after 1956, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Soviet Union;
2)To provide cover for the dictatorial right-wing states the U.S. was allied with in the Cold War era(all of which implied that anyone who opposed them was "a Communist" or was in league with Communists(because, the twisted argument went, it was simply impossible that a starving campesino in El Salvador or a Black or Colored person in South Africa would ever rebel against the conditions they were subjected to without some conspirator from Moscow or Havana telling them to do so).
This is why the rhetoric I hear from your country's leaders is so familiar to me...and why I feel such great suspicions about it-my country's leaders INVENTED it.
That's not the same as WANTING them to be control. I also support those within Gaza that are working for democratic alternatives.