Way back when, during the Vietnam War, there were areas designated as “free fire zones.” Those were pieces of land that the U.S. military described to the locals, via air-dropped fliers in Vietnamese language, as subject to automatic weapon or artillery fire without asking questions. In the old Wild West parlance, “shoot first and ask questions later,” only in this case no questions were asked. The purpose was to clear an area of Viet Cong, the communist guerrillas that were the focus of U.S. military combat. The problem was that they blended in, indistinguishably, with the local population. Much the same as Hamas militants/terrorists do with the civilian population in the Gaza strip. Much like the situation with the civilians in Vietnam, the locals in Gaza have difficulty moving anywhere else. Even when they take shelter in UN refugee facilities, they still are attacked. I am not unsympathetic to the Israeli predicament; with Hamas sending rockets indiscriminately into Israel, the Israelis have a reason to respond. Unfortunately, as in Vietnam, the cure may prove worse than the disease–”we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Violence begets violence. The us versus them thought process dehumanizes those with whom we are in conflict. When we feel justified in responding with violence, to those we believe (with some justification) hate or disrespect us, we soon conclude that we must win at all costs. We will kill them before they kill us. We will stop only when they are all dead or in complete surrender. But then, inevitably, the cycle begins anew. The resentment among the losers boils up into terrorist activities. The simple answer is: STOP. Stop and realize that those others are fellow human beings. Stop and engage in dialogue. Simple, yes; easy, NO! But in Gaza as in every other area of the world where people fight over land, religion, money, power, self-determination, ethnicity or any other rationalization, it comes down to this. There is no point in debating relative virtues or who has committed more evil or suffered more harm; that only prolongs the suffering of all.
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