Adolf Hitler was famously voted into power and then appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. There would not be another German election for more than a dozen years. We all know how this went: Germany started a war in 1939 which the Allies eventually won, killing about 3% of Germany's civilian population in the process.
Hamas was famously voted into power and then took control of Gaza in 2007. There would not be another election in Gaza for more dozen years. Once again, we all know how this went: Hamas started a war two months ago which Israel is in the process of winning, so far killing about 0.5% of Gaza's civilian population in the process.
But wait. Am I really comparing Hamas to Nazi Germany? Yes, I pretty much am. Their leaders have given repeated public interviews in which they clearly state their intentions: They will continue attacking Israel forever; they are proud to be martyrs; and they won't stop until Israel is destroyed. Unlike Nazi Germany, Hamas has nowhere near the power to carry out their version of Jewish genocide, but their ambitions are about the same.
Given this, is it surprising that after Hamas's ruthless attack on October 7 Israel will stop at nothing short of their complete destruction, just as we once stopped at nothing short of the complete destruction of Nazi power? It shouldn't be.
That said, there's a big difference between World War II and the Israel-Hamas war. We were not historically bitter enemies with Germany, and thanks to our obsession with Soviet power in Europe we quickly concluded real peace after our victory. Just the opposite is the case in the Middle East. Israel may "win" their war, but only at the cost of an ongoing slaughter that will generate even greater hatred among Palestinians and make genuine peace even less likely than it is now.
As I've said before, I envy people who have total certainty in their views of Israel and Gaza. I have nothing close. Israel has endured decades of various Arab coalitions trying to destroy them, and it's hard to understand how anyone can blame them for their deep and abiding desire for self defense and retaliation. At the same time, their treatment of Palestinians over the past couple of decades has been so gratuitously revolting that it's hard to understand how anyone can blame them for cheering on even a grotesque terrorist group like Hamas.
Both sides have an endless and frequently legitimate list of grievances. How can anyone not see that? And how do you get past it? Both sides really and truly want to destroy the other at this point. It's not a facade or false consciousness or anything like that. It's how they really feel.
Even in theory, is there any answer?
Kevin: "Adolf Hitler was famously voted into power and then appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. "
Hitler won some seats by voting, and intimidation (google 'brownshirts'). The powers that be organized a coalition which he'd lead.
Three percent of Germany's population died over *six years* of war. And many of those deaths were the result of war crimes on the Allied side, most of which were militarily unnecessary. Mostly the Soviets, who engaged in full-bore ethnic cleansing at the end of the war, but there was saturation bombing from the Western side too.
And Germany didn't just do a single raid, it did full-scale invasions of multiple countries and conquered most of continental Europe. And carried out a genocide. Not just threatened to, actually did it.
At the rate we're going, Gaza will have lost that many in six *months*. All in punishment for a single raid that killed 1,200 people.
I saw this on the Weekly Sift. Appropriate here:
"...the Gaza War validates a liberal rather than conservative view of how to maintain peace. In its simplest form, the conservative idea is peace-through-strength: If we’re strong enough and tough enough, no one will attack us because they’ll know they will suffer more than we will. The liberal vision is peace-through-justice: If everyone is getting a square deal, they won’t want to risk it by going to war."
https://weeklysift.com/