I absolutely agree Hamilton. And you did not write one word when Hamas killed children, only a post about why we shouldn't call it "terrorism." Even here you call it only "the Hamas attack." It doesn't even rate an adjective from you.
I don't think Israel should be killing Palestinian children. It would be great if I thought you believed the same about Israeli children. I'll miss your columns about organizing.
I will answer this once and not again: the Hamas attack was overwhelmingly considered to be and covered as an atrocity, condemned by every government and almost universally written about as an unpardonable attack in the media. There was very little mainstream disagreement about whether Hamas killing civilians was bad. The Israeli response, by contrast, is supported by most governments, in particular my own, and is still ongoing, and is growing, and is continuing to kill civilians, an order of magnitude greater in number. Therefore it seems to me more pressing to write about. There are many bad things that happen every day that people generally understand to be bad that I do not write essays about. If that's not enough for you, you do not have to read this site.
Yes, the mainstream media “universally condemned” the Hamas attacks but did you, yourself, condemn the Hamas attacks? Your analysis appropriately sounds the alarms, but what solution are you proposing? Or is this just another vacuous “somebody should do something” jeremiad?
What you miss, Mr. Nolan, is that your essay failed to acknowledge the almost unique depravity of, not merely Hamas' "attack" but of its slaughter of over 1,200 people in Israel, brutally, hideously, and gleefully, including a full complement of babies burned to death, teenagers serially raped, then shot, children killed in front of their parents, and vice versa. In so doing you engaged in a very much one-sided condemnation of Israel's response to Hamas' almost unbearable instigation. It's not enough to respond separately that "this was overwhelmingly condemned." Check out Harvard, Columbia and Stanford student and faculty statements, for example.
You likewise fail to acknowledge Hamas leaders' continued public promises that they intend to inflict October 7 on Israel "again, and again, and again" until all Jews in Israel and beyond are "annihilated," statements that at least have the virtue of consistency with the Hamas Charter. Or that Hamas demonstrably has located its rockets and command centers beneath and around hospitals, schools, amusement parks and residential complexes, creating an almost unsolvable conundrum for Israel.
It grieves me to see the loss of civilian lives in Gaza, especially of the children. On the evidence, it would appear to grieve Hamas far less, if at all.
You further failed to acknowledge the fact that in every war more civilians are killed than combatants (usually multiples or even logs more), that the rules of war (repellent though that term assuredly is) acknowledge this and allow for it as long as the targets are legitimately military. Speaking of which, as I am unfamiliar with most of your other work, did you speak out with similar compassion for the children when almost 400,000 people, many of them children. were murdered in Yemen? Or at least half a million in Syria? Or during the war between Iraq and Iran? All of these, by the way, were situations in which the deliberate use of the population as human shields was absent or far less deliberate or ubiquitous.
Perhaps your omissions in your current essay are not surprising, because had you acknowledged the above facts you might have found it necessary to propose alternate paths for Israel to take that would be effective in eliminating the manifest threat Hamas represents to the lives of its own children and others.
Unfortunately, no group’s children are special more deserving of special treatment than others, specially what with drones and missiles. (Not a defense of anyone or anything.)
As for a political response by we, the people, it’s the way as a rule but opposing GOP’s claiming Dems are cowardly pacifists, the mass media echoing GOP bullshit, and what Eisenhower (allegedly) wanted to call the military-industrial-congressional complex -- which has only gotten worse since.
Like an idiot, I’m hopeful of some sort of resolution of the Israel/Palestine issue, notwithstanding that kicking the can down the road for 75 years just makes the problem worse. And the current Israeli government has no interest and Palestine no longer has backers who can help working out a deal.
All just fucking awful -- and that’s an obscenely gross understatement.
It is true that neither in your post nor in your response to Rebecca, did you condemn the murder of Israeli children. You only write about what the MSM condemned.
You also do not consider that Hamas knew that the Israeli response to October 7th would be swift and brutal. And that many Palestinian children would die as a result. The order of events is significant. As is the predictability of the Israeli response to the events of October 7th.
Do you believe that Hamas was ignorant of what the Israeli response would be?
"The comment section of any news story about this issue inevitably descends into a back-and-forth volley of accusations about who did the bad thing first that caused them to be responsible for all the bad things that came after. The focus seems to be purely on assigning blame so that the slaughter can then proceed in good conscience. This particular style of debate, as thousands of people are dying, has started to make me sick to my stomach. Please don’t do that here."
It's almost as if Hamilton anticipated your bad faith arguement.
You're focused on dictating blame instead of the actual argument of what he wrote, which is, politics should be a system that seeks to prevent things like the slaughter of children and not be a means to perpetuate it.
Two wrongs do not make anything right,eh? And pointing out the numerous examples of mass murdering elsewhere in the Mideast is just really, “whataboutism,
Is it not? Both sides in this drama are claiming that either side must be totally exterminated to right the wrongs done.
"Politics is how we care for one another" was how a teacher I had defined it. I wish more people could see it that way instead of a way of choosing sides.
Oct 26, 2023·edited Oct 26, 2023Liked by Hamilton Nolan
“Children are dying."
Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”
Many thanks Hamilton. Clear and brave as usual. Some comments are very stupid and provocative, don't waste your time mate. There is not way to justify the killing of so many innocent people, supported by bloody and coward polititians. Buaj, it is disgusting
I actually consider the non-children to have a lot of value, too. It's a bit sad one must resort to pointing at the children to get them to stop dropping bombs on everybody else.
War is the failure of politics. It is not its extension. It is always brutal, cruel, unjust and lethal to combatants and civilians. Every war entails atrocity, but some exercise of restraint is possible. It can never be enough. Humans ought to have made war obsolete, but they have not. As long as vicious tyranny exists among men, so will war. There is no sugarcoating any of it. I have no solution.
The reason that we have to support one side or another is due to the vast polarization within our respective countries. My position has been and always will be that both sides need to stop the violence and decide what to do, so that both sides can co-exist in peace. So that no more children get killed in the future and no more extremist groups can use it as a recruiting tool or a crutch. It's not complicated. It's not confusing. It's extraordinarily simple.
History of Israel and Palestine is what got us to where we are now. How do we solve the future peaceful coexistence for everyone in the Middle East. Obviously, history is not the answer.
As much as I would like nothing more than the violence to end, and agree with the moral founding of your position, it's hard to imagine that Israel should lay down its arms in hopes that their civilians (and children) will not be targeted again, soon. It seems as though you are calling for another type of military response from Israel that only kills the bad guys, but sadly the bad guys are using Palestinian children (and hostages) as cover after having committed their atrocities. You would do better to call for Hamas to stop the killing of innocent Palestinians by surrendering--since they will kill more innocent Israeli people if they are allowed.
Pouring thousands of missiles and bombs onto Gaza, destroying homes and killing thousands of civilians, is not an appropriate or just response, in any world. None of this should be discussed as if Israel's choice is this or nothing.
So what exactly should Israel do to guarantee the security of its citizens and prevent another attack like this? It’s easy to criticise. Far harder to propose actually workable solutions. Israel is trying to target Hamas as a terrorist group. What is Israel supposed to do if they hide their fighters among the civilians population and I’m bunkers under hospitals?
Uh, not commit war crimes? Let’s start there, and let’s finish with “bbbut what else were they supposed to doooo” is not credible when you have a state with a powerful and highly advanced military and intelligence system. You’re telling me that Mossad does not know exactly where Hamas leadership is? That the military has no way to carry out targeted raids on command centers and the like?
I think the real answer is that Israel is run by a bloodthirsty dictator who knows that at least some of Hamas’s leaders don’t live in Gaza, and instead is taking this opportunity to raze the city to the ground and remove the people, maybe so he can get at the oil and gas reserves in the area.
Firstly, there is no oil under Gaza. Even when Israel occupied it no oil was being extracted.
Secondly, the population of Gaza is far from exterminated. If you dont believe me, look at the USA war in Vietnam. That is what genuinely not caring about civilians looks like.
Thirdly, targeted strikes when an evil terrorist group is using civilians as human shields unfortunately look just like this.
In general, fact checking yourself is better than fact checking others. It avoids these unpleasant situations.
Second: Just because the population hasn't been exterminated YET does not mean that Israel is not carrying out ethnic cleansing or genocide of the population. That's pretty much exactly what a Nazi sympathizer would have said about the Holocaust, so congratulations on being the vilest possible human being.
Third: "targeted strikes" is Israeli government propaganda. Here's the truth:
The Israeli government has hit multiple hospitals and killed thousands of children, dozens of journalists; hit aid center and ambulances. Killing journalists in particular ensures there is no one on the ground to report the atrocities being committed by the IDF.
LOL "fact checking" when you didn't provide one fact or link or source and it took you fourteen days to reply. The only unpleasant thing here is you. And wrong. I don't know what biases you are carrying around and I don't much care, but I really hope you recognize who you are carrying water for. Maybe another fourteen days will do it.
That is not true. Israel was killing people in Gaza before Hamas attack by denying them access to water and fuel. Israeli government did not demonstrate any concern for Palestinians before Hamas attack.
Where is the evidence? The story of what took place is not physically possible. This was all planned just as the talk of relocating Palestinians to a tent city in the desert all year long has long been planned. People are completely gullible it seems to not think through the details of this story and to just believe it was somehow remotely possible. The whole story makes no sense. Try explaining it in detail to someone and see how far you get before stopping yourself and getting puzzled looks.
I absolutely agree Hamilton. And you did not write one word when Hamas killed children, only a post about why we shouldn't call it "terrorism." Even here you call it only "the Hamas attack." It doesn't even rate an adjective from you.
I don't think Israel should be killing Palestinian children. It would be great if I thought you believed the same about Israeli children. I'll miss your columns about organizing.
I will answer this once and not again: the Hamas attack was overwhelmingly considered to be and covered as an atrocity, condemned by every government and almost universally written about as an unpardonable attack in the media. There was very little mainstream disagreement about whether Hamas killing civilians was bad. The Israeli response, by contrast, is supported by most governments, in particular my own, and is still ongoing, and is growing, and is continuing to kill civilians, an order of magnitude greater in number. Therefore it seems to me more pressing to write about. There are many bad things that happen every day that people generally understand to be bad that I do not write essays about. If that's not enough for you, you do not have to read this site.
Yes, the mainstream media “universally condemned” the Hamas attacks but did you, yourself, condemn the Hamas attacks? Your analysis appropriately sounds the alarms, but what solution are you proposing? Or is this just another vacuous “somebody should do something” jeremiad?
This is what they do. Everywhere. Thank you for standing up for CHILDREN everywhere, anywhere.
What you miss, Mr. Nolan, is that your essay failed to acknowledge the almost unique depravity of, not merely Hamas' "attack" but of its slaughter of over 1,200 people in Israel, brutally, hideously, and gleefully, including a full complement of babies burned to death, teenagers serially raped, then shot, children killed in front of their parents, and vice versa. In so doing you engaged in a very much one-sided condemnation of Israel's response to Hamas' almost unbearable instigation. It's not enough to respond separately that "this was overwhelmingly condemned." Check out Harvard, Columbia and Stanford student and faculty statements, for example.
You likewise fail to acknowledge Hamas leaders' continued public promises that they intend to inflict October 7 on Israel "again, and again, and again" until all Jews in Israel and beyond are "annihilated," statements that at least have the virtue of consistency with the Hamas Charter. Or that Hamas demonstrably has located its rockets and command centers beneath and around hospitals, schools, amusement parks and residential complexes, creating an almost unsolvable conundrum for Israel.
It grieves me to see the loss of civilian lives in Gaza, especially of the children. On the evidence, it would appear to grieve Hamas far less, if at all.
You further failed to acknowledge the fact that in every war more civilians are killed than combatants (usually multiples or even logs more), that the rules of war (repellent though that term assuredly is) acknowledge this and allow for it as long as the targets are legitimately military. Speaking of which, as I am unfamiliar with most of your other work, did you speak out with similar compassion for the children when almost 400,000 people, many of them children. were murdered in Yemen? Or at least half a million in Syria? Or during the war between Iraq and Iran? All of these, by the way, were situations in which the deliberate use of the population as human shields was absent or far less deliberate or ubiquitous.
Perhaps your omissions in your current essay are not surprising, because had you acknowledged the above facts you might have found it necessary to propose alternate paths for Israel to take that would be effective in eliminating the manifest threat Hamas represents to the lives of its own children and others.
Where is the evidence? Not one part of the “atrocities” reported makes a bit of sense. Not one.
Israeli children.
Yemeni children.
Ukrainian children.
Unfortunately, no group’s children are special more deserving of special treatment than others, specially what with drones and missiles. (Not a defense of anyone or anything.)
As for a political response by we, the people, it’s the way as a rule but opposing GOP’s claiming Dems are cowardly pacifists, the mass media echoing GOP bullshit, and what Eisenhower (allegedly) wanted to call the military-industrial-congressional complex -- which has only gotten worse since.
Like an idiot, I’m hopeful of some sort of resolution of the Israel/Palestine issue, notwithstanding that kicking the can down the road for 75 years just makes the problem worse. And the current Israeli government has no interest and Palestine no longer has backers who can help working out a deal.
All just fucking awful -- and that’s an obscenely gross understatement.
Like anyone needed your permission.
Crawl down out of your own ass.
It is true that neither in your post nor in your response to Rebecca, did you condemn the murder of Israeli children. You only write about what the MSM condemned.
You also do not consider that Hamas knew that the Israeli response to October 7th would be swift and brutal. And that many Palestinian children would die as a result. The order of events is significant. As is the predictability of the Israeli response to the events of October 7th.
Do you believe that Hamas was ignorant of what the Israeli response would be?
"The comment section of any news story about this issue inevitably descends into a back-and-forth volley of accusations about who did the bad thing first that caused them to be responsible for all the bad things that came after. The focus seems to be purely on assigning blame so that the slaughter can then proceed in good conscience. This particular style of debate, as thousands of people are dying, has started to make me sick to my stomach. Please don’t do that here."
It's almost as if Hamilton anticipated your bad faith arguement.
You're focused on dictating blame instead of the actual argument of what he wrote, which is, politics should be a system that seeks to prevent things like the slaughter of children and not be a means to perpetuate it.
Thank you. NAILED IT.
Two wrongs do not make anything right,eh? And pointing out the numerous examples of mass murdering elsewhere in the Mideast is just really, “whataboutism,
Is it not? Both sides in this drama are claiming that either side must be totally exterminated to right the wrongs done.
Plans were developed to anticipate this Hamas attack over a year ago by Nethaynu
and his cabinet . They knew what could take place, and laid back so they could justify to make a massive counterattack
That’s exactly what took place
How did you come to that conclusion from the article? He never insinuated that, let alone said it.
Mr Nolan answered nicely but the onion article encapsulates my thoughts when I read these types of comments not just here but other sites
https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657
If satire isn't deemed appropriate here is a link to defector (the site from which was first exposed to Mr. Nolan)
https://defector.com/bearing-witness-to-gaza-grief-shouldnt-feel-like-a-radical-act
I mostly agree, except no one’s perfect and people err.
Your reading comprehension is lacking.
"Politics is how we care for one another" was how a teacher I had defined it. I wish more people could see it that way instead of a way of choosing sides.
“Children are dying."
Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”
-Steven Erickson
Many thanks Hamilton. Clear and brave as usual. Some comments are very stupid and provocative, don't waste your time mate. There is not way to justify the killing of so many innocent people, supported by bloody and coward polititians. Buaj, it is disgusting
Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's pretty simple, really.
Damn,
Thank you for this.
I actually consider the non-children to have a lot of value, too. It's a bit sad one must resort to pointing at the children to get them to stop dropping bombs on everybody else.
“A bit sad” welcome to the human condition
THANK YOU
Thank you for this piece. I am so depressed about this. Hugs to you, because I'm a hugger. <tears>
Thank you for articulating this. It’s critical.
War is the failure of politics. It is not its extension. It is always brutal, cruel, unjust and lethal to combatants and civilians. Every war entails atrocity, but some exercise of restraint is possible. It can never be enough. Humans ought to have made war obsolete, but they have not. As long as vicious tyranny exists among men, so will war. There is no sugarcoating any of it. I have no solution.
The reason that we have to support one side or another is due to the vast polarization within our respective countries. My position has been and always will be that both sides need to stop the violence and decide what to do, so that both sides can co-exist in peace. So that no more children get killed in the future and no more extremist groups can use it as a recruiting tool or a crutch. It's not complicated. It's not confusing. It's extraordinarily simple.
History of Israel and Palestine is what got us to where we are now. How do we solve the future peaceful coexistence for everyone in the Middle East. Obviously, history is not the answer.
As much as I would like nothing more than the violence to end, and agree with the moral founding of your position, it's hard to imagine that Israel should lay down its arms in hopes that their civilians (and children) will not be targeted again, soon. It seems as though you are calling for another type of military response from Israel that only kills the bad guys, but sadly the bad guys are using Palestinian children (and hostages) as cover after having committed their atrocities. You would do better to call for Hamas to stop the killing of innocent Palestinians by surrendering--since they will kill more innocent Israeli people if they are allowed.
Pouring thousands of missiles and bombs onto Gaza, destroying homes and killing thousands of civilians, is not an appropriate or just response, in any world. None of this should be discussed as if Israel's choice is this or nothing.
THAT!!! For anyone to think otherwise is an extremely biased, broken soul.
So what exactly should Israel do to guarantee the security of its citizens and prevent another attack like this? It’s easy to criticise. Far harder to propose actually workable solutions. Israel is trying to target Hamas as a terrorist group. What is Israel supposed to do if they hide their fighters among the civilians population and I’m bunkers under hospitals?
Uh, not commit war crimes? Let’s start there, and let’s finish with “bbbut what else were they supposed to doooo” is not credible when you have a state with a powerful and highly advanced military and intelligence system. You’re telling me that Mossad does not know exactly where Hamas leadership is? That the military has no way to carry out targeted raids on command centers and the like?
I think the real answer is that Israel is run by a bloodthirsty dictator who knows that at least some of Hamas’s leaders don’t live in Gaza, and instead is taking this opportunity to raze the city to the ground and remove the people, maybe so he can get at the oil and gas reserves in the area.
Think it’s more logical to say that at least the US Hegemon can get to the oil and gas reserves Israel defends
Think that's bullshit, but thanks for playing, reply guy from three months later.
Firstly, there is no oil under Gaza. Even when Israel occupied it no oil was being extracted.
Secondly, the population of Gaza is far from exterminated. If you dont believe me, look at the USA war in Vietnam. That is what genuinely not caring about civilians looks like.
Thirdly, targeted strikes when an evil terrorist group is using civilians as human shields unfortunately look just like this.
In general, fact checking yourself is better than fact checking others. It avoids these unpleasant situations.
Firstly: you obviously haven't been reading the news:
https://unctad.org/news/unrealized-potential-palestinian-oil-and-gas-reserves
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-geopolitics-gaza-multibillion-dollar-gas-field
https://www.workers.org/2023/11/74864/
So: you're wrong.
Second: Just because the population hasn't been exterminated YET does not mean that Israel is not carrying out ethnic cleansing or genocide of the population. That's pretty much exactly what a Nazi sympathizer would have said about the Holocaust, so congratulations on being the vilest possible human being.
Third: "targeted strikes" is Israeli government propaganda. Here's the truth:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-nowhere-safe-in-gaza-unlawful-israeli-strikes-illustrate-callous-disregard-for-palestinian-lives/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/15/israel/palestine-unlawful-israeli-airstrikes-kill-civilians
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/21/u-s-has-sent-israel-data-on-aid-group-locations-to-try-to-prevent-strikes-00128336
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-war-jabalya-camp-strike-intl-hnk/index.html
The Israeli government has hit multiple hospitals and killed thousands of children, dozens of journalists; hit aid center and ambulances. Killing journalists in particular ensures there is no one on the ground to report the atrocities being committed by the IDF.
LOL "fact checking" when you didn't provide one fact or link or source and it took you fourteen days to reply. The only unpleasant thing here is you. And wrong. I don't know what biases you are carrying around and I don't much care, but I really hope you recognize who you are carrying water for. Maybe another fourteen days will do it.
But for the barbaric sneak attack on Israel by Hamas, there would be ZERO Gaza deaths.
That is not true. Israel was killing people in Gaza before Hamas attack by denying them access to water and fuel. Israeli government did not demonstrate any concern for Palestinians before Hamas attack.
Boy, that just demonstrates a complete ignorance the history of the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli government.
Where is the evidence? The story of what took place is not physically possible. This was all planned just as the talk of relocating Palestinians to a tent city in the desert all year long has long been planned. People are completely gullible it seems to not think through the details of this story and to just believe it was somehow remotely possible. The whole story makes no sense. Try explaining it in detail to someone and see how far you get before stopping yourself and getting puzzled looks.
But for the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people there would be no such organization.
“But,” is absolutely phukin lame at this present juncture.
https://www.workersinpalestine.org/the-calls-languages/english?emci=b3dee72a-787d-ee11-b004-00224832e1ba&emdi=e0df8e5a-2a7e-ee11-8925-00224832e811&ceid=20296453
Also encourage all other associations and
parties to vigorously boycott all goods and
energy products to Israel, and broadcast to the world to join you in this.. We need to be involved and relentless!!!
Hard hitting bullseye!