The Israel-Hamas War

Fog of War 1 - Watercolor

I find it impossible to focus on Star Wars shows while the war in Gaza rages on. Although, I have found the apocalyptic images coming out of Gaza to be morbidly inspiring; see watercolor above.

So, at the risk of alienating some of my blog’s 14 readers, the aforementioned war is what I’m going to talk about. Ideas will be bold titled so you can skip around as needed. This is a sci-fi fantasy blog, so I will attempt to tie reality back to fantasy at some point.

To start with the end in mind: how blessed are we to live in a world where we can let our imaginations run wild, and create a whole industry based on nurturing said imaginations, wherein we create alternative universes that we can retreat to when reality is too challenging. I hope we can get back to joyfully exploring those worlds. Sometimes, however, reality is too impossible for us to ignore.

Never Forget: Saturday, October 7 marked the bloodiest day for Jews in the post-war era. The most Jews dead in a single day since the holocaust. The familiar refrain regarding the holocaust is “never forget.” This became the mantra of 9-11 as well. Israel is now referring to the Hamas attack as “Israel’s 9-11.” An apt comparison. The idea of ‘never forgetting’ is, in fact, a 3000+ year old, Biblical command from God. It is in reference to the nation of Amalek attacking the fledging nation of Israel as they left Egypt. Then, as now, the enemy targeted the children, the elderly, the sick, and the weak and the back of this long caravan. There was no political or military goal. Amalek’s goal was simply to inflict pain and fear.

In the waning days of World War II, the Nazis knew that there was no path victory, unless maybe they freed some Jews in exchange for resources, and possibly transferred resources away from the concentration camps and towards the front lines. In those cases, they might have had a chance at victory, but they chose otherwise; as murdering the Jews was more important than winning a war and saving the lives of their own civilians. And this ideology is the nature of pure evil.

Pure Evil: is when the enemy hates you more than they love themselves. They are gladly willing to die as long as they can inflict as much pain upon you as possible. They will gladly send their own sons to their death, If it means they have a chance of defiling your daughters. They will gladly turn their daughters into whores, if it means they have a chance to make your sons descend into spiritual debauchery.

Hamas knew full well that their attack would bring the retaliation of unprecedented death and suffering upon their own people, yet they proceeded joyfully with the slaughter. You know the details, so I will spare you their mention in this post, but I find it scary and eye-opening to see how many people are at best finding it hard to unconditionally condemn the Hamas slaughter, and who are at median celebrating it as a legitimate military-political operation.

So, Never Forget isn’t about the tragedies that have plagued the Jews, (and the human race for that matter,) throughout the millennia. Never Forget means, quite simply, never forget that there is pure evil in this world. Never try to reason with evil. Never try to negotiate with evil. Never make excuses or apologies for evil. Never try to intellectualize evil away. Because, you have to face evil. You have to defeat evil. And you have to stand united to do so.  Certainly, this is not a mantra that is exclusive to the Jews. But sadly, it took 1,200+ Jews to give their lives for us to see that united we must stand, or we will face utter annihilation.

Perhaps twelve-hundred of our brothers and sisters gave their lives, so twelve-million of us didn’t have to.

The Horrors of War: What has transpired and will continue to transpire in the coming months in Gaza will be hard to watch. Hamas’ element of surprise (of exploiting a catastrophic intelligence failure that is nearly as infuriating as the slaughter itself) has long since expired. The carnage has shifted to Gaza. After showing Israel what an (humiliatingly underestimated) inhuman, and lethal threat they are, Hamas knows that its end is very near; this war is Hamas’ ‘Battle of the Bulge.’ Israel cannot and will not allow Hamas to survive this war as anything more than an idea. Ultimately, in order to eliminate such a malignant cancer from the flesh of Gaza, it will take some very invasive, and very prolonged procedures. And, during those procedures a great deal of the healthy tissue will be destroyed along with the cancer.

The Propaganda of Death, Israel’s Lose-Lose and the Gazan Civilians’ lose-lose: Death is what the Iranian regime wants. Jewish deaths are a bonus for them. What the Mullahs really need are Gazans suffering unimaginably, and they want the images shown on TV. This war, sadly, will provide more than an ample supply of those images.

1,200 Israeli civilian deaths are juxtaposed against 20,000 Gazan deaths (many of whom are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers of course, but dead nonetheless) The stories of scores of Jewish babies beheaded by Hamas have been replaced with images of hundreds if not thousands of dead Gazan children. Israel will not stray from the course, because as long as Hamas is holding Israeli hostages, Israel has a humanitarian crisis of their own. If the death toll rises dramatically, the US may withdraw its support. If the US withdraws, in will swoop Hezbollah and their 150,000 precision guided, long range missiles. The Israeli missile defense systems can’t stop them all at once; only a nuclear strike can do that.

When the fallout settles, the Mullahs will be overjoyed. Sure, their proxy militias will be vaporized along with millions of civilians, but they will have served their purpose by then.

So, what’s the answer? How do we avoid a nuclear holocaust? Well, Israel needs full support from start to finish. The sacrifice of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans will prevent the deaths of tens of millions of innocent global citizens in the long run. This evil is so deeply rooted that it has to be destroyed, no matter what the cost. We see who Hamas is. They are soulless creatures whose only purpose is to inflict pain and fear. We know who the Iranian regime is; they are the manufacturer of said soulless creatures. There is no other choice. Hamas has to be destroyed and eventually Iran has to be stopped.

What about the Gazan children? Indeed, their death has been and will continue to be horrific. I also find it hurtful to hear people so quickly deflect the conversation to Hamas being at fault. Yes, of course Hamas is to blame. But please don’t be dismissive; every child who dies in war is a tragedy.

A metaphor: If someone purposefully throws their own child under your car while you’re driving, they are certainly the murderer, but it was your car that killed the child. And even though it’s not your fault, you will carry the pain of that death for the rest of your life. This is the sad reality that every Israeli soldier who enters Gaza must endure. And it’s hard to even imagine, that the soulless creature who threw their own child at your car, was once a twinkly eyed, innocent child himself, although probably not for long.

So, the unspoken tragedies in this war are the young Gazan men and women who were once innocent children. They did not ask to grow up in Hamas occupied Gaza. They did not ask to be born under an oppressive regime. They did not ask to be brainwashed and inundated with toxic trauma from the time they were a few years old. They did not ask to learn to kill Jews from a young age, instead of learning to sing and count and play with plushies. They did not ask to be indoctrinated with rage and tortured into soulless beasts. They did not ask to carry unimaginable pain, and a thirst for blood that can only be slaked by killing as many infidels as possible until their own death brings them permanent relief. They did not ask for any of this. The innocent 2-year-old children they once were, did not ask to be tragically irredeemable shock troopers in a death cult. They didn’t ask for a future where we have no choice but to destroy every last one of them.

So, once we have killed them all, we must avenge them. We must destroy their creator and tormentor. We must defeat Iran.

Iran: Is the Iranian regime truly evil, or are they manufacturing evil to achieve their political goals? I would posit the former as they are glad to sacrifice their own in order to harm others. They know Hamas will cease to exist in any kind of potent form after this war, and they know thousands of Gazans will die horrible deaths. Apparently, to the Mullahs, Hamas is a rounded, worn-out screwdriver that can’t turn screws anymore, but can still be used to smash a hard object until it itself becomes smashed on said hard object. Hopefully, think the Mullahs, said hard object will be chipped away enough, so that one of its sharper tools can finish the job.

It’s a big gamble, because if the Israeli flag flies over Gaza once again, and the Gazan people start to experience freedom and prosperity under Israeli rule, how much credibility loss and humiliation would the Iranian regime suffer? Lots and lots. And that’s how you defeat Iran. Not through military might per se, but through wide scale failure and public humiliation.

The world sees who the Iranian regime truly is now. Some people and nations will engage in dismissive, willful ignorance. Some will even applaud Iran and Hamas. But…there they are. They can’t crawl back under their rocks and act like they aren’t the vile Jew-hating low-lives we all see them to be.

Back to Iran. Iran is a regime that applauds the atrocities of October 7th. They are a regime that will gladly sacrifice 2 million Gazans if it isolates Israel and cements Iranian power in the region. No one will be safe if Iran gains nuclear weapons. They must be defeated, and the defeat must start by humiliating their lapdog called Hamas.

Israel and the Palestinian People: Even the most cynical, Islamophobe in the world would have to concede that, (short of pulling a Jaegerist, Eldian eugenics program (There you go, Sci-Fi-Fantasy tie in.)) 5 million Palestinians aren’t just going to go away, and it’s not sustainable to live in a constant state of war. You have to find a way to make peace.

Now, no one, NOT ONE country in the region has ever truly helped the Palestinians with anything significant beyond weapons and incitement. No Arab nation has ever given them the means and the reason to be happy. Jordan rejected them, Egypt rejects them as we speak. They are no more than expendable tools to the Arab world. No one has ever welcomed them, cared for them, or stood up for them. Maybe the one country in the world who does what no one else would do can be Israel.

The process, of course, starts with Israel normalizing relations with as many of its Arab neighbors as possible, and this is of course, is what Iran wants to derail at all costs.

Circling back: What does any of this have to do with my ‘sci-fi fantasy blog heavy with Star Wars content.’ Of course, there are parallels between the Jedi Inquisition and the attempts of genocide against the Jews that have happened over the millennia. Of course, there is the fact that most Star Wars properties display clear delineations between good and evil. But is there a practical, philosophical, and/or spiritual connection with the real-life horrors that are unfolding before us and our fantasy playgrounds? Yes, I think so.

For anyone closely affected by pure evil, by evil that threatens their loved ones, their people, their tribe, their culture- the evil has to be confronted without fear. It has to be defeated, but opportunities have to be created in the vacuum left by said evil, lest another evil step in and take its place. You have to destroy the evil, but you have to build something good in its place. Life, business opportunities, spiritual opportunities, art, music, sport.

You have to build purpose for people. You have to build something beautiful in Gaza.

So, What about peace? I imagine living in Gaza, under Hamas rule, would make living in Orwell’s ‘Air-Strip-One’ under ‘Big Brother’s’ rule feel like paradise. I have confidence that once Hamas is destroyed, many of the 75% of Gazan civilians who claimed to have supported October 7, will be glad to be out from under Hamas’ yoke. The ones who wish to keep fighting will have to be dealt with. Israel must, when Gaza is completely cleansed of terrorist operatives, begin the slow and arduous task of being partners in peace with the Palestinian people, starting with Gaza.

You might say that isn’t possible, and you might be right. Certainly, there will be millions against the idea, and rightfully so. I hold Hamas and their Mullah masters 100% responsible for every death in Gaza, but (aside from rockets that misfire and never make it out of Gaza) it will still have been IAF bombs that destroyed the place. That will take the Gazans a long time to get over. In the best-case scenario, it would take multiple generations of everything going right before the hatred starts to subside and a legitimate peace and coexistence process can even begin. Then it would take an equal amount of time before peace can actually be achieved. I believe that means approximately 100 years.

Best case scenario, 100 years if everything goes right, Palestinians and Israelis living side-by-side, working together, sharing land, sharing peace, sharing prosperity, and sharing happiness. You might laugh at the notion, and again, rightfully so. Peace between Israel and Palestinians is indeed a 100% rainbow-shitting unicorn fantasy. Yes. Yes, it is. But as someone who has recently finished their first manuscript, sent it off to agents and publishers, and even gotten positive feedback (!) I can tell you, fantasy is doable. It’s really hard work and it takes a really long time, but if you persist, If you really work your ass off and don’t give up, fantasy can become reality. Israelis and Palestinians can coexist.