Gazing at Gaza from New Hampshire

 

Trying to make sense of the horrific events in Gaza from my hamlet in New Hampshire, one can only admit, we haven't a clue. 

Or, perhaps, all we have are clues, but no real clarity.

On the one hand, the rampaging Hamas twenty something men, beheading families, raping, stabbing, shooting, burning can be seen in only one way: Nothing can justify that.

Gaza 2023

On the other hand, these men did not erupt simply because they are monsters. Even monsters arise from some nest.

In white bred New Hampshire, where men wear plaid shirts, blue jeans held up with belts and suspenders, trying to fathom what the complaint is become surreal. We can only imagine.

Is Gaza simply another 9/11, with fanatic men acting from some generalized frenzy of inchoate resentment and loathing, men who would be unable to actually articulate their complaint beyond, "We are occupied! We are oppressed! We live in an apartheid land!"?

Warsaw 1939

Or is Gaza a sort of Warsaw ghetto, where conditions are unlivable, with incomprehensible poverty and destitution, and the destruction is triggered by the overwhelmingly powerful oppressors?

Or is Gaza like the inner cities of the United States in 1968, which exploded in flame, looting, shooting, incomprehensible, random destruction?

All we can tell, from the shire on the Seacoast is someone had a cause, but whatever that cause, they unleashed such random, generalized and untargeted horror it is almost impossible to sympathize with them.

Warsaw Ghetto

Then again, Goebbels and Hitler claimed the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto were violent, dangerous vermin who had to be ruthlessly crushed, and the Nazis wanted everyone to see the Jews in that ghetto as deserving of their fate and an example had to be made of them.

But, that's not the way others saw the people who lived in the ghetto, at whom the Nazis were aiming their wrath:

“We continued in the direction of the city center, but travelled only a few meters, because of the intense fighting…A never ending column of miserable people shuffled by. It was the most shocking site. Women, children, old people. Deadly tired faces without a shadow of hope, eyes swollen from smoke and tears, faces covered with shoot, a picture of despair and doubt. Policemen with machine guns walked beside them.”

Listening to the Israelis today, with the words of "we will crush and destroy these Hamas animals, so they can never arise again," does sound familiar--as if you can exterminate a people, erase them, rub them out.

Well, we did come close to doing that at Wounded Knee, so maybe it's possible.

Nowhere can we find what we really want to know: What is it like for the Palestinians in Gaza and in the rest of Israel?

One professor noted that the GDP per individual in Gaza is $1,000 a year where it is $56,000 for an Israeli. Does that mean this is the average yearly income? He said the Palestinian, making 1/56 of what the Israeli makes has to pay the same prices for goods in Gaza.

What restrictions does the Palestinian have in Gaza? Is it like the Warsaw Jew in his Ghetto, unable to cross out of the ghetto only a few hours a day and that with a special pass? Or can he come and go freely, earn a living anywhere in Israel?

What is life like for the people who Hamas says it speaks for? What does it mean to say they are "occupied?"

We can watch Netflix TV shows set in Palestine and Israel, and get some sense of the issues, but we are really in the dark without real objective information.

All we can know for sure, from New Hampshire, is we have no clue what the real issues are in Gaza.