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hamas and the law of life
THE EMBEDDED


by
ROBERT J. LEWIS

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Robert J. Lewis has been editing  Arts & Opinion since 2002.  This article originally appeared in New English Review.

War does not determine who is right,
only who is left.
Bertrand Russell

Ten soldiers wisely led
will beat a hundred without a head.
Euripides

People all over the world are railing against the loss of innocent lives in Gaza because they don’t grant Israel the right to bomb residential buildings where Hamas fighters are embedded. This raises the question of whether there should be sanctuary or safe haven in times of war?

The long and the short answer must be categorically NO because Hamas, or any disgruntled faction, militia or nation could wage war and then retreat to a safe haven with impunity. In most wars, hospitals and places of worship have served as safe havens provided they exercise neutrality, refusing to accept neither combatants nor weaponry in their spaces. So when Hamas embeds itself with the local population, it knows that it is asking of it, without explicit consent, to risk the ultimate sacrifice.

In dealing with the embedded, Israel has four options. (1) With respect to sparing the lives of women and children and non-combatants, it can grant Hamas safe haven and either fail in its mission, or resign itself to being in a permanent state of war. (2) It can lay siege to the residential building, mosque or hospital and eventually flush out the adversary, a dangerous and costly proposition -- in terms of time and resources -- in an hostile environment. As far as I know this has not been tried. (3) In respect of world opinion, it can send in and purposefully sacrifice its soldiers in lethal urban, door to door combat. (4) And finally, with the goal of minimizing casualties, it can explode a verified enemy target, neutralizing both the embedded enemy and civilians, and suffer the consequences of hostile world opinion.

From the Hamas perspective, it has to hunker down somewhere, and it can’t be somewhere easily identified as a military target, so it would seem that it has little choice but to embed itself with the local population. Since there has been no widespread protest from the Gazan people demanding that Hamas vacate their dwellings or surrender, we must conclude that in general the locals aren’t as disturbed as world opinion on the sacrifice they are being asked to make, just as Hamas is self-evidently OK with it, otherwise it would surrender, and the slaughter, or in media-speak, the genocide, would immediately end.

As it concerns the tragic loss of life of non-combatants (children, mothers, the elderly and infirm), who should bear the brunt of the blame in light of Hamas's steadfast refusal to surrender? Which means Hamas is winning the all important messaging war because the world is blaming Israel for the murder of innocents.

Which isn’t to say that on a daily basis there aren’t outraged Palestinian voices cursing Hamas for the destruction it has wrought; but in the absence of a unified front calling for Hamas to surrender, one is forced to conclude that the conditions in Gaza before the war were such that despite the suffering, the tragic loss of life and devastation of infrastructure (hospitals, schools, mosques) the principals in the gruesome conflict would rather continue fighting than capitulate, that no sacrifice is too great for the cause of freedom and self-determination.

Nonetheless, one must wonder: If prior to the war Hamas enjoyed the support of 75% of the population but only 25% supported military intervention, why did it turned a deaf ear to the general will of the people it was elected to serve and instead opted to do Iran’s bidding?

* * * * * * * *

Without exception, every people in the world, defined by language, culture and religion, feel compelled to acquire a territory in order to fulfill their destiny. What we learn from history is that some people get their territory and others don’t – and whether that is fair or not is beside the point.

In realpolitik, every land belongs to the occupier until someone takes it way. That’s the law of life, or as Mark Twain observed, “There is not an acre of land on the globe that’s in possession of its rightful owner.”

 

also by Robert J. Lewis:

ORIGINAL ALT-CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR GUITAR

The Mask for the Task
The Automobile as Extension of Home

The Outlaw

Exploring the Universe

How Free Are We?
Monadville
Meditation on Anger
To Birth a New Religion
Entertainment Addiction
Descent into Language Barbarism
Who Owns the Moon?
Why Do We Daydream
Argument & Disagreement
Smashing the God Particle
The Decline of Reading
In Praise of Useless Activities
When Sex Became Dirty
Blood Meridian: (McCarthy): An Appreciation
Trump & Authencity
Language, Aim & Fire
One Hand Clapping: The Zen Koan Hoax
Human Nature: King of the Hill
The Trouble with Darwin
The Life & Death of Anthony Bourdain
Denying Identity and Natural Law
The Cares versus the Care-nots
Elon Musk: Brilliant but Wrong
As the Corporation Feasts, the Earth Festers
Flirting & Consequences
Breaking Bonds
Oscar Wilde and the Birth of Cool
The Big
Deconstructing Skin Colour
To Party - Parting Ways with Consciousness
Comedy - Constant Craving
Choosing Gender
Becoming Our Opposites
Broken Feather's Last Stand
Abstract Art or Artifice II
Old People
Beware the Cherry-Picker
Once Were Animal
Islam is Smarter Than the West
Islam Divided by Two
Pedophiling Innocence
Grappling with Revenge
Hit Me With That Music
The Sinking of the Friendship
Om: The Great Escape
Actor on a Hot Tin Roof
Being & Self-Consciousness
Giacometti: A Line in the Wilderness
The Jazz Solo
Chat Rooms & Infidels
Music Fatigue
Understanding Rape
Have Idea Will Travel
Bikini Jihad
The Reader Feedback Manifesto
Caste the First Stone
Let's Get Cultured
Being & Baggage
Robert Mapplethorpe
1-800-Philosophy
The Eclectic Switch
Philosophical Time
What is Beauty?
In Defense of Heidegger
Hijackers, Hookers and Paradise Now
Death Wish 7 Billion
My Gypsy Wife Tonight
On the Origins of Love & Hate
Divine Right and the Unrevolted Masses
Cycle Hype or Genotype
The Genocide Gene

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arts & Opinion, a bi-monthly, is archived in the Library and Archives Canada.
ISSN 1718-2034

 

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