Pat Stuart

Revulsion. Outside the United States and Western Europe, the world has largely turned away in revulsion from the Israeli response to the Hamas attack in early October and from us, its American patron. That would be bad enough if we — American taxpayers — weren’t paying for the massive bombs that kill indiscriminately, bombs that stamp “Made in America” on what has been happening in Gaza. Our government calls it war. Others use words like mass extermination and genocide.

Whatever the label and no matter what it costs us, will the bombing of Gaza succeed in giving the Israelis what they say is their goal: security? Highly unlikely.

And it may just be the beginning. The Israeli government has vowed to kill everyone associated with Hamas. Who knows how many that might be? Perhaps, though, the better question is: Who knows how many that will come to be?

One thing we know for sure about human nature — the more who are killed, the more there will be who will want and will seek revenge. In short, Israel can bomb Gaza to absolutely nothing but rubble, which it is well on its way to do. It can reduce Gaza’s 2 million people to what? A couple hundred thousand? Ten thousand? One thousand? But ... no matter how few are left, it won’t be long until the survivors’ children and grandchildren will be grown and the cycle will repeat.

Just as it has, over and over, since 1948. Generation after generation of Palestinians have struggled for a homeland free of Israeli rule. This makes them insurgents — i.e., a political and military movement with the stated aim of overthrowing its occupiers. Somehow, though, we tend to overlook the inevitable dynamics of an insurgency when we’re talking about Hamas. 

Our own origins are in an insurgency, so you’d think we’d remember and act on what we know: that killing to defeat insurgents simply grows their numbers. The pattern has repeated so many times, it’s almost an axiom. Thus, I wonder, what makes anyone think this current iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end with another outcome?  

It can take a long time and sometimes does, but history shows us that the insurgents, when completely embedded in the population and, particularly, when driven by religion, win. The official third stage of an insurgency is just that: a win for the insurgents.

What does “a win” look like? Palestinians want their own land and self-government. Israel wants security. The two-state solution has always appeared the only possible way to reach these aspirations, but every attempt has failed and will keep on failing barring only one faint possibility — overwhelming U.S. pressure on Israel to do what it never has and give the Palestinians back enough land and resources for a viable state with the freedom to choose their own government and exercise full sovereignty.

Without that, the cycle will repeat while the annual drain on our pocketbooks will continue. Hundreds of billions of American tax dollars — your dollars and my dollars — have been given to Israel since 1948, not to mention billions more in direct material aid and further billions in munitions. 

One partial result of our largess: Israel is among the richest nations in the world, but no safer.

Another: “Made in America” is stamped all over the Israeli bombing campaign, leaving the U.S. (as one White House official recently said) “taking on water,” internationally.

As for us, the American taxpayer, we will see our nation go further in debt and our tax money fly to Tel Aviv now and in the future. 

Only if Washington develops a backbone and goes all-in on a two-state solution will this dynamic change. Is that likely? I’d say not given that our government’s policy, whether Republican or Democrat, has been to support Israel no matter how wrong and self-defeating Israeli policies are. The bottom line: We and our children will keep paying and paying while the Israeli economy flourishes and Palestinians suffer.