Monday, October 9, 2023

The Hamas War

I never thought that a group of terror commandos could actually launch a full-scale land, sea and air attack on a country, but that's exactly what Hamas did to Israel over the weekend.  The TV news networks covered the war - which Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu (below) made an official declaration of against Hamas,  something I never thought was possible, as Hamas isn't a country - over the weekend at the expense of everything else.

I know what Netanyahu is going to do - frame opposition to his polices as tantamount to opposition to the war, as if to say that is you are either with him or you're with Hamas.  That way, he can continue to pursue his judicial "reform" agenda to consolidate his power.  Except that he spent so much time on that endeavor that he missed warning signals that an attack on Hamas was probably.  This war shouldn't strengthen Netanyahu.  Rather, it should weaken him. 

Of course, it will strengthen him.  In 2004, the revelation of a memo showing that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack inside the United States before 9/11 was a blow to George Walker Bush's reputation as he was going into a re-election campaign, but did it finish his Presidency?

Why don't you ask President Kerry that? 😠

On a more personal note, I have a lot of friends expressing support for Israel.  But I also have a few friends expressing support for the Palestinians and Hamas, saying that Israel is getting its just deserts for 75 years of oppressing the Palestinian people.  Just as Al Franken once said that his father had believed Jews should support civil rights because of the Holocaust, I, as an Irish Catholic, had long supported the Palestinian cause because of the Troubles in Ulster.  But this is different.  The Irish Republican Army at its worst never perpetrated anything against the British as horrific as what Hamas has just done in Israel.

No comments: