Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Even he of the legendary wisdom will find it hard to deal with what is currently happening in the ancient land of his people. Indeed, there are many who would even contest that the land of Israel can properly be called theirs.
On October 7th of this year, soldiers of Hamas struck Israel and killed a thousand and more of its people, and took hostage hundreds of others. It was quite a surprise because one would have thought that the lessons of the Yom Kippur War would have never been lost to Israel’s defense forces and yet there it was. Naturally, condemnation from all over the world came swiftly and thickly soon after but there were also those that appeared to justify the attack saying that one cannot discount the years that the Palestinian people suffered under modern-day Israel. So, it seems people are blaming everything on, first, Israel, and, second, the British (and the UN) who proposed the establishment of the nation of Israel. The sentiment it seems that after the horrors visited upon them by Nazi Germany, they deserved a place to call their home. The problem of course was that there were non-Israelites in the place they chose. There were Jews too although they didn’t call themselves Israelites then. The land was then called Palestine but it was not always so, and there have been many who once ruled over the lands. One can go back beyond the British to the Ottomans, the Greeks, even the old Israelites. Back to the land of Canaanites. Tell me, can anyone really say whose land it is? Recent DNA studies even appear to show that modern Israelites and Arabs share the same DNA: Canaanite DNA. They are all of that land.
I don’t think it is smart to argue that the state of Israel only existed in the 1940s when Britain and the UN decided to allow the creation of the Israeli state in then Palestine. I mean, I don’t think it is possible for one to argue for example that the city of Stalingrad or Leningrad in Russia did not exist at one time just because they are now called something else. Said in another way, you can’t say St. Petersburg didn’t exist until the 1990s when Leningrad (previously, Petrograd) was renamed St. Petersburg. The fact is that it used to be known as St. Petersburg when Tsar Peter the Great established it in 1703 (in honor of St. Peter the Apostle). The fact that it was renamed Leningrad for a period of time does not mean that St. Petersburg did not exist before it got its name back; and thanks to the Israel stelae (a.k.a. the Merneptah Stele), it appears that there was in fact a kingdom called Israel that was besieged and defeated by a pharaoh in that same place. However, his boast that “its seed is no more” may have been, as in a lot of pharaonic boasts, an exaggeration.
Not long after the attack by Hamas, Israel began its assault in Gaza from land, air and sea. Thousands died, many of them women and children. Much more than the thousand killed or taken by Hamas. Now, there are those who condemn this excess. They speak of proportionality and humanitarian considerations but when it comes to retribution, should Israel limit itself to killing the same number of people Hamas killed? Or is it a 1:10, or some other ratio? Basically, the rules of war seek to minimize civilian casualties. Israel claims that Hamas is using civilians (including the hostages) as human shields and using facilities such as schools and hospitals as staging posts for launching rockets into Israel but it also claims that it goes further than what the rules of war require to insure that they minimize civilian casualties to the point that if there is a danger that civilians may be harmed if they strike a target, it will withhold the strike. Somehow, the rules of engagement got rewritten after the Hamas strike even if Israel is still making the same claim. So, if it is not proper to claim that the Hamas strike was understandable because of the oppression the Palestinian people has allegedly endured, then it is equally improper to say that Israel is justified in the alleged indiscriminate killings. In fact, it appears that it was not only Hamas that entered Israel and took hostages but ordinary Palestinians as well. This came out when Hamas was trying to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel in exchange for the hostages taken during the October 7 attack. Some hostages were kept by civilians and Hamas could not account for them fast enough. So, that situation also opens a new can of worms: if ordinary Palestinians were involved in the taking of hostages (maybe even some of the killings?), then can we safely say that Israel may be justified in its general assault on just about anybody in Gaza? But then, what about the children who absolutely had nothing to do with any of these activities?
Now, King Solomon (yes, we’re back to him) was famous for suggesting that a baby that two women were fighting over be split in two so that they could stop fighting. In the case of Israel and the Palestinian state, the Solomonic solution was a two-state deal that Israel accepted but rejected by the Arabs. Over time, the commitment of Israel to that solution has become hazy. Meanwhile, groups of Arabs have vowed to destroy Israel. Of course, there was that Israel-Palestinian Agreement in 1993 or thereabouts but undoubtedly there is little or no progress from that. Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands, and Palestinian groups are still committed to the destruction of Israel. The two signatories of the Agreement have died without seeing anything from it, and the US, who brokered the deal, have damaged their disinterested negotiator status especially during the Trump Administration.
Unlike in King Solomon’s story, it is not likely that the “true mother” will give up her rights if only to keep the child alive. Perhaps we should then take the advise of a certain comedian when he said we should send the “Good Dad” who intervenes when his children are fighting each other: “What’s going on here?” “He started it!” “I don’t care who started it, KNOCK IT OFF!” We could all hope it was that easy.
In the end though, Hamas is a terrorist organization while Israel is a state. The rules are not the same. They are never the same. Not for a country that proclaims that it is a democracy. This is why it was wrong for the US to go in and kill Osama Bin Laden. One can see the reason why the US would be inclined to but as a country that believes in the Rule of Law, imagine if the US actually captured him and brought him to justice. Killing him is revenge, not justice.
Israel too. It could be forgiven for making a strike in Gaza right after the Hamas assault but even if you don’t go through the math of what is a proportional response, one can still go by what is reasonable. Their main objective is to destroy Hamas. Think about that for a second. The declared objective of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. How is that working for them? Is this something that is achievable? Were the US and all its allies able to destroy the Taliban? Guess who is in charge of Afghanistan now. ISIS lost its caliphate, the land, but it still exists in a different form. Many have said it before: you cannot kill an idea, not by war anyway. Need we say more? Look around, Nazism is still around years after Hitler and his Reich have been defeated, and Germany went through a de-Nazification process.
Donald Trump may have been wrong about bringing the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem but he did right with the so-called Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and some Arab states. If this teaches us anything, then it must be that some differences can be overcome. Perhaps this is why Hamas did what it did: to scuttle the chances of the Accords expanding into many other Arab states that could lead to the weakening of support for the Palestinian cause. It is perhaps a fear that if relations were normalized with Israel, then they would be completely ignored. However, it is also possible that they may have found a new forum to bring up this cause and work for an acceptable resolution. The Arab states have tried war against Israel before and it did not end well for them. The Abraham Accords could be a way to discuss the Palestinian cause in a more productive manner.
The greatest fear should be that you become that which you hate. We can all sympathize with Israel for what happened during World War II but people are starting to think that they are turning into the oppressors and, again, how do you kill an idea? Israel has this aura around it: invincible and the chosen people of God but they have to recall that even God chastised its people even to the point where many of them were enslaved in far-off lands. We all have to be careful about how we view ourselves. Israel has shown that it is a mighty nation. No one can doubt that but it now has to show that it is not only a militarily mighty nation. It must show that it is honorable. Yes, it claims that even in the midst of war, it is observing its obligations under international law. It has to go beyond mere words. We understand that it is in war in Gaza and there will be civilian casualties. However, it cannot and must not merely shrug its shoulders and present it is a natural consequence of war because it shouldn’t, even if it is. It must now be a philosopher-king much like the legendary Solomon, son of David, King of Israel.