SUMMARY: A follow up to the previous post on the Israeli-Hamas war, explaining that there can be no justification for the extreme violence, massacres, and destruction committed by either side. There are three important take aways from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the importance of following the established international rules to prevent atrocities, the negative consequences of inflicting mass continuous suffering, and the outdated nature of war. We should all commit ourselves to making the changes necessary to ensure the peaceful resolution of conflict and respond to hate with grace and forgiveness.
KEY WORDS: Hamas, IDF, Southern Israel, Gaza, Terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Atrocities, Suffering, Oppression, War, Peace
COMMENT, please: We’d love to hear your thoughts on the Hamas attack on Southern Israel and the IDF’s response. Please keep it civil, especially since emotions are running high.
Howdy y’all!
I will remind long-time readers and inform new readers that I was living within a kilometer of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya when terrorist attacked it. I shopped in the stores, ate in the restaurants, went to the cinema, knew the employees there. A student and her mother died in that attack. We stayed at a safari camp whose owner lost his wife and daughter in the attack. I had friends who fled the attack. We watched the smoke rising from the mall from the balcony of the school I taught at. It was close. It had a terrific impact on me personally and everyone around me.
In the reporting coming out of Israel and Gaza of the mass indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, I was reminded of what a terrorist told a small child when he and his mother were let go, “We’re not monsters,” he allegedly told him handing him a candy bar looted from the store the family had been shopping at.
I thought then, as I think now, that yes, yes he and his compatriots are monsters. You don’t deliberately and with malice aforethought inflict that amount of psychic stress and strain, that amount of death, that amount of pain and suffering and not be a monster.
There is no justification for what al-Shabab did. There is no justification for what Hamas did in Israel this week. There is no justification for what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. None of it is justified.
COMMENT, please: Let us know your thoughts on terrorism and what drives it. I’d love to discuss it with you.
Three Lessons from the Latest Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
I’ve got three points to make, and then we’ll call it a blog post.
We Have Rules For A Reason
WHEN WE DON’T LIVE BY THE RULES that we made for ourselves as in the Geneva Convention and the Declaration of Human Rights, then we are setting the conditions for atrocities to happen. It doesn’t mean that we caused the atrocities. Just like the old movie trope of the hostage taker telling someone that if the hostage dies, it’s on them, is just so much BS, telling the Israelis that they caused Hamas to slaughter a 1,000 people in Southern Israel, take dozens of hostages, and caused the IDF to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians in retaliation is just so much bullshit.
When we know that much of behavior is caused by the environment we find ourselves in, the easiest way to change behavior is to change the environment. While we deal with the aftermath of the horrors inflicted on real live human beings in Southern Israel, we must keep in mind that there are real horrors being inflicted on real live human beings in Gaza, the West Bank, and Palestinian refugees around the world.
Supposedly, we created those rules so that we wouldn’t be committing atrocities when we were most vulnerable to committing them, during the high continuous stress of living in a war zone, and that governments would be complelled to treat people fairly. Supposedly.
COMMENT, please: Do you think the rules are being followed? Do you think they help prevent atrocities or hold people and governments accountable? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Mass Continuous Suffering Never Leads to Anything Good
WHEN WE INFLICT MASS CONTINUOUS SUFFERING ON A PEOPLE, we shouldn’t be surprised when they fight back. At some point, we have to look at the antecedents of such behavior. It is not produced in a vacuum. There are hugely complex geopolitical, sociological, and psychological forces at work here.
This is not a call to engage in bothsidesism, but a call to honestly assess the contributions that both sides have made to the current situation, and how both sides can change to make it better.
What is clear to me is that both Likud and Hamas benefit greatly from continuing this conflict. Before the Hamas incursion into Southern Israel, Netanyahu was facing mass protests in the streets for his decision to reform the Israeli court system, which many perceive as a thinly veiled attempt at keeping himself out of jail due to corruption. The incursion seems well-timed to say the least, not that I’m indulging in conspiracy theories.
Hamas, too, benefits from the continuing suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. A peace between the two groups would mean that the conformity necessary to carry out such attacks — and the resulting groupthink that makes such boondoggles possible — would be threatened. Palestinians might actually support other parties, groups, or organizations.
Hamas came to power opposing the secular government of the secular PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and Fatah. That doesn’t absolve Israel of playing any role in promoting Hamas’ control of Gaza. Remember in 2014, Netanyahu denounced an agreement between Fatah and Hamas to reconcile, which was probably that a real peace agreement between the two sides was possible. And because Hamas sided with the Syrian uprising, which caused Iran to cut off its aide ($200 million) and the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt, cut off Egyptian aide and trade, placing Gaza under enormous stress struggling to govern due to lack of funds.
You’d think anyone interested in peace between Israel and the Palestinians would’ve helped make up the shortfall, but no one did. Actions still speak louder than words, so the lack of action at a crucial moment when peace was possible, tells us that Netanyahu was more interested in conflict than peace.
There is plenty of why fors, what fors, and what ifs to fill a morgue and then some, but I have two points: (1) the people of Gaza and the West Bank have been suffering greatly, especially in the last decade, and (2) both sides benefit from continuing the conflict both in general and in this specific instance, both sides except for the actual citizens of Israel and Gaza.
COMMENT, please: Do you think suffering and perceptions of injustice play a role in terrorism and war? I’d love to discuss it with you in the comments.
War is Obsolete
WHEN WE MAKE WAR, we are exacerbating a host of problems and solving few if any.
- War wastes tons of resources in lives lost, material destroyed, and money better spent on other priorities.
- War hastens climate change by justifying reckless production of war material and dumping tons of carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and other pollutants into the environment.
- War speeds the wealth transfer from the middle class to the 10% worsening the wealth gap and causing more tension and stress in society.
Moving Forward
We need to take a page from Black America and respond to extreme provocation and hate with grace, humility, and forgiveness. It never ceases to astound me that every time a racist thinks murdering a handful or two of Black people will ignite a race war, they are slapped down by the Black community’s refusal to answer hate with hate, violence with violence, harm with harm. As a group, they embody the turn-the-other-cheek teachings like few others have. Perhaps that is the lesson here.
We are a creative inventive species. There is not a problem that we cannot solve. So, if we are not solving a particular problem, you can be sure it is because someone somewhere is benefiting from the status quo and stopping it from being solved. It is a good heuristic to live by.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Psy of Life 
COMMENT, please: Do you think suffering and perceptions of injustice play a role in terrorism and war? I’d love to discuss it with you in the comments.
No doubt in my mind. Desperate people seeks desperate measures especially when obedience to religion is involved Jack.
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Howdy James!
I think both play a role. Suffering can be traumatizing. It can create desperation in the populations that suffer. I think that is something we’re seeing in Gaza, especially. Suffering can also make people vulnerable to being manipulated around perceptions of injustice. In the tit-for-tat back and forth between many groups finding the first mover of the conflict can be impossible, but there is a long group memory of certain atrocities and events.
Right now, people are finding it easy to condemn Hamas for the attack out of no where on Israel. While it was brutal an deserves condemnation, it didn’t come out of no where. Israel is feeling justified in slaughtering civilians by the thousand, creating conditions for a prolonged humanitarian disaster, and giving an unworkable ultimatum to get out of Gaza City. They are creatively absolving themselves of the harm they are doing, which will only perpetuate the conflict.
The whole thing seems like a hopeless mess, which is your first clue that the principle players involved aren’t interested in resolving the conflict.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Jack, the US of A has a problem, it is still searching for it’s sole. Like Australia, it’s a multifaceted nation, to make the issue more difficult, it is still coming to grips with slavery and the civil war.
Life would be much easier if the population just said, take us we are, we aren’t perfect, but we are doing the best we can.
Trying to impose your values on others, is doomed to failure, as we all know America for what it is.
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Howdy Jon!
I agree with you for the most part. I would direct you to my series on The Civil War didn’t end, the cultural roots of racism, the geography of culture, and on the inner racist of white people. My quibble is that we did come to grips with slavery and the Civil War when you think about the majority of the US population being white. We are pro-slavery or in less inflammatory terms pro-systemic racism and anti-democracy, especially if it means white people have to give up their supremacy. If it weren’t that way, Republican racist dog whistles wouldn’t keep getting them elected.
Our steadfast belief in “USA! USA!” and “We’re number one!” can only be maintained by refusing to question the foundations of our country, which is racist and anti-democratic. By keeping the political understanding of the vast majority of the population at the level of jingoism, we are able to maintain a system that transfers the nation’s wealth to the 10% as quickly as possible. As LBJ said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” That is the foundation of our democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Jack, I apologies for not being clearer in my post, yes, the civil war in America recognized slavery.
But I was referring to is the deep seated resentment in many regarding said war, it’s outcome and it’s impact on the South.
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Howdy Jon!
I think you were clear. I think we are in complete agreement on the continuing reverberations in American society that the Civil War had. My goal was to ensure that you were aware that I was well aware of it and that I had written extensively on it.
It’s always fascinated me how different people can independently come to the same conclusions. The evidence to support those conclusions about the Civil War is abundant and easily accessed. So much so, that if you’re not coming to those conclusions, it is probably because of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’m reminded of our many politicians who constantly campaign on the problems with immigrants (legal ones, illegal ones, and asylum seekers) at our southern border, but also vote against every move to reform and adequately finance the system for dealing with them. The problem is too profitable for them to try to solve it. Whenever and wherever that is true, the problem in question persists and gets worse. When there are conflicting actors involved, they tend to at in ways that escalate the problem. [This is where I could take off into a long discussion of the theory of Schizmogenisis, but I’ll resist.]
If we followed the rules, if we enforced the rules, the modern State of Israel would not have come into being as it did. There would not be millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps 60 years later. Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. The list goes on, and on, and on. When it comes to enforcing the rules, the powers of the world are very much better at talking the talk than walking the walk. The reason is simple. They want the rules to apply only to their perceived adversaries, not themselves. Look at the list of nations who are not members of the International Court of Justice and consider themselves not bound by its rulings.
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Howdy Bob!
Your discussion and application of schismogenses could make a great guest blog post. Perhaps, you should consider it in your copious spare time.
The GOP seems to engage in what I dubbed in my therapist days, the unsolvable problem, quite frequently. As long as you had an unsolvable problem, you didn’t have to change. Writ large, that means the GOP can continue using divisive issues to divide and conquer the electorate so that they are not held accountable for the outrageous conditions many of their constituents are living in as a result. In addition, to immigration, gun violence, the opioid crisis, and healthcare come to mind.
The do as I say not as I do quality of our foreign policy is the main reason why I don’t think criticisms of hypocrisy are effective. Everyone is hypocritical. It is an extension of fundamental attribution error. You break the rules because of a deep-seated character flaw; I break the rules because of circumstances, so it’s okay. You’re a bad person, and I’m still a good person. Historically, I think the US has been very creative in its use of FAE to defend its hypocritical foreign policy.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The accusation of hypocrisy rarely, if ever, manages to overcome attributions of motive. The Other does bad things from bad motives. We do the same things for good motives. And the more dehumanized and demonized the Other is, the more this is true, and the more things we must do (with the best motives) that would be bad if They did them. And that is the very slippery slope of fighting fire with fire.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m always amused and a little saddened by how our popular culture reflects this very idea. We find two movie and TV tropes that reflect the Fundamental Attribution Error and probably fuels our current era of the racist rant, extra-judicial killings, and Karenism:
(1) The anti-hero (who has become the hero) who is the only one who can see the truth in the face of either widespread corruption or apathy in the system and has to go rogue because truth.
(2) The might makes right scenario where the hero tolerates the gross and blatant injustices and unfairness of the “bad guy” until he — and it is almost always a he, isn’t it? — just can’t stand it any more and punches him. That’s always the money shot and the audience cheers wildly when it happens.
The liberal belief that you should always punch a Nazi — which arose from that populist hero Indiana Jones — is always right because we know who the Nazis are, the rule can never be abused, and it can never be turned around and used against us, right? I mean, who likes Nazis? It’s black and white.
That said, motive is always important. The Les Miserable lesson of stealing a loaf of bread to feed your sister’s starving family should be punished less severely than stealing to feed your drug addiction holds. The tendency to blame character flaws for behavior we don’t approve of is sacrosanct.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’ve been recalling the proverb that revenge is a dish best served cold, and noticing how seldom that advice is followed. Everybody feeling wounded want their revenge hot and immediate. So, they rush in to conflict ill-informed, ill-prepared, and suffer the consequences. Now, Israel will rush into Gaza to have it’s way with Hamas. Thinking on that, i realized that the attack had all the earmarks of deliberate provocation to get just that response. It was a suicide mission. And just as Hamas spent at least a year, probably more accumulating the means and planning that attack, so they also prepared just as long and well for the response. As one retired general said, “Never go where your enemy wants you to go.” This is going to be really, really bad.
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Howdy Bob!
I agree. Hamas knew Netanyahu would have to over react. They probably even timed the attack when he was at his lowest point in popularity, so that he would be tempted to rally the country around himself and distract everyone by a prolonged bloody conflict in Gaza.
Hamas may or may not survive the retribution that Israel will lay down on them, but they will get concessions and aide from various Arab governments. They have made themselves and the issue relevant again, which was probably their primary goal.
If Israel inflicts enough damage and pain on Gaza, countries whose support had been flagging for whatever reason will have to support them with aide.
Hamas is playing to its base — the radicalized Islamists and the fractures within the Islamic world — as much as Netanyahu is playing to his, and Republicans are playing to theirs, by using the conflict as their pawn.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I think I recall somebody saying never to let a crisis go to waste.
Perhaps, the Arab leaders will again decide they must support the Palestinians, if only to loosen Iran’s grip on them. I wonder whether our diplomats currently touring the neighborhood are making that point.
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Howdy Bob!
My apologies for my late reply. This week has been a bit more overwhelming and moving faster than I realized.
Anywho, there are a couple of active crises that are being used to keep supporters stirred up. “I’m willing to go to prison,” comes to mind. Of course, he’s not.
I read that Jordan is no longer willing to support Hamas when they cancelled their conference. Egypt is reluctant to open the doors, literally. They are keeping the border closed. They aren’t even willing to allow aide to flow freely. Both were once ardent supporters of the Palestinian cause. The brutality of their attack may have backfired on them. Few people respond to that level of violence and wanton destruction with, “My those people seem quite upset about something. Maybe we should listen to what they have to say.”
It is looking like Hamas will be physically destroyed by Israel when they finally role through Gaza City. Of course, there already isn’t much left except for the tunnels. The question to be thinking about now is what comes after Hamas and Netanyahu. As horrific as this disaster is, it does open the door for some positive change if both sides change their leadership and finally try to end the conflict.
Huzzah!
Jack
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President Biden’s admonition to the Israelis, and others, about rage and making mistakes, as mild as it may seem, is very pointed in it’s context. A face-to-face public rebuke from a POTUS to a PM of Israel in a time of crisis is a very rare thing. I find it especially relevant since I have trouble seeing what Hamas did as anything but setting a trap.
Nobody seems to want this to become a wider war. Even Iran, much as they would support their proxies, does not appear enthusiastic. The settlers in the West Bank are a bit of an exception, acting emboldened to take the war to their Palestinian neighbors in the small scale.
One very likely positive outcome is that the Netanyahu government will not survive. As one observer commented, there is no excuse for the fact that Hamas was able to succeed in carrying out the attack, and it took so long for the IDF to respond in the affected towns.
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Howdy Bob!
Hopefully this is the end of Netanyahu and Hamas. Neither of whom have been a friend of the peace process or of good governance.
I saw a headline that I didn’t read since my extracurricular reading has been curtailed this week that proclaimed Biden as the new father figure of Israel accompanied by him hugging a young Israeli man. Not a surprise there since Biden is such an accomplished retailer politicker and does empathy extraordinarily well.
If it is being publicly reported that the US and allies are urging temperance on the Israelis, then behind the scenes must be much more explicitly worded if not much less diplomatically so. The pictures of the bombing and missile strikes in Gaza, even in “safe zones” which are starting to sound like carefully constructed kill zones for genocidal purposes — I’m hoping that is hyperbole, but the more it happens, the less likely it is an accident — are horrific.
As much as public sentiment is on the side of the Israelis, continuous pictures of Palestinian civilians suffering under the bombardment can at least dampen the sympathy.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I heard an interview with a couple of West Bank settlers. The gist was that they are there because “It’s them or us, and we came to make sure it is us. They have no right to be here. It is ours.” Genocide? Maybe not, if ethnic cleansing gets the job done. Gaza is, and always was a dead end with no exit. And for Israel, it has been a matter of shooting fish in a barrel.
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Howdy Bob!
I don’t know how consciously planned the entrapment of Palestinians in Gaza was, but it doesn’t matter. Right now, they are using Gaza as a barrel and are, as far as I can tell, protestations aside, using it as such. They seem to be firing upon Gazas indiscriminately killing them at hospitals (through failing supplies if not with actual bombs and missiles), in schools, in the “safe” zones, and along the road south and the closed exit.
If it reduces the population drastically through mass death, it is genocide.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Gaza entrapment, as with the other “refugee camps” is an artifact of the refusal of the Arab countries to accept the Palestinians as immigrants and potential citizens, combined with Israel’s seizure of Gaza (from Egypt) and the West Bank (from Jordan) in the 1967 war.
The current actions are genocidal, and some Israelis are not embarrassed to say so.
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Egypt clearly does not want a huge influx of a million Palestinian refugees. Lebanon clearly has their fill — Hezbollah has made their presences unwelcome at the least. Jordan is done with them. Iran isn’t sending mercy and evacuation flights and ships, is it?
On the Muslim side, I think the Palestinians are the victim of Iranian machinations. The Sunnis don’t want anything to do with them because of Shiite support. Hamas needed a backer, so…
And, now we have perpetual war with no mercy shown to the Palestinian people by any side.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The other Arabs never wanted them. That’s why they put them in refugee camps and made it hereditary. They’ve been a political football ever since. When looking to find whom to blame, the answer is simple, everybody. There are no clean hands in this situation.
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Howdy Bob!
And the world is going to stand collectively by wringing its hands, clutching its pearls, and tutting as Israel routes the last of the Palestinians out of Gaza and turns it into a ghetto, to use an indelicate term. It will all be Hamas’ part. If only Hamas hadn’t used 2.5 million Palestinians as human shields being crammed into an area the size of Philadelphia couldn’t have anything to do with it. If only Hamas were less bent on destroying Israel like it says in their founding documents even though it was Israel that rejected the two state solution when Hamas made nice with the Palestinian Authority and it looked like it might happen.
We’ll all have someone to blame for the ugly end to Palestine, lots of “good” reasons for acting like we did, and plenty of excuses for absolving ourselves from any guilt or role played in it.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The world has a long, long tradition of that. Hardly a single “world leader” stirred theirself to even sanction Azerbaijan for cleansing the Armenians (or the Turks doing it 100 years ago), and the main reason we are supporting the Ukrainians is because Russia is just bad, right?
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Realpolitiks trumps all. We act in our best interest not by our principles and beliefs. Ukraine makes a difference to us, the Rohingya, don’t. Israelis matters, Palestinians, don’t. The predictive principle is who matters to the geopolitical economic interest of those in power, not whatever morals those in power purport to live by. We all know this.
Morality plays over things like the Hamas attack or 9/11 or simply performative. There’s real emotion there. That’s not what I’m saying, but because everyone who feels so injured that they think doing something like 9/11 or 7 October is justified feels justified in doing it. Every time we retaliated with a cruise missile strike for some minor terrorist attack, we were justified.
One of the things that I’m surprised by is that the factional-ethnic strife on Russia’s southern border hasn’t been worse than it is. I figured that with Russia bogged down in Ukraine, the folks who’ve been avenging their centuries old grievances would be back at each other again. That has been as limited as it is speaks to the strength of the strongman authoritarian governments they installed.
I read that Russia is now sending reinforcements from units that are based in Russia, never sent to Ukraine before. Heretofore, they’ve only replenished losses in the units that they had originally committed to Ukraine. If that’s the case, then the loses in Ukraine are starting to eat into the military power that Russia has and will limit their ability to maintain the peace elsewhere on their borders. Don’t be surprised if China gets aggressive with its territorial claims against Russia or any of the others republics that share a border with them.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Like authoritarians everywhere, Russia has never been adverse to spending it’s troops lives freely.
As for the Russia-China current romance, if Russia appears weakened enough, China will see the “Stans” as up for grabs. Getting influence there has always been an important part of the Belt And Road project.
What would humans find to do with our brains if we gave up self-justification?
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I am increasingly, the more I look at the history of modern Israel and the ancient history of the region, coming to see both the Israelis and Palestinians (but more so the latter) as being held hostage to the political needs and ambitions of others for the past 75 years. And when the frustration and fears on both sides boil over, they fight like two pit bulls in the ring while others place their bets.
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The damnable thing to it all is that without the Holocaust, it would be just like Myanmar and Rohingya: no one would care. I don’t know which is worse, though: mindlessly feeding the Israeli genocide machine or ignoring a genocide as it unfolds in front of you.
The Palestinians have been a political hot potato to be passed around since World War I. How they got to be the chosen one, I’ve never quite understood, but they seem to be the group that gets dropped when something “bad” needs to happen in the region.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’ve been reviewing the recorded history of the territory that now comprises the Levant west of the Jordan River. It’s been contested, invaded, fought over, conquered, different populations displaced or dispersed, etc., for as long as records exist and more. I keep remembering a college friend’s mother who identified ethnically as Assyrian reacting to some news about the (pre- Saddam ) government in Iraq by saying, “Those damned Babylonians!”. That was the most important single thing I ever learned about the Middle East. The Babylonian Empire destroyed the Assyrian Empire 3,600 year ago. William Faulkner was so right, that the past is never dead.
The Palestinians, like many other Arabs were in rebellion against the Ottomans off an on well before WWI came and Laurence was sent to stir them up more, making promises his superiors never meant to keep about getting their own democracies under the protectorates.
Since the Gazans can’t leave and the bombardment keeps increasing, what the Israelis are doing there can’t even be called ethnic cleansing. I got to thinking today that it would be an appropriate slap in a lot of faces if they put up a sign above the Rafa Crossing that read, “ARBITE MACHT FREI”.
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Howdy Bob!
Even though Faulkner’s South didn’t have as long as a history, it had a similar approach to “those people over there in the next county.” It strikes me that it is a good example of how culture gets passed from one generation to the next and gets embedded in the institutions we create.
One of the things that I’ve heard reported over and over again since 7 October is how small and interconnected Israel is. Everyone is affected by the 1500 or so Israeli deaths. Gaza is even smaller geographically and by populace, so the 5,000 Palestinian deaths have to had an even bigger effect on Palestinians. No one seems to care about that. I guess because they deserved it. You know, FAE.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’ve noticed over the years that, particularly in the case of Gaza, the Israeli response to a 5 pound rocket has been a 500 pound bomb, and a casualty ratio of about 10-1.
Then, there is this item on how Bebe used the threat of Hamas to keep the peace-nicks on both sides at bay. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/23/2201155/-NY-Times-story-confirms-that-Netanyahu-kept-Hamas-in-power?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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No one day or one event can be taken in isolation. The Israeli/Hamas conflict is no exception.
What we are witnessing started in 1947, some would suggest it started long before that?
But in 1947 Israel was created, to do this people were forced off their land and those of the Jewish faith took over.
There has been conflict ever since and sadly I see no end to it.
The elephant in the room is America, who see Israel as their middle east deputy, face it. oil to America is God and that region has lots of oil.
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Howdy Jon!
I think you’re exactly right. Guilt over the Holocaust and “end-of-days” Christians have made mindless support for Israel a litmus test in American politics, one that Israeli governments and politicians have learned to wield as a cudgel.
The effect of removing Palestinians from everyday Israeli society by creating these two enclaves for them to live in makes dehumanizing and othering them much easier to achieve. The reverse is also true. Palestinians also have dehumanized Israelis. It makes the conflict much easier to perpetuate and to exploit for personal political gain.
Huzzah!
Jack
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