So it feels a bit inappropriate to talk about the Middle East when our second city is up in flames; but for the moment, the Middle East is still a lot more lethal, and so much of the problem is that we don't pay attention to what's going on elsewhere. So let's finish what we started here.
There are only two things you need to do to understand the Middle East.
1. Believe nothing you hear.
2. Believe everything you hear.
What? You say that's a complete contradiction?
You're not Jewish, are you?
The Middle East is incomprehensible. Anybody who tells you it can be understood is an unreliable guide: Jewish or Gentile.
Nobody knows what's going on. Not even the eyewitnesses, not even the actors themselves. Everybody is an unreliable narrator from the biggest perpetrators to the biggest victims, precisely because the worst perpetrators exploit the good faith of the worst victims.
But we have to proceed as though everybody is telling the truth, because in so many ways, they are.
The objective truth is out there. Reality exists, but emotional heat warps perception, and even if certain people see the truth in full, we'll never know whom they are, and you'll have to disregard their testimony because if you take theirs seriously, you'll provoke the ire of people you don't take seriously, and in the Middle East, ire costs lives.
What you have to do is listen. Don't judge, don't let them influence you, but give them a chance to be heard. People have to tell 'their truth', but if you let one side tell their truth, you have to let the other do it too.
And then you judge what you don't judge. You have to do the paradoxical work of taking it all in with equal seriousness--something so many scholars refuse to do--and then take none of it seriously.
There are many thinkers who say there's no historical truth, only narratives. They're not just bad scholars, they're manipulative scholars bordering on evil. If there's no truth, what does anything matter at all? If all that matters is power and narrative, then the powerful would just make it up as they go along, and there would be nothing but power. Justice wouldn't matter, freedom wouldn't matter, sympathy wouldn't matter. All that would matter is strength, and for all they protest many claims to work for justice, all they would do is replace one set of oppressive people with another.
But at the same time, the villains have a point. There's the truth of what happened, but in reality, we have to precede as though we'll never know the full truth.
But what we can do is piece together what likely happened from a composite of testimony, and know that that composite has a better percent chance of being closer to the truth.
So what would the composite of all this testimony about massacres in food and aid distribution sites look like?
You know as well as I do what likely happened. Israel established aid sites with the express intention of letting Hamas initiate massacres at sites for aid the IDF has no intention to distribute.
I think Hamas embedded itself among the starving, opened fire, possibly on both Israelis and Palestinians, and the soldiers were only too willing to fire back. Lots of Palestinians died in the crossfire, and that's exactly what the leadership of both sides wanted. And this scenario will repeat itself, again, and again, and again, week after week, until long after Palestinians begin to starve en masse.
But this is not only Hamas's responsibility. This is exactly what Netanyahu wants, this is exactly what his government wants, this is exactly what his supporters want. The whole point was to provoke Hamas into attacking. The whole point was to create a crossfire as a way to say to Israelis: we tried to help them and this is the result. It's just another excuse to keep the war going and keep Netanyahu in power. The second it ends, Netanyahu goes, possibly to jail, possibly to the Hague. But even if that weren't a possibility, Netanyahu would still do it. Like any antisocial person, he just wants power over you, perpetually, forever. Dodging jail is just part of the thrill for people like him.
The more isolated Israel feels, the more the international community holds all its Jews complicit, and the tighter they're bound to Netanyahu, who is constantly yelling at them that the world is all antisemites just as Hamas tells its population that the West is all colonialists and infidels. Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition have the exact same vested interest: keeping their populace as scared and aggrieved as possible.
This is a region of Jobs beset by twin devils who've convinced God to subject His people and land to the worst of tests. Every mental state that is true for one side is true for the other. The more isolated these peoples feel, the more radical they both become, and the closer the war draws to the worst shames against He who subjects us to shame.
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