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Read other letters about this article
they don't hold up.
The residents of the Gaza territory aren't being held hostage in their territory by the Israelis. If they're unable to emigrate, it's the due to the actions of every other country in the world that doesn't allow the residents to immigrate. Israel has not surrounded Gaza.
They used to occupy the place. They handed the territory over to the residents. I don't get the analogy to Warsaw 1943. The Jews of Warsaw didn't have an outlet to the sea and border access with a nation that, if not exactly an ally, is allegedly non-hostile to its population. The Jews of Warsaw had short supplies of arms and ammunition, and no way to stockpile or resupply. The Jews of Warsaw faced the prospect of imminent annihilation, simply for their presence.
The inhabitants of Gaza, by contrast, seem to have gone out of their way to invite and provoke that kind of reaction, over a period of years. Despite the provocation, I predict that the Israeli military will stop well short of delivering the Gazans to the near-total annihilation that was the fate of the Jews in Warsaw. That forbearance will not stop the foes of Israel from characterizing their action as "genocidal." The number of unarmed civilian casualties is bound to be high. As I noted previously, it's fairly obvious that Hamas has made that part of their tactical design, to fulfill the strategic aim of casting the Israelis as the Villains.
(But Villainy and Heroism is more than simply a power calculation, a matter of "strong - villain" and "weak = heroic." And "Power" needs to be thought of in terms more relevant than abstractions about total military might. The person firing a rocket at random across a national border into a target area comprised of unarmed civilians has Power. The unsuspecting victim who finds themselves within range of the rocket when it explodes has No Power.)
Gaza is evidently dependent on Israel for 80% of its electricity. Why no measures were taken by the Gazans over the past three years to ameliorate that situation isn't clear to me. But the Israelis- who also maintained many businesses in Gaza that provided much of its employment and industrial base- were willing at the outset to supply that power and aid. And after years of repeated captures of smuggled weapons caches and rocket attacks, they've pulled the plug. Why this is somehow seen as wanton cruelty- instead of as a weary reaction to a smoldering fire of mounting terror on its border that the recipients of the aid have continued to fuel- doesn't compute to me.
