The diabolical force of war is fueled by hatred, terror and the inability to understand the reasons of the adversary or enemy who must be defeated, humiliated or eliminated. It is useless to predict whether the brutal attack by Hamas, crossing the highly controlled border between Gaza and Israel and murdering more than 1,400 Jews, will lead to a conflict of unknown dimensions.
The planned arrival today of President Joe Biden in Israel is not only confirmation of the military, economic and political support of the United States to its strongest ally, but also a desperate gesture to prevent the conflict from becoming the fuse that lights the powder keg. of an uncontrollable conflagration.
Antony Blinken's chaotic coming and going through Arab capitals and Israel, as Kissinger did more than half a century ago, is an indication of the magnitude of the crisis that has forced Biden to go in person to the epicenter of the events, running physical risks. and politicians. It is a critical moment for Israel, for the Palestinians, for the region, for Europe and for the world.
Shlomo Ben Ami spoke the other day about the “holocaustic memories” that have not been erased from the minds of the Jews. Hitler wanted to eliminate them all. He killed six million, which represented 40% of those living in the world in the forties of the last century. Since the first Basel Zionist Congress in 1897, organized and chaired by Theodor Herzl, Zionism set out to establish for the Jewish people a publicly and legally secure home in Palestine. The Balfour declaration of 1917, in the midst of the Great War, paved the way for the dream to become a reality. The Holocaust and the massive arrival of Jews to Palestine led to the creation of the State of Israel, approved by the United Nations and blessed by the victors of the war, from Truman to Churchill to Stalin.
Golda Meir's memoirs recount the epic of the pioneers who arrived in Palestine a century ago and the difficulties they encountered in sharing the land that for centuries had been inhabited by Arabs and Palestinians who depended on the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed in 1917. The Land ownership, rather than ideologies, is the cause of most wars. Too much history, so little geography and many accumulated hatreds.
The indiscriminate and criminal terrorism of Hamas on October 7 provoked the declaration of a state of war by Netanyahu, who is determined to invade Gaza, with more than two million Palestinians suffering from Israeli bombings and a forced flight to nowhere, without water , without food, without electricity and without shelter. It is a disproportionate reaction, which does not comply with the Geneva conventions that protect civilian victims of wars, which in the midst of their horrible cruelty have their rules.
Biden arrives in Israel to put out fires. He has said that Hamas does not represent all Palestinians and that the goal of creating a Palestinian state, as agreed in Oslo in 1993, must be returned to.
The North American fleet in the eastern Mediterranean not only supports Israel but is a deterrent force so that the conflict does not expand to Lebanon and Syria, with Iran fueling hatred and contempt for everything that means Western civilization. And Putin, rubbing his hands, visiting China, while he forcibly annexes Ukrainian lands that do not want to depend on the Kremlin.
