The diabolical force of war feeds on hatred, terror and the inability to understand the reasons of the adversary or enemy that needs to be defeated, humiliated or eliminated. It is impossible to predict whether the brutal attack by Hamas, crossing the heavily controlled border between Gaza and Israel and killing more than 1,400 Jews, will result in a conflict of unknown dimensions.
Today's scheduled arrival of President Joe Biden in Israel is not only confirmation of the military, economic and political support of the United States to its staunchest ally, but a desperate gesture to prevent the conflict from becoming the fuse that ignites the gunpowder of a conflagration that can be uncontrollable.
The chaotic coming and going of Antony Blinken through Arab capitals and Israel, as Henry 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 and political risks. There are not many precedents for a president visiting a country in a state of war. 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 "Holocaust memories" that have not been erased from the minds of the Jews. Hitler wanted to eliminate them all. It killed six million, which represented 40% of those living in the world in the 1940s. From the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, organized and presided over by Theodor Herzl, Zionism set out to establish a publicly and legally secure home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in the midst of the Great War, paved the way for the dream to become reality. The Holocaust and the mass arrival of Jews in 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 through Stalin, who was the first to send a congratulatory message to Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.
Golda Meir's memoirs recount the epic story of the pioneers who arrived in Palestine a century ago and the difficulties they faced in sharing the land that for centuries had been inhabited by Arabs and Palestinians who depended on the Ottoman Empire, which was collapse in 1917. The possession of land, rather than ideologies, is the cause of most wars. So much history, so little geography and so many accumulated hates.
Hamas's indiscriminate and criminal terrorism on October 7 led to the declaration of a state of war by Netanyahu, who is determined to invade Gaza, with more than two million Palestinians suffering from Israeli bombardment and a forced flight to nowhere, no water, no food, no electricity and no roof. 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 horrific cruelty have their own 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 must be resumed, as agreed in Oslo in 1993. The US fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean does not support Israel alone but is a deterrent so that the conflict does not expand into Lebanon and Syria, with Iran fueling hatred and contempt for everything that stands for Western civilization. And Putin, rubbing his hands, on a visit to China, while forcibly annexing Ukrainian lands that do not want to depend on the Kremlin.
