Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has now declared: “If citizens of Israel have to sleep in shelters, then Gaza will burn.”
Ha’aretz is reporting that police are standing around not stopping crowds as they light arab owned Israeli businesses on fire. Jews killed in the latest attacks now number 7, and Palestinians killed now number over 80. Yes, things can still get much worse, but my concern now isn’t so much that it’s plausible that it could get worse, but rather that it is literally inevitable that things get worse. Without minimizing the terror inflicted by Palestinians firing rockets on largely Jewish communities*1 it is the disproportionality of the statement by Gantz that shows so clearly how and why violence has escalated.
There simply is no good to be found. Fuck violence.
1: Don’t forget that Israel’s population is only 75% jewish, with the biggest portion of the remainder being Arabs of non Jewish religions
I can hear Gantz now, yelling at a subordinate officer on the phone: “Brennt Gaza?”
Is it some positive sign of some faint hope that it didn’t and the ceasefire was pushed on Netanyahu, agreed to and the war ended
or at least paused?