Snitz talks Gaza and the unpleasant history of conflict
First off the world has been improving. As Steven Pinker (Harvard) points out, global poverty has dropped from 90% of the world’s population (mid 1800s), to approx. 75% (mid 1950s) to about 10% currently*. So much for the good old days.
Notwithstanding our progress, in a typical year approx. 60-70 million folks drop dead. What causes all these folks to croak? Not war or guns. Heart disease and cancer knock off about 55% .
As for the type of conflicts that dominate the news, nothing this century compares to WWI (14 million dead) and WWII (70 million dead). The majority of the deaths in WWII were civilian. Think the Holocaust was horrific? The Japanese butchered almost 20 million Chinese and the German/Russian fighting knocked off another 25 million. *
The bombing of Hiroshima was awful (100,000 deaths). Five battles in WWI caused over 1 million casualties each (most of which lasted less than 3 weeks).
My point is that while your local church group may be benevolent, governments tend to have only a moderate regard for human life and aren’t generally moral. Governments may act like people, just not “nice” people.
That takes us to Gaza and the Ukraine. Can one rationally compare these two conflicts? Not if you use your head and ignore your heart (which is famously biased). The Ukraine conflict thus far (no matter who you blame) has killed approx. 500,000 Ukraine military, injured many more, and displaced over 15 million people of which at least 8 million have left the country. The nation lies in ruins.
Israel lost 1,300 innocent civilians and has retaliated by inadvertently killing approx. 10,000 Palestinian Civilians (used as human shields by Hamas). Ergo, thus far the carnage has been awful but by historical standards pretty contained. Sadly, unless the Israeli government stops playing a useless game of whack the mole, the body count could easily spiral exponentially & may not be contained. In the end, they’ll have as much success stopping the occasional terrorist attack as we did eliminating the Taliban.
I’m Jewish and love the State of Israel. I do not trust the people running the country's military campaign anymore than I do Biden & friends. Netanyahu is a desperate crook who’s partnered with a bunch of right-wing whackjobs to forge a coalition government and avoid getting thrown in jail. The nation’s leadership is nothing like the well-oiled military fighting machine of 25 years ago.
Thus far Iran has been playing the Jews masterfully to drive a wedge between Israel and their Arab neighbors. It’s time for Israel to play the long game, be shrewd, and deal with its real adversary Iran. That will require the cooperation of China (who Iran sells most of it's oil to and who inadvertently finances Middle East terrorism). For that to happen the US will need to be involved and Putin as well. As I said, it’s a long game that requires astute chessmanship…not the blunt end of a knife.
Shut off Iran's supply of money and bomb the shit out of it's nuclear enrichment facilities. That's the long game. Middle East terrorism requires expensive military hardware. We can't allow Iran to be flush with funds to purchase such.
*Links for poverty, WWI and WWII data.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/02/harvards-pinker-makes-case-for-human-progress-in-new-book/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1208625/first-world-war-fatalities-per-country/
Comments