Not Like Last Time

By David Glenn Cox

Ever so slowly, Hamas begins to understand they have poked the bear and have gone too far. Initially, the Israelis called this massacre their 9/11 and I thought “I don’t know, if I’d go that far.” It sounded a  bit like a hyperbolic CNN Bumper- The New 9/11! But after the first 24 hours the impact on the world consciousness is much like 9/11.

It is important to distinguish; this is now a declared war. Not an incursion intervention or a special military operation, but a serious wrote down on special paper war. This mission is not to put down an uprising, but to put down a country and to overthrow its leadership. Their chosen method is to kill people and destroy their stuff by war. The murdering terrorists were acting as agents of the Gazan people. It wasn’t some splinter group, but representatives of the Gazan people themselves.

The people of GAZA chose Hamas. Hamas didn’t come to power in a bloody coup struggle. The Gazan people put Hamas in power, knowing full well what they represented. No differently than any other country chooses their leaders. Spare me your tears. The Germans put the Nazis in power and look what happened to them. The Gazans are wholy responsible for their own plight. So now begins the pity party dance and the wrenching of clothes in anguish. “Oh, how could God let this happen to us? Why does God curse us so?

Two sides of a coin with the parade of young Hamas militants marching down the main street with fixed bayonets on their Kalashnikov rifles held so high. Faces covered with black silk battle dress and tied off with a prayer to Allah headband, marching to local martial music. The march is for war and murder. To show off their weapons and their tough baby killer image. A message of non-conciliation and non-accommodation and most of all violence. Then suddenly, becoming the crying weeping Palestinian.

I was watching a live feed from the Palestinian side of Ramallah. Yutes or Youths (aged 12 to 19) were throwing stones at the Israeli border guards. Stones like baseballs and pieces of broken concrete with slingshots. Hiding behind a trailer body, the Yutes would take a run towards the border with their missiles. Police? What’s that? Every few minutes, one of the Yutes would get a little too close to the border and the Israeli border guards would take a shot at them.

So, this one comes limping back with a bullet in his calf. An ambulance is waiting less than a block away (That some church group probably donated) coming quickly with lights and sirens to pick up this poor victim of Israeli oppression. Meanwhile, the next Yute is already throwing his stone while the next ambulance pulls into the waiting position. Their buddies were busy building a burning tire fire roadblock in the middle of the street as the traffic attempted to navigate around their barricade. Police? Parents?

But I was astounded by the number of old tires available for burning. Does Gaza import old tire cores? Tires come from automobiles and automobiles belong to affluent people. I was under the impression this was a poor location, with people struggling just to make the day. I asked myself, just how long it would take me to wear out a set of tires in an area two miles wide and twenty something miles long? Either they are importing old tires, or there are lots of automobiles.

Hamas had threatened to execute a hostage for every Palestinian neighborhood Israel bombed without warning. Then as the impact of the event began to filter through and be understood. They grew quiet without the bravado or machismo.

I watched Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian National Initiative leader. Oh boy, is he ever bad at his job. Insisting Hamas never targeted civilians. Then under pressure admitting civilians were regrettably killed. Then Mustafa brings up the hostages. Mustafa his own self brought up the hostages! You know, those civilians who were targeted.

Hamas has offered a truce. “Let’s begin negotiations, just like last time and the time before that.” Ever so slowly, the message sinks in. Not this time.

Hezbollah warns Israel; it won’t sit back and allow a war of extermination in Gaza. Because that’s exactly what Hezbollah would do if somebody had done anything like that to their people. They still don’t get it, do they? They fail to understand the western consciousness. They believe if their cause is just, any atrocity is allowable, and then cue the poor Palestinians.

The Israelis sealed off Gaza and shut off the water and the electricity. You know, I’m the same damn way. You try to kill me, even once. And I won’t do favors for you anymore. This is a war! This was Pearl Harbor; this was Israel’s 9/11!

Watch your TVs very carefully. I saw a video news report with a doctor running in carrying a wounded Palestinian child in a bloody blanket into the emergency room, four different times. Is the message clear enough for you? In the emergency room as the reporter explained how only the most severely wounded were being admitted. Two little girls shared an examination table. One had a small bandage on her arm. The other appeared uninjured. What’s this about only the most seriously wounded being admitted?

These two little girls were suffering from a bad case of window dressing. Three injured children without even one anguished parent anywhere around. There were other wounded there too, mainly adult military aged men.

The gore of the crime Hamas has committed is too awful for even the hardest heart to show on world TV. The grisly ghastly brutality shocks the world’s senses. “We’re ready to negotiate any time that you’re ready!”

Hezbollah in support, began to fire rockets from Lebanon but the reverberations have reached the upper echelons of Tehran’s leadership. Are they ready for a full-fledged war with the West? Do they really want to bet the house on one roll of the dice? Israel answers immediately and decisively making it clear to Hezbollah, this a war and you best not poke the bear. This is War motherfucker! If you want some, you’ll get some! This isn’t like last time, now they’re coming for your ass. You better cue the waterworks.

After the original 9/11 the world repudiated terrorism. The world has grown weary and no longer cares all that much about your real estate disputes or obstinance. It has become old hat and is becoming out of fashion, and not like last time.

The Biden Administration has been quick and resolute in word and deed in supporting Israel. The Republican House is paralyzed in their own self-inflicted decrepitude speakership wounding. Any news yet on how that is going fellas?

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Responses

  1. Jill Horner Avatar

    As the daughter of a career diplomat, I learned that there were at least two sides to every conflict, this when I was indignant about some perceived injustice somewhere in the world. Well, any group who sanctions the kidnapping and murder of children and infants, doesn’t deserve to have their side. Gaza has chosen Hamas to “argue” their position of representation, so aside from children and infants being killed, Gaza has to bare the consequences of their choice. Today I am an Israeli………

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    1. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

      Your Father was a diplomat? Mine was CIA or something like the CIA

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      1. Jill Horner Avatar

        007, Bond…..James Bond.
        Many feel that all Foreign Service people are CIA operatives!

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      2. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

        I want to apolgise for that remark. It sounded like one upman ship and I apologise. Where did your daddy do his diplomatting?

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      3. Jill Horner Avatar

        No apology needed. I didn’t feel that at all. Mostly USSR and the Middle East. We did go to Paris, which was a great assignment!

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

        My father was an engineer for a international manufacter. But for some reasons all his assciations were political. He’d meet Truman and Johnson and Dean Rusk and met Kennedy twice. We lived in Dallas in 63 Montgomery in 65 and Chicago in 68. After the Kennedy assasination my father went on a business trip to New Orleans.

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  2. Jill Horner Avatar

    P.S. Great quote from FDR!

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  3. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

    The USSR? I would have liked to have seen that before it ran down.

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  4. Jill Horner Avatar

    I’ve never met any of those people. I guess my Dad did, Dean Rusk for sure.
    My parent’s were divorced when I was only 2-1/2 and my brother, Jack was 5, so I was only with him in Kabul and Paris.
    Why did your Dad go to New Orleans? Did he retire there? (None of that is any of my business, so if you don’t want to respond, I won’t be offended). My Dad taught at Tulane for a year and loved it!

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  5. Jill Horner Avatar

    I’m not sure the USSR was better than Russia. My father was very fond of the Russian people. The vodka was a benefit to most of the foreign diplomats!

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    1. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

      I don’t mean better as in good or fun. Just the USSR we all grew up with.

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      1. Jill Horner Avatar

        Well that’s true! Who recorded the song, “Back in the USSR”? One of my brother’s was born in Moscow. My father used to call him our “little Muscovite”

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      2. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

        How long did you live there? Do you speak Russian?

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      3. Jill Horner Avatar

        I never lived there, so no I don’t speak Russian. My father spoke fluent Russian, like he was born there. They were in Moscow for two years. Both my parent’s spoke fluent French, but not of of seven kids made the effort. When I went to school in Paris, my French friends wanted to practice their English, so since I was lazy, I said fine. I could kick myself now.

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      4. Thiscarbonbasedlife@gmail.com Avatar

        As Mark Twain said the Germans don’t understand their own language when you try to speak it to them. I speak no foriegn languages othe than Alabamian.

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      5. Jill Horner Avatar

        😂

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