Gaza and the Politics of Hate

It’s easy to make Israel look like the bad guy in the current conflict in Gaza.  At least, Hamas thinks so. They keep sending out the news feeds, drawing attention to Israeli aggression.  But Hamas are terrorists, self-serving, remorseless, incapable of seeing the devastation their own actions have caused. Because they want the world to believe the lie they perpetrate: they are the victims.

I will be the first to admit that the images of Gaza break my heart. Nobody wants to see children suffer and die, or families struggle without the necessities of life while the only home they have known is being blown to bits around them.  Benjamin Netenyahu said exactly that on CNN’s State of the Union this past Sunday. The people of Gaza deserve peace, education, homes as we all do. However, Hamas has chosen to use them in their real battle plan against Israel. And it’s working. Hamas is firing rockets at Israel from within crowded civilian locations, knowing that Israel will fire back. Because Hamas wants the world to see those bodies, to feel the pain and anguish of innocent lives lost, and then have the international community pressure Israel into backing down.

But Israel warned the residents of Gaza what was coming, and urged them to move to safety before the conflict happened. Hamas told the people to stay. And the residents of Gaza made their choice. They stayed, knowing Hamas would fire rockets near schools and markets.  They knew Hamas hid weapons in these schools funded by international money. Hamas took money from ,many international sources, but instead of building schools and infrastructure, they built an elaborate network of concrete tunnels leading from Gaza to Israel, to further carry out their acts of terrorism on their neighbour. And yes, the residents of Gaza know this too.

I believe that Israel understands what they up against, better than anyone else in the world. Their strong and unwavering stance is their best weapon against the intangible offence of hatred.  How do you broker peace when one side is capable only of hatred? This is a fight that cannot be fought on rational grounds.  Prime Minister Netenyahu made his stance very clear on CNN when he explained how the only approach his country could take was to remove the tunnels, and eradicate the source. Because like a deadly weed, the hatred of Hamas only keeps growing back. The Jewish people of Israel are firmly behind their leader’s plan, and genuinely believe that Hamas will always be a threat. “Operation Protective Edge” and the Iron Dome defence system are proving themselves effective on a daily basis in the escalating conflict, with an unprecedented level of national support. As has been said before, and must be said again, the people of Israel have the right to defend themselves.

When we think of war, we think of physical battlefields and weapons. With clear demarcations, this kind of war is much easier to decide. But psychological warfare is not so easy to win.  And it spills out into physical conflict. Until the psychological causes are resolved, the physical conflict will continue to play out, resulting in prolonged violence, casualties and inestimable destruction. In a word, Gaza.This battle isn’t being fought on the ground. It exists in the minds and very souls of the people of Gaza.  All they have ever known is “imprisonment” under Israeli guard, and several violent and devastating conflicts. That is what the people of Gaza have to say, under the tutelage and endorsement of Hamas. Hatred is the enemy Israel has always fought. Hamas continues to build insurrection and fuel aggression, rejecting ceasefire attempts over rocket fire, forcing Israel to fire back. And still the citizens of Gaza remain, united in their hatred. As the death toll mounts, and images bodies in rubble fill screens, this conflict has moved from dividing the region; it is dividing the world. For Gaza, there is no peaceful solution.

The Ebola Outbreak – Just One Plane Ride Away?

Ebola. The very word strikes fear in your heart. Swift, deadly, and awful. Nobody wants to die like this. But to date there are more than 670 deaths and 1200 cases in what is now the deadliest Ebola outbreak in modern history. Including doctors and Ebola specialists. Unfortunately, with the crisis in the Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza, is the world too preoccupied to give this crisis the full attention it deserves, now?

It isn’t fear-mongering at this point to say we are one plane load away from everyone’s worst nightmare.  The Washington Post headline reads we should be worried. One flight out of west Africa to North America or Europe, densely populated and entirely unprepared, will land this virus in conditions where it cannot be easily contained nor readily detected. Because the early symptoms are no different than those for any cold or flu, and the current test only discovers Ebola in the bloodstream after it has developed. No CDC officials or highly trained specialists will be ready and waiting by the time the plane lands and Patient zero disembarks. Nobody will know who that patient is until after it is too late, and they have died from Ebola. 

The WHO says we must “step up outbreak containment measures, especially effective contact tracing”. This is easier done in the more sparsely populated and rural locations where Ebola has traditionally manifested itself in Africa. But not when it travels to urban centers. And not when there is massive fear and social stigma attached. It’s a strong deterrent for potentially infected people to even admit they are sick. So they panic, travel hoping to escape their fate, and carry the virus with them. 

This is a disease contained by physical boundaries, quarantine and time. Early detection gives patients a fighting chance but there is no cure, and with a 90% mortality rate, there isn’t a lot of hope for the infected when there is an outbreak. Hope applies to how quickly trained respondents shut down the affected region, identified those who came in contact, and were able to identify the strain and disinfect all contamination. 

The recent death of an American missionary in Lagos, Nigeria, proves the point that this virus can and will evade containment. The Nigerian hospital has been shut down. Since Ebola is not airborne but spreads through bodily fluids, it remains to be seen just how many people were contaminated, and how many deaths will ensue. Lagos is heavily populated, and serves as a scary litmus test for the rest of the world as to what will happen. 

The rest of us can breathe a collective sigh of relief now, but nothing has been done to effectively keep the virus from travelling. What needs to happen is more than just a physical blockade of the African communities, restricting travel in and out. One airline has stopped flights from Liberia, but this is an action all airlines need to have in place now. And there can be no flights from major urban centers in Africa where desperate people fleeing the quarantine zones would head to. Not until the experts can say they have managed to turn things around. And they would say that is far from the case. One doctor I spoke with who worked in Africa for decades explained part of the problem is due to the fact that Ebola has different strains, which is like fighting different strains of the flu. This particular variant is more aggressive, and proving that much more deadly.

There are enough movies out about world pandemics and plagues. Politicians deliberate with scientists and doctors desperately trying to prove there is a problem and that they must act immediately. History has taught us hard lessons with the Bubonic plague and the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918.  We have the knowledge and technology to help us contain this outbreak even if we don’t have a cure. What we don’t have is  – time.

 

 

Will Putin Pay the Price?

For all the violence and conflict currently ongoing, the world agrees on one thing: Putin is responsible for shooting down the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine.  And the world is right. Russian rebels are holding the crash site under their control, limiting access, and clearing bodies and wreckage. Their action is tantamount to a signed confession of their guilt and Putin’s complicity. By now we know that Putin has been establishing, training and supplying the Pro-Russian rebel forces in Ukraine. The hotbeds, like Donetsk, he has seeded and set off.  Tonight’s think-tank on CNN all echoed the same sentiment: Putin is responsible but he will deny any responsibility, as he has done with everything.  Everything is a shell game – he is masterful at saying one thing, but doing another. Putin went on live television to declare that there must be cooperation at the crash site, so that international bodies could go in and do their work unimpeded, that every effort must be made to assist them in that process. The rhetoric was exactly what Putin was supposed to say. He didn’t mean a word of it. Putin feels nothing for those lives lost, those families consumed by grief. Compassion, sorrow, remorse – these are feelings he is not troubled by. Putin is only sorry that this happened because it has the potential to bring him down.  We’ve watched him make his moves very carefully, exercising his full control. But his men in Donetsk made a mistake, a very costly and unforgiveable mistake ,when they shot down a civilian aircraft thinking it was another military target, like the others they had brought down over the past couple of months. The world won’t excuse what they did, and neither will Putin. Some of them will pay with their lives. But what about Putin? All talk has been about economic sanctions. Turn those financial screws even tighter. But really, what has that accomplished? Putin annexed Crimea as he denied he did it; Putin sowed the seeds of insurrection across Ukraine; and now, Putin has men shooting aircraft out of the sky.  He won’t stop until someone actually stops him. Short-term financial hardship, borne on the backs of his countrymen, seems an easy price to pay as he slowly amasses control over the region.  He’s friends with China, with whom Russia shares its dislike of the West. Economic sanctions have done nothing to derail Putin’s progress. Something more needs to happen now that the world spotlight is on him and Putin is scrambling to rework his endgame.  He has made it abundantly clear that he will not change and therefore remains a growing threat to world security. Putin thinks he knows the rules better than the rest of the world, and that he can play by his own. Up to now, that’s because we’ve let him. But if Putin can change the rules to suit his purposes, why can’t everyone else? Maybe it’s time for the United Nations, the EU, a consortium of nations united in one common cause for a brief moment: remove Putin from the international equation.  It could start at the crash site, where Putin has full authority over the rebels but has done nothing to allow a proper investigation to take place. For the bodies of those victims and their families, this is a travesty of justice.  It’s time to call his bluff.  

Israel: When Push Comes to Shove

Over ten days, the world has watched the recent conflict in the middle east go from zero to sixty. But this one isn’t another storm in the region that will blow over. Long-standing issues have finally reached their breaking point, and ground zero is Gaza.

The deciding factor in this matter will be Israel and no one else. The resolution and determination of this small, powerful nation has been expressed through brilliant and decisive military strikes. Israel has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to threats against it, for good reason. One look at a map says it all: Israel is surrounded by enemies, countries that have been havens for terrorists and extremists who wage warfare using their own people as shields. There is no reasoning with jihadists, who willingly martyr themselves in acts of hatred, for whom the lives of women and children are simply part of the arsenal. Hamas serve their own purpose, and not that of the common people they put in harm’s way. The images of dead and injured civilians in Gaza are what they want the world to see. Hamas have told people to remain in the path of the rockets, while Israel gave fair warning to everyone that they should leave for their own safety. And everyone in the region knows the rules Israel plays by. If you attack, expect retaliation.

I am very proud of Canada’s staunch declaration of support for Israel. John Baird could not have said it better. “Hamas started the bloodshed … Hamas can end it.” Hamas fired rockets into Israel knowing what would result. He condemned Hamas as the terrorists they are, and insisted they cease firing rockets at Israel.  After watching this conflict play out for decades, I believe Israel has the right to defend itself as it deems, and to wield a big stick as the only nuclear power in the region. Now they have followed through on their threat to launch a ground invasion with tanks. Israel has fought and won tank battles. In the Yom Kippur war of 1973, nine Arab states plus four north African nations suffered massive losses. A superpower intervention by the USSR and the US influenced a cease-fire with which Israel reluctantly complied.

World leaders have been quick to respond and arrive on scene to help broker peace talks in the hopes of a cease-fire. But the cease-fires have been short-lived, because Hamas refuses to stop, forcing Israel to fire back. The results are devastating, and the loss of life is heart-breaking. But the truth of the matter remains. Hamas has tunnels leading into Israel from Gaza, through which they have sent terrorists. Israel must do what the international community cannot: defend itself by itself. They will destroy the problem at its source, and having warned civilians of what is to come, they will now proceed.

War is an ugly thing; there is nothing humane about killing, no matter what the reason.  Israel makes no apologies for what needs to be done, nor should it have to. Terrorism, whether from Hamas, Al-Quaeda or any source, is a threat to us all, and as history repeatedly bears out, there is no negotiating with terrorists.

Death on Putin’s doorstep

Like everyone, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of all who perished on that Malaysian airliner earlier today. This may sound rhetorical, but truly it was a horrific and needlessly tragic event. Nothing will bring back those lost lives.  I’m sure Vladimir Putin is just as sorry for those deaths, although not in the way we think.

As tensions skyrocketed in Gaza this week, and the world’s eye turned toward the Middle East, Putin was ratcheting up his on-going war with Ukraine. There’s no question that Putin is behind what is going on in the Ukraine. We’ve been watching the chessmaster move his pieces into place over months, fomenting unrest and instability in border regions as he annexed Crimea. Putin works best in the shadows and with the world’s attention diverted to Gaza, Putin must have thought that he would have the opportunity to more actively engage in his quest for the Ukraine. Somehow, he didn’t factor in what happened today.

There was nothing to be gained by his pro-Russian militant forces shooting a civilian airliner out of the sky.  There would be no finger-pointing at the Ukrainian military. Now both sides are denying responsibility. However, Donetsk is a militant stronghold and that missile may as well have had Putin’s prints all over it. The spotlight is back on the region, brighter and harsher than ever. Whether he wants to be or not, Putin will be held accountable for those 295 lives.  This is a step back he didn’t expect. And a wake-up call for the rest of us. Putin’s games are far from over, and they are very deadly.

As a side note, I’d like to hope nobody else has plans to fly over closed airspace in a region that is clearly engaging in hostile tactics, and has been for some time. I don’t know why any civilian airliner was authorized or directed to fly anywhere near that region. No diversion could have been nearly as costly as the lives lost due to this flight plan.