Are You As Confused As I Was About the Israel-Gaza Conflict?

Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Grief to Growth podcast. Today we're going to shift gears a little bit to focus on an area of the world that history has weighed down by a series of heartbreaking events, and that's Gaza and Israel. We'll look at what it is, who controls it, what's life like for the people living there? Now, I know this topic doesn't directly relate to our usual discussions about grief and loss, but I think the understanding of human suffering and complexity does play into our greater understanding of life, death and what lies beyond. So let's get into it.

I want to begin by making this very clear Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies the terror that Hamas rained down on Israel last weekend. It was subhuman behavior and it should never be condoned or tolerated. Israel has a right to exist, the Israeli people have a right to exist and they have a right to live in peace. So to make that very clear, this is not a both sides things, but if you wonder, like I did, what causes people to do such things, what will cause Hamas to do such things, you have to understand the history of the Palestinian people and you have to understand the history of Gaza and have to admit it's something I didn't know much about until pretty recently. So from the Israeli side, from the Jewish side, we've all learned, I've known for a long time that Israel has been, or the Jews have been, beaten up as a people for millennia. They've always been. They've been attacked by many people. Israel was formed because of the Holocaust. That's where the state of Israel comes from in 1948. As a country, it's relatively new, being only 75 years old, and Israelis again have a right to live in peace and they see this as an existential threat, which it is. But when it gets back to the Palestinian people, they are a people without a country, they're people without resources.

The people in Gaza are living in what's essentially an open air, 150 square foot, 150 square mile prison. It's 26 by five miles. It's surrounded on one side by the sea, on the south by Egypt and on the other sides, the east and the north, by Israel. It's a small, of course, but densely populated region. It's not a country. It's referred to as a territory there's, it's basically cut off from the rest of the world by fences the Israelis have have put up around it. So imagine living in that space, two million people and one of the most densely populated places on earth and half of its population is below the age of 19, meaning they are children. So this high density is a primary reason for when Israel attacks there's so many civilian casualties. The fighters from Amas and the innocent citizens are literally living side by side and the civilian population is nowhere to go.

The history of Gaza and the Palestinian people it's long, it's complicated, it's violent and it's tragic. Now I was wondering why don't the Egyptians help the Palestinians, the Gaza people, the Palestinians where they take them in? I mean, it borders Egypt. Well, egypt has its own economical and political problems and Hamas is actually an offshoot, and Hamas is the government of Gaza. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt has banned, and Egypt is not really looking to take in 2 million refugees, and that's what might happen if they actually open that border up. So Egypt has its own reason for wanting to keep the Palestinian people and Gaza out.

Before 1948, gaza was a part of Palestine under British colonial rule. In 1948, as I said earlier, israel was created. And when Israel was created, more than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. So this sounds familiar, right? We created Israel, which was great, to protect the Jews and to give them a homeland, but then these Palestinians were displaced. So then Gaza fell under Egyptian control during that time, and that's a situation that lasted for about two decades, from 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel won against its Arab neighbors. And when Israel won that war, it occupied land, including Gaza and the West Bank.

So let's fast forward to 2005. So Israel is occupying Gaza, the Palestinian people are still living there, and in 2005, israel decided to pull out thousands of settlers and military forces from Gaza, leaving the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza. But about a year later, hamas, the militant group, won elections and it effectively took control. So that was in 2007. 2007, 16 years ago, was the last time there were elections in Gaza. And so Hamas, this militant group, this offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, this terrorist group, has effectively been holding the Palestinian people in Gaza captive since then.

So, given the rise of Hamas, israel implemented this land, air and sea blockade on Gaza in 2007. So Gaza is under a blockade. Egypt also enforces this blockade Now. Israel, of course, says this is necessary for the security of its citizens against Hamas attacks, and Hamas continually attacks Israel. However, entities like the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch have called the blockade illegal, going even so far as to say that it makes Gaza a quote open air prison.

So, of course, in the last week or so since the crazy Hamas attacks, israel has tightened the blockade even more, leading to really dire living conditions. Now, as of this week, food, power and water were cut off. The power plants in Gaza run on diesel. Diesel was cut off, so Gaza has no power now. No power, no food and no water going in Around 95% of Gaza's population. This is before this blockade got even tightened. Around 95% of the Gaza population does not have access to clean water. 46% of the population is unemployed. The UN estimates that 80% of the people there rely on international aid to survive. These are the normal living conditions in Gaza, even before what's going on right now.

Now, this week it was really interesting to me an Israeli official warned the Palestinian citizens in Gaza to get out. Later the Israeli government clarified, saying they were not telling people to flee. And what Israel does when they're getting ready to bomb Gaza or to break strikes they will announce in Arabic where they're going to strike, or they'll fire warnings and or they will fire warning shots so people can move. But it's really hard for people to move. They can't move out of Gaza right now because you have nowhere, nowhere to go. So in the last week or so, since the attacks from Hamas, approximately 200,000 people have fled their homes and Gaza now. Imagine 200,000 people. That's 10% of the population. But where do they go? Given the physical straits, constraints and the blockade, including the border with Egypt, there's nowhere for them to go to find safety. They're essentially boxed in by powerful forces and they're being burdened by this violent history.

Now the reason I had to talk about this when I was a child, I remember watching the images of Vietnam war on TV and I wondered what kind of world is I'm living in. I never understood people deliberately killing each other. And as I watched and I'm watching to see property destroyed and every time I see this it breaks my heart I was looking at the images today of what's going on in Gaza. What's happened, you know, buildings being flattened and I imagine not imagine. I think about people Building these buildings and spending time and money and effort to build them and they destroyed in an instant.

Think about the children that are living in terror on both sides, the children in Israel who have been terrorized by what Hamas has done, and, in turn, the children in Gaza that are being terrorized by Israel's defense or retaliation. We have to find a situation to this, to have to find a solution to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. The world is turned is back. For for too long, we've told the Palestinian people just hold on and keep living the way they're living, and they've turned to. Unfortunately, a Violent extremist group like Hamas, who is a, carried out this attack on Israel and Israel feels like it has to defend itself, and we're in the situation that's bad and only going to get worse. We're over 2500 people killed, including on both sides right now, and I'm afraid this humanitarian crisis is going to happen in Gaza. It's going to be just horrific.

So I want to thank you for listening to this special episode. I'm sorry to bring up such a downer, but if you're like me and you want to know more about what's going on, understanding, I want to give you a real quick primer on that. We'll return to our regular Programming the next time, but I feel like this is something I had to say, so the next time. This is Brian signing off. Take care and be well.