Terrorism and 'Humane' Warfare

Everyone recently has been throwing around the terms of terorism and terrorists and rules of 'humane’ warfare as embodied in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. ? The term ‘humane’ warfare is an oxymoron to begin with and in fact has never occurred. ?Just look at the Ukraine and Vietnam where ‘civilians’ were and are being attacked as part of broader military aims. ?So much for Russian and US ‘humanitarian’ wars. ?As far as embargoes and armed borders - remember the Iron Curtain, Berlin Wall? ?Or the border between North and South Korea, or between Pakistan and India? ?Two states at war (even if ‘cold’) do not allow for safe passage routinely of people and certainly don’t support economic services to assist the other side. ??

And what is terorism? ?It is a form of warfare designed to shock the other side into surrender and submission or at a minimum to gain some advantage. ?The earliest exponents were the Assyrians from what is now northern Iraq. ?Romans used terror, especially in crushing the Judean revolts. ?Mongols also used terror as a means of war - killing hundred of thousands in Baghdad back in the 13th century for example to show the punishment for not submitting. ?Nazi Germany routinely used terror to conquer and subjugate occupied countries. ?The Mafia uses terror to maintain itself as do Mexican drug cartels. ?The PLO, Red Army faction, Brigado Russo and Baader Meinhof gangs of the 1970’s used terror as a political messaging tactic. ? Al Qaida and ISIS use terror tactics to incite ‘jihad’ among the broader Muslim population and cow populations they may exert control over. ?Hamas and Hezbollah, as popular parties of their respective populations use terroristic tactics in their battles with perceived foes. ? While Hezbollah represents only a segment of the Lebanese population, Hamas has both full governmental and military authority in Gaza. ?Their armed forces are an army, paid, trained, equipped with a full arsenal of standardized weapons and under command and control of a structured military authority with standardized levels of authority and promotions up the ranks. ? The surprise raid they planned and executed under approval of seniormost authorities that was conducted on October 7 was no different than the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan or the surprise attacks on Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, etc by Nazi Germany. ?Those actions led to formal declarations of war by the victim states and their allies. ? Total embargoes of economic transactions between the parties at war ensued, and no consideration of ‘innocent civilians’ were ever made. ?Time for US high schools and universities to teach real history.

To simply excuse Hamas as just responding to Israeli ‘provocations’ ignores their fundamental charter of 1988 that calls for the complete annihilation of Israel and its Jewish population by any means necessary. ? To support Hamas, and it has the support of the majority of Gaza’s population, is to ratify their charter. {it can be found here at ?https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)

And as long as such a charter stands (the PLO differs very little in that respect as President Abbas’s comments reveal) the basis for a two-state solution is impossible. ?It requires both parties the recognize and respect the rights and needs of the other. ? The pariah status of descendants of the former residents of what is now Israel among their Arab brethren shows they’ve not even earned respect from their ‘friends’, much less their ‘enemies’. ? They were never welcomed in the neighboring Arab lands even as an equal number of Jews were expelled from those lands and welcomed into Israel, thereby ceasing to be refugees in short order. ? UNRWA was to have been a temporary sop for the rejectionist Arab world to ‘handle’ the matter but has grown to become a monstrosity for perpetuating the pariah-hood of a people.