The banality of evil, or FAFO

This past weekend, 7-October-2023 until this writing on 9-October-2023, has seen a horrific pogrom perpetrated against Israelis by a terrorist organization, Hamas.  During the pogrom, we saw images of people celebrating the events.  Celebrating murder and mayhem.  Celebrating rape, decapitation, torture.  Celebrating killing families.

Sweets were handed out.  Joyful singing and dancing.  I will not link to any of those disgusting videos.

Now, this morning, I am seeing others posting on Twitter/X that they have family that doesn't support Hamas in Gaza, and they should be spared.  I saw video of very unhappy people running around ruins in Gaza, complaining about the very initial stages of a response.

I've got so many conflicting emotions at this point.  First off, a majority of the people, the ordinary people in Gaza, seem to support what happened, what their political leaders encouraged to happen.  They supported mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping.  They showed their support.

And now their relatives seem to think that we should feel for them, for what is about to happen to them.

I'm sorry.  I don't.  

Because there never were people who stood up and challenged the leadership in Gaza, never held them to account for wasting all the donated money on armaments and warfare, or enriching themselves ... they are, to a degree, complicit, in what happened.  Really.  Not unlike the German people, while maybe not Nazis themselves during WWII, went along with the program.

As with the German population of the time (and, well, frankly, the rest of Europe), they didn't protest, assisted with and often times celebrated the mission of industrial scale genocide.  Sure, there were a few who had the moral compass to recognize the evil that was being done in their name.  But not many.

The same is true in Gaza.  And as we've seen in heartbreaking videos, across the middle eastern world.  And in leftist strongholds across the western world.

The people who support this, who celebrate this, who do not stand up against this, who do not attempt to degrade the ability to commit atrocities in their name, these people have no moral high ground to stand on.  Their relatives, rightly concerned with their well being didn't speak up on Saturday when they had the chance.  Or Sunday.

Only after it became apparent of the scale of the response, which has not even begun yet, did the crocodile tears flow, the rending of garments, the wailing.  

This acceptance of evil in your name is atrocious.  This celebration of murder, torture and rape is so beyond terrible it cannot be described by words just yet.  Though I can think of a few that could easily become standards for describing what the Gazan terrorists did to innocent civilians, elderly, babies, mothers, etc.

They Gazafied them.  There.  I said it.

Now, as Israel gathers its forces to obliterate Hamas, to completely remove them from the planet, are the calls for truce coming out, from those complicit in the terrorists actions.  At some point, Israel will have to deal with the collaborators.  For now, there will be salting of the earth.  A deterrence will be created.

And many, many people in Gaza are going to die.  This makes me very sad.  They do not have to die.  They could turn on Hamas, kill or eject them, and pacify.  I don't think that will happen, not because they don't have the means to do so, but because they implicitly support Hamas.

As Golda Meir, former wartime PM of Israel wrote

“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

This tends to make those complicit with the terrorism very upset.  Largely because it is true.  

Hamas just fucked around.

Gaza, as a whole, is about to find out.  This is going to involve a horrific scale bloodletting.  

Israel did its duty by warning Gazan's to leave while they can.  Israel has no choice but to re-establish a convincing deterrence that gives those who would attack Israel, some serious pause on the cost of such actions.  I would not expect a ceasefire within the next few months.

Egypt should open its border to allow the innocent to flee to northern Sinai, though given the banality of the evil within Gaza, I am not sure how one would determine who is innocent, who has not cheered on, if not directly opposed Hamas.

Again, all of this, every last bit, the terrorism, the rapes, the murders, the kidnapping, and soon the obliteration of Hamas and likely most of Gaza, is 1000% at the feet of those who perpetrated this act, supported this act, welcomed the outcome.

For those who do not remember, In 1972 Palestinians kidnaped, tortured, and murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics.  In the subsequent years, the planners and executors were hunted down and killed.

What the Palestinians have done this time is well over 100x worse purely in body count terms.  I would not expect Hamas leadership in Gaza, or abroad, to have long and peaceful lives.  

They brought this on themselves.  They allowed their people to be collateral damage to "own" the Israelis.  They fucked around.

Payback is going to be a real bitch.