by Dr Garrey Michael Dennie

Today, war rages between Israel and Hamas. A blizzard of bombs lacerates bodies. Screaming bullets tear babies asunder. Fires immolate entire families. And the whole world is transfixed in horror to the sights, sounds, and fury of twenty first century warfare.

In the latest outrage beyond measure, a bomb explodes at a hospital killing 500 people all seeking refuge from the terror of war. Palestinians blame the Israelis. But the Israeli and the American governments, declare that another militant Palestinian organization, Islamic Jihad, fired the rocket that failed and killed Palestinians.

In the fog of war, what is the truth? How can it be known? Who can we trust? Because the war has ignited a scorching debate on who should be blamed for the despair of Palestinians and Israelis seemingly trapped in an endless dance of death. Each side has accused each other of killing babies, the old, the invalid, and non-combatants. Indeed, it is beyond question that Hamas has murdered Israeli babies. And the Israelis’ bombs have killed a thousand Palestinian babies.

Finding moral clarity in this season of death is not easy. To do so, however, we must confront three interlocking questions: (1) What is the cause of this war? (2) How should the combatants conduct the war? And (3) how do we arrive at a just and lasting peace between the combatants?

Unsurprisingly, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can agree on the cause of the war. The Israelis tell us that this war results from the fact that two weeks ago, Hamas gunmen crossed into Israel and murdered at least 1400 Israelis. Palestinians, however, completely reject the Israelis’ explanation that Hamas’ brutal assault against Israeli non-combatants is the cause of the war.

They argue, instead, that Hamas’ murderous attack against Israelis was, in fact, the continuation of a war between Israel and Palestinian organizations that has been going on since 1948.

The Palestinian position stems from the fact that the modern state of Israel only came into existence 75 years ago as a creation of the United Nations. The UN sought to offer a permanent home to Jews after Hitler’s Germany murdered six million Jews in a most brutal genocidal campaign designed to eliminate the Jews from the face of the planet.

The Jewish genocide was not the first genocide in the history of humanity. In fact, that starting point resided right here in the Caribbean. Indeed, St Vincent and the Grenadines too, was a site of genocide. However, the Jewish genocide was the first to produce a paroxysm of guilt by those who enabled the genocide and those who committed the genocide. Hence, to assuage their

conscience from their complicity in an act of unbounded evil, Europeans and Americans seized lands from the Palestinians and created the modern state of Israel. Palestinians had to pay for the crimes of Germany.

This was a momentous decision. It restored the Jewish people to an historic homeland after 2700 years of exile. This act of reparations was without precedent. But for the next 75 years it also ignited a series of wars and violent confrontations between the Israelis and the Palestinians over their fate on this contested land.

In these wars the Israelis have been immensely successful. Backed by the enormous military might of the United States, successive Israeli governments have used their power to seize more and more lands from the Palestinians, imposed upon them second class status within Israel itself, and in today’s current dispensation, Israel sits as an occupying force over Palestinian lives in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That is, in fact, the judgement of the United Nations.

Seen through these lenses, Hamas’ attack against Israel is the latest Palestinian response to an ongoing conflict that is 75 years old. Israel cannot be allowed to forget this history. But the Palestinians must recognize that Israel’s declaration of war today is a direct response to the fact that Hamas entered Israel, murdered Israeli citizens including babies, and mutilated their dead. These are actions utterly bereft of conscience, a savagery that has shaken Israel to its foundations. But Israel’s bombing campaign has flattened Palestinian cities, uprooted one million people from their homes, denied food, fuel, and water to two million people, and killed thousands including babies. These actions defile the laws of war.

We cannot have a preferred war crime or a preferred war criminal. We can never condone the killing of a Palestinian baby or an Israeli baby. This is depravity beyond relief, the absolute abyss of inhumanity. It desecrates everything that makes us human. The Palestinians have a right to justice. And Israel has a right to security. A two-state solution is the only way to accomplish this. And they can and must do so without killing babies.