The Suffering of Gaza

Why do they suffer, and what should we do about it?

The world has a lot of expressed antisemitism these days. I have a feeling its voice is outsized, honestly; it's always been there, but lately people are driven to scream their antisemitism loudly and it's receiving a lot of attention, amplified partially by the suffering of Gazans that Hamas blames on Jews.

It's a lot to unpack, unfortunately. There's no doubt that Gazans are suffering. The questions are "why?," and "what can we do about it?"

Why Are the Gazans Suffering?

The short version is, unfortunately, Hamas. The longer version is even more unfortunate: the Palestinians themselves. The truth is even more unfortunate: it's just reality, amplified by every fact of their existence, some voluntary, some involuntary. 

Suffering is a part of life, in the end. This is a truth that many seem to struggle with these days, in all walks of life, and I really wish that every one of us had an advisor who would remind us that a life without suffering is impossible.

In part, a life without suffering is impossible because the definition of “suffering” is dependent on individual perspectives. This thought is borrowed, but it’s spot-on: suffering is contrast. I “suffer” if I prefer one condition to another, regardless of whether the conditions are starvation against a time of plenty, or a beginner’s ukulele compared to a Gibson ES-355.

The real questions here are the merit of the suffering, the cause of the suffering, and what we do about it and how we let it affect us. A stoic has the perspective of letting it all wash past him or her; others react as if any such suffering is a personal affront.

Let's walk through the sources of suffering for Gaza, though, and we'll start with simple causes ("the short version") and keep going, because we're trying to be honest: I'm trying to be honest as a writer, and if you're not trying to be honest as a reader, well, that's on you: I don't judge much, and you have to live with yourself, whatever that means. The lies you tell yourself are up to you.

The Most Wrong Version of Gazan Suffering

"It's Israel's fault." This is in quotes, because it's not correct. It has some indirect aspect of truth to it, but it presumes a lot of really faulty thinking. We'll circle back to this after a few major points and a bunch of paragraphs, but let's table it for now, because walking through it would mean walking through these other points anyway.

A Simple Version of Gaza's Suffering

The simplest version of the reason for Gaza's suffering is Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization whose original charter was a genocidal document screaming for the simple destruction of Israel and all Jews, with Israel's destruction coming first and a sort of victory lap for Islam comes with the destruction of every Jew. They revised the document a while back to remove some of the worst of the language such that they qualified for UN aid without too much of a sense of shame, but then also retained an endorsement of the PLO charter, which can't be revised since the PLO itself is defunct as an organization.

The PLO charter retained the genocidal language and intent that Hamas copied for its first charter, so endorsing the PLO charter means the Hamas charter retains - indirectly - the intention of genocide and destruction. But since it's indirect, it's okay, right?

It is not okay. But the UN still turns a blind eye, because it's apparently "okay enough" to just sort of put air quotes around "we want to destroy Israel" and "we long for the death of every last Jew." After all, launching thousands of rockets, year after year, at Israeli citizens is just something that happens between neighboring parties, and hardly signifies that calls for the death of everyone being targeted should be taken seriously, right? (In case you’re blind, deaf, stupid, or all three, this prior sentence is sarcasm. Hamas launching thousands of rockets is absolutely more evidence that they’re intent on genocide, and suggesting otherwise is lying to yourself and everyone around you.)

On October 7, Hamas leveled up and attacked Israel more harshly than usual. They caused 5000 casualties, including 1200 or so deaths, along the way raping entire families (including raping children in front of their parents), brutally maiming their victims (in one case slicing the breast off of a woman while raping her and passing it back and forth like some hellish trophy), mutilating corpses, parading them through the streets to mass celebrations... it's war, yes, but it was inhumane even for war. And it wasn't something that Hamas alone participated in: reporters and UN officials were along for the ride, documenting and participating in the attack.

They also took a number of hostages: men, women, children. I hate writing this paragraph, because it minimizes the horror to a degree that it’s just words on a screen somewhere. This was damnation for the hostages, and remains so even for the ones who’ve been returned, and is not diminished in any way for the hostages Hamas still has… somewhere in its grasp.

None of this is an idle claim. They filmed much of it. It's been preserved in multiple places, by people who celebrated it and by those who recorded it to remind our future selves of what horrors of which mankind is capable. If you're brave, you can see it: https://saturday-october-seven.com/. (This is a pro-Israel site, but the videos were preserved by pro-Gaza sites as well, like gory trophies.) If you're afraid to watch, I understand. I've watched very little myself; I've seen enough horror already in my life. But if you're afraid to watch it but still angry at Israel, well, in that case, yes, you should watch it and consider the subject of your anger.

Some of the hostages (over half, I understand, but numbers are hard to come by since Hamas won't release details - one of the sticking points in their constant cries for ceasefire) have been returned: some in better condition than others. I have heard that many of them endured constant rapes while in captivity. I don't know if the fog of war applies to these details: one of the earliest rumors of the October 7 attack was that Hamas beheaded babies and burned them, and while I have heard that at least one baby was decapitated, and multiple were burned, I'm not sure that the full horror was perpetrated as suggested: I'm also not sure it matters. At some point, "more horrible" no longer applies, yet the fog of war remains.

The fog of war is being used by antisemites, too: the claim of a particular horror is made by people who believe it to be true, often encouraged by the barbarism of the people they accuse, yet the horror is unproven, possibly later disproven - i.e., on October 8, the rumor spread like wildfire that Hamas raped babies, then burned the bodies, then beheaded them, perhaps in different orders. These rumors were, as far as I am aware, untrue: they killed babies, they burned babies' bodies, yes, but to do all three was apparently a bit beyond the pale for them (how moral they are, yes?) - and the claim was used to say "See how Jews lie to make Hamas look evil! They only raped or burned or decapitated, not all three, so Hamas are the good guys."

Anything to support the claim that Jews are evil, I suppose… and I guess on some level I’m grateful that there’s a “beyond the pale” for these jerks.

October 7 was an act of war. Israel had no choice, no matter what you or I or anyone else thinks, but to retaliate in military fashion.

Hamas is not a functioning military: they use military structures, they use military weapons, they play-act at being a real military while advocating that their fighters not wear identifiable uniforms (which is, by the way, a war crime), they hide among civilians as part of their strategy (another war crime), they fire upon civilians (war crime!) from protected areas like schools, mosques, hospitals (war crimes, all, and acts that remove protected status from those buildings).

Hamas has no way to resist an actual, engaged, superior military force. And guess what Israel has? ... here, I'll help: an actual, engaged, superior military force.

Hamas' public strategy of hiding among its civilians - which, by the way, are civilians by Israel's reckoning and not Hamas', thanks to the PLO charter that Hamas "wholly endorses" - means that Israel ends up chasing Hamas among Gazan civilians. Hamas used billions of UN aid to build a tunnel network under Gaza for Hamas' use only - they don't let their people in, preferring to expose them to Israeli attacks - but the result is that the Israeli Defense Forces have to undergo urban warfare, chasing Hamas among the Gazan people. Ordinarily, one would expect the casualty count to be horrific - and it is - but while it's easy to look at 30000+ casualties (reported by Hamas, who somehow knows exact numbers of civilian casualties moments after an event, but has no idea how many hostages it holds, and yet still brags about how it manipulates its audience by lying directly to it) and be horrified at the human cost, the truth is that it could be much worse.

And if the IDF used the strategies used by every other military on the planet, it would be much worse. The typical ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties is 9:1 - nine civilians for every military casualty. Estimates for the IDF are under two to one, which is still ugly to read, but indicates that the IDF is being incredibly efficient in pursuing its specific military targets.

Yet it's inescapable: Gazans are still dying.

The Slightly More Realistic Explanation of Gazan Suffering

It's easy to blame Hamas for Gazan suffering, because Hamas is directly exposing its civilian population to harm, whether that harm is external (i.e., Israeli munitions catching civilians in the crossfire) or internal (where Hamas harms its civilians directly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, perhaps because those citizens want aid resources that Hamas wants for itself.)

The problem is, though, that Hamas isn't an externalized power. It's not like Israel, or Iran, or Jordan, or Egypt said "Hey, let's install Hamas as the government in Gaza."

Egypt and Jordan wouldn't have done so even if they had the power - both countries hate Hamas with passion, because Hamas hates those countries - it just so happens that Hamas hates those countries a lot less than it hates Israel. With that said, Jordan took in Palestinian refugees, who paid Jordan back by assassinating its prime minister and rebelling against its king; Jordan has no love for Palestinians as a result. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is allied with Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood rebelled against Egypt as well.

Gaza elected Hamas to build its government. Hamas immediately suspended elections and purged itself of its competition (mostly), and has remained in power ever since... with an approval rating among Gazans ranging from 67% to 80%.

So while Hamas is directly responsible for the war with Israel - which would not be taking place had Hamas not committed a direct and intolerable act of war on Simchat Torah, October 7 2023 - the fact remains that Hamas was able to commit an act of war as the government of Gaza because the Gazan Palestinians elected them. Gaza elected a malicious government, and the government acted with malice; why would anyone, including the Gazans themselves, be surprised?

Even though the youth of Gaza did not elect Hamas, their parents did - and they are responsible, and they've educated their youth to be non-critical of Hamas, as well. (See that approval rating.) It's possible that the average Gazan doesn't have the same opinion the polls show, but we have no better information available, and what's more, Gazans are able to have contact with the IDF - if they wanted to give the locations of Israeli hostages to the IDF, they could do so.

And they haven't, by and large. They've chosen to ally themselves with Hamas, the government that brought the wrath of a vastly superior military power on their heads, and they've remained steadfast - and thus, the continued wrath of their opponent is deserved.

What Israel Has To Do With Gazan Suffering

I promised I'd circle back around to Israel, and here it is.

Israel is the "tip of the spear" for Gazan suffering, when it comes down to it: it's the anvil that Hamas is hammering, with Gaza's civilians caught in the middle, sort of. (See the prior section: those civilians put themselves in this position.)

Israel's been tolerating Hamas for decades now, in multiple ways. It's been suggested (rather blatantly, and accurately) that Hamas is the enemy Netanyahu prefers, politically speaking, because they're so cartoonish, and it gives him an easy lever to remain in power. Hamas then obliges Netanyahu, because they both get to demonize their enemy. Yet this isn't the same as them being convenient allies: Hamas would gladly execute Netanyahu if they had the opportunity.

Israel also tolerates Hamas militarily: the Iron Dome is a wonder of technology, shooting down an amazing percentage of Hamas' incoming rockets (often targeted at nonmilitary targets, yet another war crime that the world excuses, because why not?) The Iron Dome is a purely defensive system: it does not attack. It's not an offensive mechanism.

This tolerance gave Hamas an outsized expectation of what they could do: they'd be able to harm an Israeli here and there (as they've done for years, as the Iron Dome and other defenses aren't perfect) and Israel would rattle its saber and life would go on as usual.

October 7 was (apparently) meant to be a provocation, but only to a certain degree: it was apparently supposed to incite an "outsized response" by Israel, such that other Muslim countries and organizations were outraged enough to retaliate against Israel, creating a regional war reminiscent of the Six-Day War, which a number of countries attacked Israel at once (and got beaten soundly, but surely the eighth go-round would have a different outcome.)

Instead, Hamas succeeded beyond its wildest imaginings in the short-term - killing many, and performing a number of atrocities that are... difficult to defend. It's one thing to look at a historical antagonism between Israel and Gaza (such that it is, I suppose, given Gaza's condition as a temporary region with its own government, and not as an actual state) and say that acts of aggression back and forth are natural outgrowths of that antagonism; it's another to look at murder and rape in front of family members to amplify suffering, and the indiscriminate taking of hostages, and defend those acts as ... well... anything.

Those acts are declared as war crimes, and for good reason.

The Result of All This Suffering

What we see as a result of all of this is... well, it depends on where we look. In the general sense, I think (and hope) that most people are sane: ask a person on the street if they support Gaza, and the result might be "Sure, why not?," but add details and context of the rapes and murders, and defense gets a lot more sparse.. or more violent.

After all, few among us would say "It's okay to rape someone," no matter what the posited circumstances are. If you're being attacked, you don't get to rape your attacker in retaliation. There's a rational response to aggression in whatever form you choose to perceive it, but rapes, and murders, and desecration of corpses, and mutilation of the living aren't among them, unless you're a barbarian or you've chosen to blind yourself because of the identities of victims of the crimes.

On social media, however, where outlier voices are amplified, you see a lot of the more virulent response: voices are encouraged to be more outrageous, less restrained, without consideration: you go for the punchy, pithy quote that inspires others to respond, rather than contributing wisdom to the world.

What Can We Do About This Suffering?

There are a lot of answers here.

Unless we’re Israeli or Gazan ourselves, the answer is “not a lot.” Hamas chooses to amplify the suffering of the Gazan people by retaining the hostages it took, and by insisting on the destruction of Israel as a long-term goal, and by even insisting that any ceasefire is temporary; our best play as outside observers is to resist any manipulation by Hamas and its willing tools online, and to remind all of them that Hamas is the key to the conflict: when Hamas surrenders or ceases to exist, the suffering from the war ends. Immediately.

Asking Israel to reduce Palestinian suffering is a lost cause even on the surface. Israel did not start this. Israel’s pursuit of peace can only be expressed as a military engagement: if anything, Israel could reduce Gaza’s suffering by being more harsh, but I imagine few would enjoy such a response. Israel has no choices here: a short-term ceasefire without the result being a destruction of Hamas only leads to more Israeli deaths, and asking a country to pursue a course of action that kills its citizens is asking that country to commit suicide.

This is foolishness and, without putting too fine a point on it, absolute evil. No.

The answer to all of the suffering - if we’re trying to reduce it, I suppose - is to recognize that Palestinians (or “Gazans”) have agency and always have. It was mentioned earlier in one of the causes of their suffering: it’s the choices they made to elect Hamas, to hate Israel more than they love life, to sacrifice their children to a dream of a world in which others cannot exist: they chose to hate the agency of other groups, so they sacrifice their own agency to their hatred.