On Paper, It's Easy to Have All the Answers

An NYT writer to the editor advises:

Amid the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, the U.S. is urging Israel to scale back its military operations. Britain and Germany are calling for a sustainable cease-fire.  

Israel can inform the international community that it will accept a cease-fire in Gaza under the following two conditions:  

1) All of the hostages must be released before a cease-fire can begin.  

2) The purpose of the cease-fire will be to negotiate the disarmament of Hamas and its expulsion from Gaza.  After both conditions have been satisfied, the cease-fire will become sustainable. 

At that time, the U.S., the European Union, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Arab League and Israel can begin to negotiate the future governance and reconstruction of Gaza.  

I know, I know... the prevailing narrative is that the United States and the international community will rebuild Gaza once Israel is done pummelling their neighbor... What if, Israel is made to understand they will clean up their own messes and live in the community they create?

It feels good to destroy perhaps but don't they understand the animosity created by continually killing kids?

America has purchased the Iron Dome and made Israel's borders more secure than our own now.  It's time to help Israel gain independence and begin to fund its own defense, with private dollars from Jewish people worldwide who wish to contribute, but no more end runs around Congress with the executve branch unofficially declaring war worldwide by financing other country's defensive and offensive needs, and land grabs too.

The thing is, if you don't like what Russia is doing to Ukraine, how can you justify backing the religious extremists in Israel who have been seizing more and more lands for "their own"?  America should have cut the religious extremists off long long ago, in our own Republican party and in Israel.

The future is secular, with room for private people to freely practic their religions in pluralistic countries.  Religious states have gone the way of America's 1800s Native American displacement and removal policies:  we see them for the shameful crimes committed against humanity, and we are still reconciling the "sins of the White Father" who honestly believed that God wanted them to take lands for themselves.

Those days are gone, friends.  Wise up.  What works on paper doesn't play in the real world today.  Be smarter if you want to survive and live independent lives of peace.  Worship God, not the gun.  Most strong men are hypocrites who don't follow the laws they should be seeking to enforce in the name of justice for everyday people.

Hopefully 2024 will be a learning year for those busy dropping knowledge and never taking the time to understand how the world works past the grabbing for posterity part...