Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
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I talked to an Israeli (we were both vacationing in Vancouver, BC). There never was a feeling of invulnerability, but rather of containment and a tolerable level. Hamas would lob some rockets over the border, the Iron Dome would shoot them down, maybe some would get through. You learn to live with a certain amount of risk.
What this attack shattered was the feeling that Hamas is a threat that could simply be managed and ignored. It should also shatter the illusion that continued mistreatment of the Palestinian is a viable way forward. Unfortunately, I think the Israeli leadership will only take the first lesson.
I was referring to the propaganda we were fed about Israel during the Cold War - you can still see it in a lot of right-wing narratives about Israel.
Here in South Africa, we call it “laager mentality” - in the US, wars fade into the background, but in places like Israel (and Apartheid-South Africa) the “open-ended-war-with-no-end-in-sight” cannot fade into the background. And, eventually, it leads to… consequences.
It’s not Hamas - it’s Palestinians. Before Hamas it was the PLO, and if Israel (somehow) neutralises Hamas there will be another “big bad” Israelis will have to live in fear of. Israelis know that - they just prefer referring to Hamas to deflect from the fact that their colonial war has always been against the entirety of Palestinians.
But yes… this attack has most definitely shattered the idea of “containment and a tolerable level.”
A colonialist project can only act like a colonialist project - if it doesn’t, the colonialist state must cease to exist in it’s current form and become something else.