I don’t have any idea what the hell can be done about the current iteration of the war between Israel and Hamas. Americans like to pick sides during a war, and assign “good guys” and “bad guys,” and as near as I can tell this is a situation where both sides gave up any pretense to the moral high ground quite a while ago. It’s bad guys all the way down. I have said in the past, both in this space and others, that any time I see an unarmed person throwing a rock at a tank, my general inclination is to support the person throwing the rock. And Israel has operated as a de facto apartheid state for most of its existence, and particularly so since fucking Netanyahu came into power. I believe all of that is true, and I believe that both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist. But the Palestinians are controlled by fucking lunatics too, and I refuse to hold people who murder and kidnap civilians at a fucking music festival up as someone who should be supported. I have said before, and I think I still believe this, that Palestine’s only chance at ever actually achieving a two-state solution is to bring forth a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King. The problem is that the hardliners would kill him before the world found out he existed. The closest Israel can claim is Yitzhak Rabin, and he was assassinated by an Israeli.

Neither side wants peace. I’m entirely willing to believe that the people of both Israel and Palestine want peace, and the Palestinian people have absolutely and undeniably gotten the short end of the stick here; I probably can’t honestly say that I understand their rage, having never had to live under apartheid, but I’m at least willing to try. But none of their leaders want peace right now, and there isn’t going to be peace until that changes. Neither side really believes in the other’s right to exist. That’s not something you can really find a compromise on. Palestine will continue to have a steady supply of hopeless, angry young men for as long as Israel denies their right to live freely, and the Israeli government will accept nothing short of full second-class, boot-on-their-necks subjugation for the Palestinians, which guarantees that supply of hopeless, angry young men will never end.

This will end in genocide, eventually. It’s close enough as it is, but that’s where it’s headed. Again.