To My Friends and Loved Ones, No one ever wants to wake up on a Saturday morning to a thousand dead Jews in the street. Anywhere. SHAME! I still have not been able to process this and I still can’t believe this is the world I live in. I was born 8+ years after the Holocaust. And now I sit and wait for the mass slaughter of Palestinians, a Semitic tribe, cousins to Jews.
Thanks, Michael. There is a different aspect to this story that I believe needs to be mentioned. The simple recipe for bringing down powerful nations and empires is to enrage them. When Gavrilo Princip shot crown prince Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the Austrian empire had hundreds of options for dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, they chose war, and the rest is history. Likewise, 9/11 was a horrible terrorist attack, but the main damage it did to the USA was self-inflicted. Israel now seems to be repeating the mistakes of previous empires. Nobody is denying Israel's right to defend itself, but unfortunately it failed to do so October 7th. Nobody denies Israel the right to punish the perpetrators of the horrific terrorist attack. However, killing innocent civilians as an act of revenge is madness.
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”
Thank you for speaking out...the oppressed became the oppressors. Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic. Israelis do not have a right to Palestinians lands and their property. Yet we have stood silently on the sidelines for no less than 7 decades while Israel continued to overrun and expand beyond what was given to them in 1948. That gift was at the hands of Great Britain and the US who wanted to break up the last of the Ottoman Empire and they found Zionism to be a very convenient friend. Every action has a reaction. We’ve allowed Israel to marginalize and violently expel Palestinians from their homes with no retribution from the U.S. since 1967. We’re been supporting an apartheid state and now we’re supporting genocide. Where is our humanity?
I suspect Netanyahu KNEW but decided not to respond because he saw a chance maybe to put a stop to the masses of objections to his policies? I think also that this is a geopolitical war between Russia China Iran and the USA, being enacted in Ukraine and now in The Gaza Strip!
There is zero will to find the correct solution viz the Palestinians. We’re only here because the Brits made absolutely sure the path forward for the two tribes in that area was going to be bloody. The Brits did the same in India. Once the writing on the wall was obvious, the retreat by the Brits made damned sure peace was not obtainable.
I’m a staunch pacifist. These days for every child killed in any “war” hundreds of terrorists will be the result.
There’s no sides here but one: humanity.
HATE
it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.
Michael. Thank you for that article and the time you took to pen these words. To make things more obvious for some people who see one thing and infer another, your words were not in favor of any one party but in favor of non-violence in general. You provided reasons for Israel not to go on a revenge campaign but rather to simply defend itself. Unfortunately, the warmongers in this world, as you so rightly pointed out, are never satisfied with that ideology. We are fast moving towards a sorry end, as human race I meant. God help us all.
You seem to “lump” “ALL PALESTINIANS” with HAMAS. The Israelis are NOT trying to exterminate the Palestinians off the earth. Hamas has relentlessly tried to do this to the Israelis and the Israelis are targeting HAMAS. Hamas use humans (their own, and now their more than 150 hostages) as human shields. Hamas uses hospitals and schools as places where they hide their weapons and themselves. Hamas BEGAN THIS TRAGEDY by swooping in on gliders and busting through fences,indiscriminately killing any and ALL JEWS they could find. They even plucked them off in porta-potties at the music festival. They tossed grenades in shelters where innocent people were hiding for cover. THEY INDISCRIMINATELY KILLED JEWS, NO MATTER HOW YOUNG, OLD, PREGNANT, OR DISABLED THEY MAY BE. The ISRAELIS ARE INDEED holding of their attack, allowing the innocent Palestinians to retreat. Israelis MUST and SHALL thread this needle carefully. UNLIKE HAMAS, THEY VALUE LIFE, - THEIR OWN, and THOSE OF INNOCENT PEOPLE. However, it’s time to rid Hamas completely. Hamas began this attack, yet again. If they murdered your family so brutally Michael, would you be so forgiving? Hamas ARE NOT ALL PALESTINIANS any more than HEZBOLLAH are ALL LEBANESE.
Michael, I am about to say something I do not want to say. The truth is that I agree with the intention that no further innocents should die. II am an American non-Jew who lived in Israel for almost 3 years after the Six-Day War. I love Israel, like it is a part of me-- much as I love the United States. I am also a long-time student of Sufism (for those who are unfamiliar with the term, it is-- very roughly speaking-- the mystical side of Islam). What you say about the Palestinians not having been responsible for Auschwitz is true. But neither were the Russians who instigated pogroms against the Jews responsible for Auschwitz; neither were the French whose Vichy regime allied with the Nazis. Neither were the Spanish who evicted the Jews from Spain along with the Muslims. Neither were American white supremacists responsible for Auschwitz, though there is now evidence that the Germans learned from jim crow. The list is long and longer than this of peoples who were not responsible for Auschwitz, yet persecuted the Jews because they were Jews. In addition to this, there is the Hamas Charter. Though it has been amended to suggest a softening of opposition to Israel, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The original Charter identified Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and declares its members to be Muslims who "fear God and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors." The charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[3] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[4][5] It emphasizes the importance of jihad, stating in article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."[6] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they "stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region".[7] The Charter adds that "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion [of Islam]".[1]
This is what the Palestinians who founded Hamas sought. We in the West tend to soften the harshness of these goals too, asserting that what Palestinians “really want” is “self-determination” a vague notion that manages to finesse their real goal of liberation. It is true that most Palestinians want only to live in peace. That’s also true of most Israelis-- most people everwhere want to live in peace. But as it is sometimes remarked that Israelis just wish the Palestinians would disappear as a problem, the same is true for the Palestinians. Even those not committed to violence like to think of a day when Israel is no more, disappeared back into the mists of time. Israelis would experience relief if the Palestinians were no longer there and Palestinians would feel the same way if Israel were no longer there.
So, what is my point? That so long as the Israelis and the Palestinians regard one another’s existence as a threat to their own, nothing will change. That peace-- real peace-- requires some real willingness to give up the quest for one’s own survival at all costs. That real peace requires a willingness to acknowledge each other’s suffering and say, in effect, “We do not want you to suffer any more and we will stand by you as brothers. We want you to have a state and independence and we want to be your brother state: we will defend you and you will defend us. There will no longer be one justice for me and a different justice for you.”
And the problem is that neither is willing to do this, trust the other. Because each side knows the other just wants it to disappear. To do this would require a deep spiritual revival among both Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims. In their respective spiritual traditions and teachings there is common ground and spiritual brotherhood to be found for those willing to seek these. But we are not in times that people feel inspired to seek spiritual guidance. Unless those who suffer are willing to seek spiritual ground with those they deem responsible for their suffering and the suffering of their loved ones, the best that one who loves both sides who live in this “holy land” can do, is advocate for Justice to be implented even against one’s self and one’s family. That justice is also called Compassion. I am 75 years old now and have become convinced that in this life in this world, the only possible way to receive it is to first be willing to extend it. I pray to God that He soften hearts enough that they be willing to risk themselves for this possibility.
War, Michael. It breeds murders, insanity, evils. Long-lasting hatreds, blindness.
When the U.S. rich organized for preemptive war against the American working classes, with the Powell memo, in 1971, they eventually offshored those millions of decent, working-class jobs -- and deeply hurt, poisoned all those abandoned. They got Citizens United. Got the Supreme Court stacked with far-right enablers of the rich.
Putin and his oligarchs did the same to the Russian people.
The world suffers viciousness from our billionaire classes who so largely rule. But before they did the open damage to the working classes, they dehumanized the schools -- U.S. and worldwide.
So we stew, suffer more insane repercussions of hatred, stoked by billionaire "news" media, by billionaire social media, and by dictators, autocrats, and nationalist worldwide.
Put humanities back in the schools, anybody? Put in essay writing programs so youth learning English worldwide might learn to cross the tribal, group-set borders to see and communicate with "others" as individuals in their cultures?
I agree with you assessment of Netanyahu, and I deeply regret that he got re-elected in spite of criminal indictments against him. He is an evil man. On the other hand I feel the rest of the World in conjunction with the US needs to round up the Hamas and Hezbolah leaders and throw them in prison along with Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, and the Iranian leadership. We do not need genocide of Iranians, Iraqis, Palestinians or Ukranians. We in the US need to defund the weapons industry. We already have enough weapons in the US alone to destroy every living creature on earth. It's time we all strapped on our adulthood forms and stop these hateful wars. We have a far greater threat against us with the ever increasing heat. The entire Earth will be affected, therefore every government and agency needs to pool all our resources to mitigate the climate catastrophe. That in itself is a large enough project to keep every human being in every country sufficiently employed to set aside greed and hatred for 50 or so years and figure out how to save most of the living things on earth.
Hi Michael, I am curious as to what you expected Israel to do after the slaughter of hundreds of their people, which includes babies? Did you expect Israel to just talk it out with the terrorists? Israel responded the same way we responded to 9/11. It is very unfortunate that innocent civilians on both sides end up paying with their lives, but as far as Palestine goes that is all the fault of Hamas who uses innocent people as shields. I really would like to know what Hamas expected Israel to do after such a horrific attack on innocent civilians? I think that probably right now they are regretting doing such a terrible thing.
Please unsubscribe me. Keep the money just remove me. You focused exclusively on Palestinian hurt ….@#$&$ you for not reminding your readers of the barbarism inflected on kids and old people in Israel. You know just like I do that kids were tied together and burnt alive yet you still want redeem Palestinians who have encouraged and supported Hamas.
Excellently explained and supported! I have always been puzzled at why the world (the USA , the UN) has allowed Garza, the Palestinian situation to continue! Surely, as "cousins to the Jews", they. too. deserve and need their own homeland!!!!!! THANK YOU, MICHAEL MOORE for advocating and passionately supporting the Palestinians' rights.
There never was a Palestinian nation nor should there ever be one that has in its charter the express wish of killing all Jews in the name of their god. Yes, this is in HAMAS’ charter. Shame on you for supporting such a mentality and refusing to recognize the ethnic cleansing of Jews that Muslim countries have been doing for centuries. Even the surrounding Muslim countries don’t want the Palestinians for they recognize them as troublemakers who are full of hate. Notice that none of them are swooping in to help except Iran who also wants to destroy Israel. You’re on the totally wrong side here.
Oh, Mike, thank you, thank you! You are exactly right, and I applaud you. I was a member of a pro-Palestinian group for 13 years, and we in Syria and Lebanon as a little girl with my family in 1955-7. I also applaud the many Jews who know the truth and speak it.
I've admired you for years, Michael, but this latest diatribe is glib and beneath you. The target is Hamas, not the Palestinians, over half of which also detest Hamas. The inhumanity of Hamas cannot go unanswered. It's amazing to me that the Jews get a day or two of compassion for an inhuman slaughter followed by what is sure to be years of vilification for trying to survive in a pit of vipers. Imagine if the US had a thousand of its people killed in a day. There would be nothing left of Gaza. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine -- we can look at what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. I agree that many poor, innocent Palestinians have become victims in the process, but who is putting them in harm's way? Hamas holds them hostage, block roads, telling them not to leave even when they are warned to leave targeted areas. And, as insane as that all sounds, who is it that hides behind the Palestinians, using them as human shields? (And who gets the blame for using them as human shields?) Who builds their tunnels under their homes? Hamas, cowards that they are. The same cowards that massacred unarmed women and children, who shot them in the back as they fled, burned them alive in their homes, and massacred babies. Your argument simplifies a complex problem and tries to equate apples and oranges. How do you root out and annihilate a terrorist organization while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. Also, while I know that many Palestinians are innocent in this situation, you also seem to ignore history here (except for the glib part about how they didn't participate in the Holocaust -- I'll have to remember that). Going back to 1964, I'm sure you recall the PLO was founded and comprised of 6 Palestinian groups whose national charter called for the destruction of Israel. So let's be honest. There's enough blood on everyone's hands in the region. Yet only Israel faces enemies on all sides who do not recognize their right to exist. You do know they are the Native Americans of the region, right? They were kinda there first. Imagine if Canada and Mexico didn't recognized our right to exist and constantly tried to wipe us from the face of the earth. The world has seen fit to reduce the global Jewish population down to 0.2%. So when a thousand are massacred, it is a huge percentage and has to be answered. Even Bono recently said, it's ridiculous to think you can just ask for peace after what has happened. I'm no fan of Netanyahu and I'm sure he won't last a year. Instead of giving us a history lesson on how the Palestinians weren't involved in the inquisition, how about offering a solution that limits casualties on both sides while ensuring satisfactory consequences for Hamas who started this latest horror?
Thank you. Can’t believe Michael has the audacity to try to equalize what happened on October 7 and then basically says Israel is committing genocide shame on him! I have admired him for his movie, sicko, and the others, but it greatly saddens me that he and others that should know better are excusing Hamas, which means the word “never” whose main purpose is extermination not just of Israel but of all Jews. Thank you to those who responded in writing letting him know that his response has the moral rectitude of jello and I will say that his article tries and fails to equalize (like the students at Harvard) the behavior of Hamas with Israel which is blatantly false.
Thanks, Michael. There is a different aspect to this story that I believe needs to be mentioned. The simple recipe for bringing down powerful nations and empires is to enrage them. When Gavrilo Princip shot crown prince Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the Austrian empire had hundreds of options for dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, they chose war, and the rest is history. Likewise, 9/11 was a horrible terrorist attack, but the main damage it did to the USA was self-inflicted. Israel now seems to be repeating the mistakes of previous empires. Nobody is denying Israel's right to defend itself, but unfortunately it failed to do so October 7th. Nobody denies Israel the right to punish the perpetrators of the horrific terrorist attack. However, killing innocent civilians as an act of revenge is madness.
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”
Thank you for speaking out...the oppressed became the oppressors. Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic. Israelis do not have a right to Palestinians lands and their property. Yet we have stood silently on the sidelines for no less than 7 decades while Israel continued to overrun and expand beyond what was given to them in 1948. That gift was at the hands of Great Britain and the US who wanted to break up the last of the Ottoman Empire and they found Zionism to be a very convenient friend. Every action has a reaction. We’ve allowed Israel to marginalize and violently expel Palestinians from their homes with no retribution from the U.S. since 1967. We’re been supporting an apartheid state and now we’re supporting genocide. Where is our humanity?
I suspect Netanyahu KNEW but decided not to respond because he saw a chance maybe to put a stop to the masses of objections to his policies? I think also that this is a geopolitical war between Russia China Iran and the USA, being enacted in Ukraine and now in The Gaza Strip!
There is zero will to find the correct solution viz the Palestinians. We’re only here because the Brits made absolutely sure the path forward for the two tribes in that area was going to be bloody. The Brits did the same in India. Once the writing on the wall was obvious, the retreat by the Brits made damned sure peace was not obtainable.
I’m a staunch pacifist. These days for every child killed in any “war” hundreds of terrorists will be the result.
There’s no sides here but one: humanity.
HATE
it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.
- Maya Angelou
Michael. Thank you for that article and the time you took to pen these words. To make things more obvious for some people who see one thing and infer another, your words were not in favor of any one party but in favor of non-violence in general. You provided reasons for Israel not to go on a revenge campaign but rather to simply defend itself. Unfortunately, the warmongers in this world, as you so rightly pointed out, are never satisfied with that ideology. We are fast moving towards a sorry end, as human race I meant. God help us all.
You seem to “lump” “ALL PALESTINIANS” with HAMAS. The Israelis are NOT trying to exterminate the Palestinians off the earth. Hamas has relentlessly tried to do this to the Israelis and the Israelis are targeting HAMAS. Hamas use humans (their own, and now their more than 150 hostages) as human shields. Hamas uses hospitals and schools as places where they hide their weapons and themselves. Hamas BEGAN THIS TRAGEDY by swooping in on gliders and busting through fences,indiscriminately killing any and ALL JEWS they could find. They even plucked them off in porta-potties at the music festival. They tossed grenades in shelters where innocent people were hiding for cover. THEY INDISCRIMINATELY KILLED JEWS, NO MATTER HOW YOUNG, OLD, PREGNANT, OR DISABLED THEY MAY BE. The ISRAELIS ARE INDEED holding of their attack, allowing the innocent Palestinians to retreat. Israelis MUST and SHALL thread this needle carefully. UNLIKE HAMAS, THEY VALUE LIFE, - THEIR OWN, and THOSE OF INNOCENT PEOPLE. However, it’s time to rid Hamas completely. Hamas began this attack, yet again. If they murdered your family so brutally Michael, would you be so forgiving? Hamas ARE NOT ALL PALESTINIANS any more than HEZBOLLAH are ALL LEBANESE.
Michael, I am about to say something I do not want to say. The truth is that I agree with the intention that no further innocents should die. II am an American non-Jew who lived in Israel for almost 3 years after the Six-Day War. I love Israel, like it is a part of me-- much as I love the United States. I am also a long-time student of Sufism (for those who are unfamiliar with the term, it is-- very roughly speaking-- the mystical side of Islam). What you say about the Palestinians not having been responsible for Auschwitz is true. But neither were the Russians who instigated pogroms against the Jews responsible for Auschwitz; neither were the French whose Vichy regime allied with the Nazis. Neither were the Spanish who evicted the Jews from Spain along with the Muslims. Neither were American white supremacists responsible for Auschwitz, though there is now evidence that the Germans learned from jim crow. The list is long and longer than this of peoples who were not responsible for Auschwitz, yet persecuted the Jews because they were Jews. In addition to this, there is the Hamas Charter. Though it has been amended to suggest a softening of opposition to Israel, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The original Charter identified Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and declares its members to be Muslims who "fear God and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors." The charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[3] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[4][5] It emphasizes the importance of jihad, stating in article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."[6] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they "stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region".[7] The Charter adds that "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion [of Islam]".[1]
This is what the Palestinians who founded Hamas sought. We in the West tend to soften the harshness of these goals too, asserting that what Palestinians “really want” is “self-determination” a vague notion that manages to finesse their real goal of liberation. It is true that most Palestinians want only to live in peace. That’s also true of most Israelis-- most people everwhere want to live in peace. But as it is sometimes remarked that Israelis just wish the Palestinians would disappear as a problem, the same is true for the Palestinians. Even those not committed to violence like to think of a day when Israel is no more, disappeared back into the mists of time. Israelis would experience relief if the Palestinians were no longer there and Palestinians would feel the same way if Israel were no longer there.
So, what is my point? That so long as the Israelis and the Palestinians regard one another’s existence as a threat to their own, nothing will change. That peace-- real peace-- requires some real willingness to give up the quest for one’s own survival at all costs. That real peace requires a willingness to acknowledge each other’s suffering and say, in effect, “We do not want you to suffer any more and we will stand by you as brothers. We want you to have a state and independence and we want to be your brother state: we will defend you and you will defend us. There will no longer be one justice for me and a different justice for you.”
And the problem is that neither is willing to do this, trust the other. Because each side knows the other just wants it to disappear. To do this would require a deep spiritual revival among both Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims. In their respective spiritual traditions and teachings there is common ground and spiritual brotherhood to be found for those willing to seek these. But we are not in times that people feel inspired to seek spiritual guidance. Unless those who suffer are willing to seek spiritual ground with those they deem responsible for their suffering and the suffering of their loved ones, the best that one who loves both sides who live in this “holy land” can do, is advocate for Justice to be implented even against one’s self and one’s family. That justice is also called Compassion. I am 75 years old now and have become convinced that in this life in this world, the only possible way to receive it is to first be willing to extend it. I pray to God that He soften hearts enough that they be willing to risk themselves for this possibility.
War, Michael. It breeds murders, insanity, evils. Long-lasting hatreds, blindness.
When the U.S. rich organized for preemptive war against the American working classes, with the Powell memo, in 1971, they eventually offshored those millions of decent, working-class jobs -- and deeply hurt, poisoned all those abandoned. They got Citizens United. Got the Supreme Court stacked with far-right enablers of the rich.
Putin and his oligarchs did the same to the Russian people.
The world suffers viciousness from our billionaire classes who so largely rule. But before they did the open damage to the working classes, they dehumanized the schools -- U.S. and worldwide.
So we stew, suffer more insane repercussions of hatred, stoked by billionaire "news" media, by billionaire social media, and by dictators, autocrats, and nationalist worldwide.
Put humanities back in the schools, anybody? Put in essay writing programs so youth learning English worldwide might learn to cross the tribal, group-set borders to see and communicate with "others" as individuals in their cultures?
I agree with you assessment of Netanyahu, and I deeply regret that he got re-elected in spite of criminal indictments against him. He is an evil man. On the other hand I feel the rest of the World in conjunction with the US needs to round up the Hamas and Hezbolah leaders and throw them in prison along with Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, and the Iranian leadership. We do not need genocide of Iranians, Iraqis, Palestinians or Ukranians. We in the US need to defund the weapons industry. We already have enough weapons in the US alone to destroy every living creature on earth. It's time we all strapped on our adulthood forms and stop these hateful wars. We have a far greater threat against us with the ever increasing heat. The entire Earth will be affected, therefore every government and agency needs to pool all our resources to mitigate the climate catastrophe. That in itself is a large enough project to keep every human being in every country sufficiently employed to set aside greed and hatred for 50 or so years and figure out how to save most of the living things on earth.
Arguing about precisely who has committed the most heinous crimes will never end them.
Hi Michael, I am curious as to what you expected Israel to do after the slaughter of hundreds of their people, which includes babies? Did you expect Israel to just talk it out with the terrorists? Israel responded the same way we responded to 9/11. It is very unfortunate that innocent civilians on both sides end up paying with their lives, but as far as Palestine goes that is all the fault of Hamas who uses innocent people as shields. I really would like to know what Hamas expected Israel to do after such a horrific attack on innocent civilians? I think that probably right now they are regretting doing such a terrible thing.
Please unsubscribe me. Keep the money just remove me. You focused exclusively on Palestinian hurt ….@#$&$ you for not reminding your readers of the barbarism inflected on kids and old people in Israel. You know just like I do that kids were tied together and burnt alive yet you still want redeem Palestinians who have encouraged and supported Hamas.
Excellently explained and supported! I have always been puzzled at why the world (the USA , the UN) has allowed Garza, the Palestinian situation to continue! Surely, as "cousins to the Jews", they. too. deserve and need their own homeland!!!!!! THANK YOU, MICHAEL MOORE for advocating and passionately supporting the Palestinians' rights.
There never was a Palestinian nation nor should there ever be one that has in its charter the express wish of killing all Jews in the name of their god. Yes, this is in HAMAS’ charter. Shame on you for supporting such a mentality and refusing to recognize the ethnic cleansing of Jews that Muslim countries have been doing for centuries. Even the surrounding Muslim countries don’t want the Palestinians for they recognize them as troublemakers who are full of hate. Notice that none of them are swooping in to help except Iran who also wants to destroy Israel. You’re on the totally wrong side here.
Oh, Mike, thank you, thank you! You are exactly right, and I applaud you. I was a member of a pro-Palestinian group for 13 years, and we in Syria and Lebanon as a little girl with my family in 1955-7. I also applaud the many Jews who know the truth and speak it.
I've admired you for years, Michael, but this latest diatribe is glib and beneath you. The target is Hamas, not the Palestinians, over half of which also detest Hamas. The inhumanity of Hamas cannot go unanswered. It's amazing to me that the Jews get a day or two of compassion for an inhuman slaughter followed by what is sure to be years of vilification for trying to survive in a pit of vipers. Imagine if the US had a thousand of its people killed in a day. There would be nothing left of Gaza. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine -- we can look at what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. I agree that many poor, innocent Palestinians have become victims in the process, but who is putting them in harm's way? Hamas holds them hostage, block roads, telling them not to leave even when they are warned to leave targeted areas. And, as insane as that all sounds, who is it that hides behind the Palestinians, using them as human shields? (And who gets the blame for using them as human shields?) Who builds their tunnels under their homes? Hamas, cowards that they are. The same cowards that massacred unarmed women and children, who shot them in the back as they fled, burned them alive in their homes, and massacred babies. Your argument simplifies a complex problem and tries to equate apples and oranges. How do you root out and annihilate a terrorist organization while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. Also, while I know that many Palestinians are innocent in this situation, you also seem to ignore history here (except for the glib part about how they didn't participate in the Holocaust -- I'll have to remember that). Going back to 1964, I'm sure you recall the PLO was founded and comprised of 6 Palestinian groups whose national charter called for the destruction of Israel. So let's be honest. There's enough blood on everyone's hands in the region. Yet only Israel faces enemies on all sides who do not recognize their right to exist. You do know they are the Native Americans of the region, right? They were kinda there first. Imagine if Canada and Mexico didn't recognized our right to exist and constantly tried to wipe us from the face of the earth. The world has seen fit to reduce the global Jewish population down to 0.2%. So when a thousand are massacred, it is a huge percentage and has to be answered. Even Bono recently said, it's ridiculous to think you can just ask for peace after what has happened. I'm no fan of Netanyahu and I'm sure he won't last a year. Instead of giving us a history lesson on how the Palestinians weren't involved in the inquisition, how about offering a solution that limits casualties on both sides while ensuring satisfactory consequences for Hamas who started this latest horror?
Thank you. Can’t believe Michael has the audacity to try to equalize what happened on October 7 and then basically says Israel is committing genocide shame on him! I have admired him for his movie, sicko, and the others, but it greatly saddens me that he and others that should know better are excusing Hamas, which means the word “never” whose main purpose is extermination not just of Israel but of all Jews. Thank you to those who responded in writing letting him know that his response has the moral rectitude of jello and I will say that his article tries and fails to equalize (like the students at Harvard) the behavior of Hamas with Israel which is blatantly false.