!Listening to myself --- agk's diary 20 December 2023 @ 14:40 UTC --- written on GPD Win 1 in bed while Evy puts away dishes and daughter announces the coming of the Lord --- Enough with the flowery language. Let me listen to myself with the plain speech I ask friends to use with me. Does what I think even make sense? 1. How do I describe what's happening in Israel and Palestine? There's a hot decolonization struggle, hot and brutal as Algeria in the 1960s, Kenya, Ireland, Rhodesia, Vietnam. Israel uses overwhelming American firepower for standoff warfare to "mow the grass," genocide (killing) and ethnic cleansing (displacing) by thousands of civilian massacres and kidnapp- ings. They hope this will deny the resistance cover or magically lead to a win. Israel uses "AI" LLMs to produce unusually big daily target lists, and drops about 500 bombs daily, directly killing and injuring 5.000 people daily. They made Gaza unlivable. 98% of Gazans can't eat daily, 60% are starving. Most are homeless in cold rain. Diarrheal diseases and nutritional diseases like pellagra and anemia are common. Tens of thousands of pregnant women may bleed to death in childbirth and birth defects are likely. Hundreds of thousands of children are maimed. Israel accomplished all this with an air bridge mostly from the US delivering bombs, shells, missiles, etc on 10 C-17 flights daily, every day, and US obstruction of the world's will that a political solution be sought. Israel's "AI" builds target lists from big databases of infrastructure (bakeries, hospit- als, solar panels, water infrastructure, gener- ators, civilian cellular/internet, UN schools), cultural workers and sites (mosques, churches, archives, universities, journalists, poets, academics), addresses of all known resistance fighters' immediate and extended families, political representatives and sites (city hall, courts, police stations and academies, and the homes of all municipal employees and elected representatives). While it draws the world's horror for all this, Israel mostly lacks military targets. Their ground offensive is sloppy and flying blind. They commit atrocities like cutting power and water and besieging hospitals, preventing ambulance movement till injured people die, sniping women and children in church compounds, lining up women and children in UN schools and executing them en-masse with bullets in the backs of their heads, abducting hundreds or thousands of men (including doctors, UN employees, and journalists), humiliating and torturing them by making them strip naked in the cold in public, transporting them by truck to earthen or sand pits dug by bulldozer, interrogating them, burying them alive with bulldozers, digging some out with broken bones and keeping them as hostages or sending them to walk back to other Palestinians to tell the tale. Israel uses different approaches toward the same end in the West Bank. The resistance in Gaza is hundreds of thousands strong, well-organized and well-supplied, with a "poor man's airforce" huge tunnel network. It has good intelligence due to the documents and servers it seized from 5 military sites on 7 Oct. That operation wasn't meant to spark this intensity of response. The goal was to kidnap soldiers and exchange them for all Palestinian prisoners and hostages held by Israel, to move Hamas back into a resistance stance and estab- lish its political legitimacy in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel's ground offensive is stuck, suffering huge losses. The resistance has partially or fully destroyed a third of Israel's tanks, killed a disproportionate amount of officers, and killed or removed from combat by serious injury thousands of Israeli soldiers. It has no anti-aircraft capabilities, but Israel can't win by aerial bombardment alone unless the world lets the siege and bombardment last long enough to starve out the resistance onto open terrain. The resistance's short-term goal is to end Israel's bombing campaign and invasion, open border crossings to humanitarian aid, and exchange its hundred or so captive Israeli soldiers for the many thousands of Palestinians held as prisoners and hostages by Israel. Israel's short-term goal is to make all the people of Gaza, and all trace of their history, go away for good. Then do the same in the West Bank, expand its borders, demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque, build the third temple where it was. A partial win is acceptable to the resistance because it will be a political victory and they're fighting a political war. If Gaza's still peopled with Palestinians after this war, it'll be a military loss for Israel. I think of Israel as like Rhodesia, a British colony broke loose into an independent racist ethnostate dependent on camps, massacres, apartheid, militarization, racist education, and international support to maintain the high standard of living of the colonist-citizens. I think within 30 years it'll be renamed to Palestine like Rhodesia was to Zimbabwe, and most of the colonist-class will have made reverse aliyah to the US, Europe, Russia, or move to Cyprus. I think Israel is flailing about like a dying state and the resistance is conducting itself like the kernel of a rising state. Hamas has a stable coalition with the other Palestinian resistance groups. Internationally, former allies are peeling away from Israel, and so is popular opinion, especially among young people, in remaining allies. The military capabilities of the Palestinian resistance's allies have matured. Ansar Allah in Yemen has succeeded in its naval blockade of Israel's Red Sea port, Eliat. They consistently communicate a clear path to de-escalation. When Israel stops bombing and blockading Gaza, Yemen will stop blockading Eliat. Hezbollah have caused hundreds of thousands of Israelis to evacuate the north of the country, killed soldiers, and destroyed radars, bases, missile batteries, and other military infra- structure. They hold most of their force in reserve, to be used only when they feel the resistance in Gaza is seriously threatened. They are capable of blockading Israel's Medi- terranean ports, leaving only a land route through Jordan for international trade. In Syria and Iraq the resistance harass US bases, mostly destroying infrastructure. I think they're also holding most of their force in reserve. Iran provides targeting data to Ansar Allah and international diplomatic support, while demonstrating its ability to control its waters and airspace, including against the US Ike aircraft carrier group. It also has much force held in reserve. US support for ceasefire is important, because if my country stopped supplying Israel, the bombing would stop, and the conflict could de-escalate from a military to a political conflict. The political conflict would look different than it has in the past due to the war demonstrating that the balance of power has changed. The comparison with Rhodesia and Algeria points to the generational dangers of this kind of total war on the one state of Palestine I think will replace Israel within 30 years. Total war is survived by paranoid, traumatized people under military governance. The pillars of normal life are wiped out. Moderates are killed by both sides. Bureaucrats and bakers, teachers of poetry and history who instill nuance and compassion, kind religious leaders, nurses and reasonable politicians, farmers and amiable shopkeepers, journalists and humanitarians all die. What kind of a state, what kind of society follows decolonization opposed by total war? No infrastructure, mass poverty and poverty of spirit, international isolation, coups, political assassinations by the former colonial government's remaining friends, serial civil wars. Limiting Israel's capability to conduct total war preserves a more functional remnant to govern the state that will in any case replace Israel. 2. How do people in my family, at work, at my church, and in my friend circle describe what's happening? * It's too complicated. I don't understand it. * It's bad, I need to do something. * I need to read more, become an area expert (I wish I had the time). * Israel is killing defenseless noble savages in Gaza. It's awful. * The Jews and Muslims have been killing each other for millennia. * Both sides etc. * Hamas are terrorists. Israel has a right to exist. * This is like the holocaust. Israel (or Hamas) are Nazis. * I visited over there and recall my personal experiences. Or I have family there. * This is what the Christian book of Revelation is about. * World War III is around the corner. * Jews control the world. * Americans control the world. * If more people knew how bad it is they'd stop it. * Arguing over details, or transfixed by a particular atrocity. * Hamas beheaded babies, raped women en-masse, burned bodies beyond recognition, etc. They're human animals. * It's hopeless. * It's not our problem if they kill each other over there. 3. What words, phrases, or stories emerge over and over in narratives or discussions about what's happening? Pet atrocities, particularly death toll numbers and flattened buildings. It's complicated and I'm stupid. Slogans like free free Palestine. You have to remember they're not Christian like us. Fear of judgment by family, fear of talking about it, fear of repression for pro-Palestine opinions, limited capacity, isolated, guilt. 4. What is unsayable, unthinkable, or scary to say or think? Every time I open my mouth at church in prayer or discussion, at open mic to read, or in discussion at a party or a meeting, it's scary. It's almost unsayable that Hamas is fighting a non-sectarian freedom struggle. It's almost unthinkable that Israel's days may be numbered. Especially when I am among people who I most expect to have a similar read on things as me, it turns out we get anxious and defensive, talk at best about details and conceal the framework we use to interpret them. Why are we afraid? We are in almost no danger. I wish I knew how other people around me would answer these four questions. I think my opinions are unusual for someone in my country, but I don't know. People talk, if they talk at all, in lists of facts or slogans. That conceals our opinions, which I think is because we think our opinions are stupid and we'll suffer ridicule. I want a ceasefire and de-escalation to preserve civilian lives. No more munitions shipments. No strikes on Yemen. No attempt to push Hezbollah north of the Litani river. I think the chance for a democratic multi-confessional state has passed, no permanent peace can be negotiated between the belligerents, and war will return until Israel is dismantled. But not total war. Let them fight with guns and count their bullets. No more bombs, no more camps, no more collective punishment. Let swords be turned into plowshares. Let everyone beneath their vine and fruit tree live in peace and unafraid.