2012 After Shalit Deal

Take it back to June 28, 2006, when young gunner Gilad Shalit was captured from his Merkava tank in the early morning, by a Palestinian commando in a cross-border raid, through a tunnel into Israel yet. Gilad Shalit was just 19 when he was captured after two grenades had been tossed into his tank. By the way, it would be pointless to blame the "usual suspect", Hamas. It was not just a Hamas commando, but a combined operation of three groups, Hamas, Army of Islam, and PRC : Popular Resistance Committees.

Likewise, it was the Army of Islam which kidnapped British BBC reporter Alan Johnston in Gaza in March 2007, and kept him for four months - until he was released for a ransom of $5 million, and one million 7.62 cartridges for AK-47 kalashnikovs.

As for Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian pacifist, pro-Palestinian militant, who had lived three years in Gaza, he was kidnapped in Gaza in April 2011, by a "salafi" group, Tawhid wal-Jihad - Unicity and Jihad, who hung him.

Vittorio's motto was Stay Human. 

The center pîcture is of Alan Johnston, forced by his captors to be strapped in a bomb suicide vest.

This is, has been Gaza for you. For us.

 Pictures taken by the author of this chronicle.

I was there, at the Al Shifa hospital morgue, in the heart of Gaza City,when his body was carried out in a coffin, and driven to the Rafah border with Egypt. Vittorio should be 49 by now.

Who remembers him  ?

Be it in Italy, Gaza, or anywhere else.

The very same question applies to Bobby Sands, the IRA Irishman, who died in a British cell, at the aptly-named Maze prison, in 1981, after a 66-day hunger strike.

The IRA dumped all arms in the end, did they not.

WHO REMEMBERS VITTORIO ARRIGONI ?

WHO REMEMBERS BOBBY SANDS ?

What is it they died for ?

What is it they stood for ?

What was it they wanted ?

 As for kidnappings and abductions, they have always been the modus operandi in these parts, part and parcel of the Hamas DNA.

Before June 2006 (that is, less than a year after the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and the IDF), there had been the October 1994 abduction of Sgt Wachsman in Central Israel - who was killed in a failed rescue operation.

The "matrix" : the February 1989 kidnapping and killing of Sgt Avi Sasportas, followed by the May 1989 kidnapping and killing of Cpl Ilan Sadoon, who was hitch-hiking between Jerusalem and Ashdod; and the kidnapping & killing of border policeman Nissim Toledano in December 1992, along with the kidnapping & killing of Yaron Chen, in August 1993.

Hamas, founded by the end of 1987, had created a special section in 1988, Unit 101, the aim of which was to abduct Israeli soldiers wherever. February and May 1989 - December 1992 - August 1993 - October 1994 : a straight line leading us to June 2006 and October 2023. The bottom line has always been clearly exposed : no Israeli is innocent. They all some day participate in the army, men and women alike, therefore they all are legitimate targets.

If there is talk of "collective punishment" here and there, it is clear enough that mass perception of the Other is at work on both sides of the divide, drawing an obvious line between hard-line ideologues, busy with collective, black and white schemes of situations, and more rational observers, who distinguish between individuals and, shall we say, nuances of grey.

Would T.E. Lawrence be labeled an "antisemite" for stating bluntly :

"Semites had no half-tones in their register of vision. They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings. They knew only truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades."

Seven Pillars of Wisdom,  Chapter III (first published in 1922-1926, about his 1916-1918 experience with the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman empire)

Interestingly, one of the men who praised him most was General Giap, who defeated the French in Dien Bien Phu, in 1954. He said : "Lawrence combined the wisdom, integrity, humanity, courage and discipline with empathy, that is the capacity to emotionally identify oneself with any subordinate as well as with the hierarchy."

A well-tested recipe for a deeper insight into complex conflicts and conundrums...

Give us "a handful of such men, fighting side by side, [they] would defeat practically the whole world."

Plato, in The Symposium, 380 B.C., who conceived "an army" [that] "should entirely consist of lovers and loved." i.e; fighters of the greatest wisdom, integrity, humanity, courage and empathy...