My First Substack Block
Israel/Palestine is the most toxic geopolitical issue ever.
A while ago I received a 12.9” iPad Pro. I got a nice bedside stand for it, thinking to read and watch movies. Amazon has wrecked their streaming service so mostly it’s been an “Inoreader till I fall asleep” sort of thing. About ten days ago I installed the Substack app and I’ve taken to skimming, liking all the things, occasionally reading, and leaving comments.
It was probably unwise of me, but I laid out some realpolitik in Notes on what can/can not happen regarding Bibi’s butchery in Gaza. This earned me a screechy response from someone … or some thing. If I were sure it were a person, I’d listen, but cartoon avatars and RAEG remind me way too much of Twitter, and there was an OBVIOUS influence op trying to use this wedge issue to turn DNC 2024 into a repeat of DNC 1968.
There are many for whom Gaza is a legitimate, heartfelt concern, the top of their stack. I would end it if I could, but the only path forward that isn’t a disaster is Harris/Walz winning in November, and Gaza in that context is a polarizing distraction. Like the Ukrainians paying in blood every day because we don’t want them to lose, but we also don’t want to deal with a post-Putin Russia, it’s a terrible situation with terrible people making it worse.
I wrote Why Gaza Is Screwed twelve years ago. I didn’t have a mental picture of precisely how it would end, but I knew that too many people and not enough fresh water was a recipe for disaster. Yes, Hamas are just as beastly as Bibi & Co., but this is an “above ground issue”. If not that event in 2023, it would be a pandemic in 2026, or a global crop failure in 2028 … or something.
Yemen’s Food & Water Crisis was written a year after the Gaza piece. I wrote a LOT about Syria back when their civil war was still fresh. I was paying attention to the Fragile States Index 2016. Being a white male nearing retirement, people jump to a lot of conclusions just by looking at my avatar. I’m always mindful of this and I try to not do the same to others.
The amateur photographer in me loves this picture of al-Yarmūk, which was once the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. I think this was taken during the civil war, but before the time that it was being overrun by ISIS. The clarity in the foreground, the washed out dusty background. The linear lines of a city swamped by the organic curve of the crowd. If it weren’t ten years old with an AFP watermark in the corner you might think it was AI generated.
What can I do, right here, right now, to reduce the suffering of these sentient beings?
Not very much.
Landing a hit on the current Iranian regime, which was covered in MIOS: Iran’s PressTV, was a good thing. The Iranians have been trying to free themselves since 2009, but like Hamas propping up Bibi, or Putin’s claim to be fighting NATO, pushing against an external force is what keeps the current regime in place. Giving the regime a black eye is a win, and I think we got one of their influence agents arrested in the U.K.
Every day I wake up, I log in, I look for what I can do to make a living and/or how I can change the world for the better. I don’t really expect to be able to do that.
If you look at the now retired Neal Rauhauser Wordpress, you can see a LOT of time and energy was spent on food and water security. There were some possibilities, but we were politically incapable of executing.
Engaging someone for whom Gaza is a deeply personal issue was unwise. Lesson learned, I’ll stay on my own calm, cool analytical patch for the future.