This evening we had a terrific wind squall, coming on the heels of about 48 hours of monsoon-style rain.  Rivers are flooding.  It was dry and clear during the wind, and the sun wasn’t down completely, so it was very dramatic and even beautiful during my walk home from work.  I hadn’t been home for even a half an hour when the power went out.  We lit candles and cuddled together (Carrie, Imogen and myself) on the couch before I went out to buy dinner for us at the burger drive-through.  All the lights and even the traffic signals were out for a mile radius around our house.

Over the last decade I’ve gone from a knee-jerk pro-Palestinian position to a more nuanced position, one marked by deep cynicism about the worthiness of Palestinian leadership and a greater appreciation for the claims and concerns of Israelis.  At the start of the current war in Gaza, I believed I understood why Israel would act with such force against Hamas, and I have been inclined to forgive the IDF’s mistakes.  I believe that they do not strike targets such as apartment buildings and mosques just for the sake of running up a civilian death count — something which cannot be said for Hamas.

But I don’t agree that the goal of diminishing Hamas’s political power vis-a-vis Fatah can justify this conflict, and I don’t believe Israel will be successful in crushing Hamas’s military capabilities.  Militarily, I am convinced that Israel will fail, and that this invasion will become their Iraq war.  Still, I would never urge restraint, as long as Hamas is firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel.  How can Israel just sit there and do nothing?  And who else will stop the rocket fire?

I read about a 21-year old Islamic Jihad militant at a Gaza hospital who demands to be treated ahead of more serious cases so that he can continue fighting, a man who tells other Palestinians at the hospital they should be happy that their family members were “martyred.”  I feel myself urging Israel on, to end the control of men like this over Gaza.

And then I read about Palestinian children found with their mothers’ corpses, and in an instant I feel about Israel the way I did a decade ago.