A Multitude of Crises: #1 – Gaza

August 25, 2025

I’m going to branch out a little bit… I’ve decided to write a series of posts that run into multiple subjects that are related to this blog’s stated purpose, but maybe more peripherally than other subjects we’ve covered. By that I mean that the influence of money in media, the for-profit model of infotainment that dictates what facts are included in reporting, is probably the most on-point part of these discussions…

But there is so much ugly stuff going on right now that has this country in an uproar that we do need to discuss it. Moral stuff. Ethical stuff. Bad science, perception, propaganda… All fed to us via the echo chambers that our media has become.

So: I’ve been having conversations with friends and extended family who live in various parts of the world; they live in England and Brussels, all across North America, even in my own house. No topic off limits, either – we’ve talked about everything from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to accessibility for the disabled, to sexual identity and what that means, to whose turn it is to load the dishwasher (my turn – somehow, it’s always my turn…).

It’s good to have these conversations, too, because everyone has a unique perspective, has read a different combination of reports and articles on a given subject and, if they’re not limiting themselves to an echo chamber that only reinforces a particular narrative, can have a perfectly valid opinion that may differ from your own. Those conversations can be very enlightening, give you information you’d missed, and perhaps even wind up changing your own thinking.

These conversations can also dramatically showcase media bias, and how detrimental it can be when news outlets are more interested in profit than actually informing the public.

So for our first discussion, let’s talk about:

GAZA

I have a friend in the UK whose support of Israel is waning as the war in Gaza stretches towards the anniversary of the terrorist attack that started it – an attack the media (and so most everyone else) seems to have forgotten in the rush to condemn Israel for the current humanitarian crisis there. I understand why she’s getting burned out on the whole thing, I am, too; the constant horror stories from inside Gaza, neither side apparently willing to negotiate a settlement that will guarantee peace for longer than 20 minutes…

At what point does the good guy become the bad guy? That is the question in my mind; at what point did Israel step over the line? When should they have stopped? At what point does Hamas stop being a threat? Were they not supposed to respond to an unprovoked terror attack at all? Or does the good-guy-to-bad-guy shift happen when we started forgetting what led up to now? I don’t know…

Have we forgotten the October 7 attack? Have we forgotten that Hamas and its sponsors have sworn to eradicate Israel and wipe it – and its people – completely off the map? Have we forgotten the hostages taken, tortured, and murdered? Have we forgotten that the citizens of Gaza elected a terrorist organization to be their government, allowed them to set up their operations in hospitals and residential areas, basically agreeing to be their human shields, cannon fodder for when the Israelis inevitably strike back?

Apparently, we have.

I cannot believe – at least, I don’t want to believe – that Israeli troops would deliberately target aid workers or “journalists” (no matter how biased their reporting might be). We know Hamas would… But looking at history, we know that mistakes get made in the fog of war, otherwise innocent people paying a high price because of bad intelligence, miss-identifications that go undetected until it’s too late. And, not everyone in Berlin or Munich or Hiroshima or Nagasaki deserved to die – but WWII ended sooner because those manufacturing centers were destroyed, and the civilians in those cities were never the primary targets (unlike the Nazi “Blitzkrieg” of London, or the October 7, 2024 attack on the Israeli music festival). And, journalists have always put themselves on the front lines, knowing that they’re putting themselves in harms’ way, for the greater good – and in combat zones, even good journalists die.

No, I’m not trying to justify or minimize what’s happening, just pointing out historically relevant facts. By all accounts, the situation in Gaza is horrible, and needs to be resolved sooner than later. But it seems to me to be at least as much the fault of Hamas and their supporters as it is Israel’s campaign.

So at what point do the good guys become the bad guys? I just don’t know anymore…

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Uncle John
Uncle John is the black-sheep relative your family doesn't want to admit to. He's a writer, old fart, anti-extremist, dyed-in-the-wool cynic, sci-fi nerd, and practicing to be a curmudgeon. More vegan than carnivore, but very much a Constitutional "originalist"; a walking, talking contradiction in terms, and a straight, no-holds-barred talker, who will tell it like it is with no apologies. Pacific Northwest native, married for many, many years to a woman he doesn't deserve, with no kids that will acknowledge them - except for the cat, who is merely tolerant.