I hope that if these words are published they lose some of their relevance because a cease-fire between the Israeli government and Hamas will have come into effect and the death and destruction that began on October 7 have stopped, if only for an unforeseeable time.
Definitions of “tragedy” include:
“a branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual”
“a genre of story in which a hero is brought down by his/her own flaws, usually by ordinary human flaws – like greed, over-ambition, or even an excess of love, honor, or loyalty”
“a disastrous event, calamity”
“ a very sad event or situation, especially one involving death or suffering”
By any definition, the events taking place in and around Israel and Gaza since October 7 constitute a tragedy. There was the horror of the attack on Israel by Hamas, followed by months of bombing and violence in Gaza and the accumulation of suffering and deaths that seems to have no end. Heroes are hard to identify, but human flaws abound.
And there is a certain tragic irony to warnings and expressions of concern for the geopolitical dimension of a widened war, as if the carnage let loose by the conflict can somehow be contained by warnings and threats from combatants when the recent history of relations has long been one of dire threats and warnings of death and destruction between the adversaries. Twenty-five thousand deaths, it seems,, may not be enough and might well be insufficient to satisfy the apparent need for revenge on the part of all sides or to insure such conflict does not recur.
Tragically, the history of Arab-Israeli relations is replete with “reckonings” that were meant to settle longstanding scores and reconfigure the calculus of defense between the parties such that attacks would be deterred. It is as if one side could carry out acts so horrific the other would be cowed into living with and accepting the then-present state of affairs.
It is essential that a cease-fire take effect now. Too many but surely enough have died or been wounded or held hostage to make clear each side’s case for waging war in all its horrible forms. The pain inflicted and the destruction wrought to date will not assuage anyone’s grievances by repetition. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, “how many deaths will it take til [we] know that too many people have died?”
There will be no victors, only victims, in this latest tragic episode of Arab-Israeli violence. Now is the time to stop it, lest we believe that one or two or five hundred or ten thousand more deaths can somehow settle accounts; that is madness.
Richard A. Skinner, PhD
St. Michaels