Who is to blame for Gaza?

I am sickened by the endless argument about whether the Israelis or the Palestinians are more to blame for the tragedy in Gaza.

A case could be made that it was the 19th-century Zionists who insisted on settling Palestine despite strong warnings from prominent rabbis that doing would sow the dragon’s teeth of civil war. Or maybe the British, who supported that settlement in order to site a pro-European population in the restive, anti-colonialist Arab world. Or the Palestinian villagers who killed Zionist settlers or the settlers who killed Palestinians in the war for land before the Second World War. Or the Nazis who made creating a Jewish homeland an existential imperative.

Or the British who washed their hands of Palestine, leaving Jews and Arabs to fight out their blood fued over the land. Or the Arab states who twice invaded Israel, and whose victory would have meant the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people. Or the Israelis who answer was to occupy, colonize and ghettoize millions of Palestinians in just the way that we treated our own indigenous population. Or the Palestinians who terrorized Israelis. Or the Israeli miltray and police who repressed and often killed Palestinian protesters.

Or the Palestinians who blew apart any chance of peace in the First and Second Intifada. Or the Israelis who assassinated their peacemaker, Yitzhak Rabin. Or the Arabs who assassinated their champion for peace, Anwar Sadat. Or the settlers who are ethnically cleansing the West Bank with violence and intimidation. Or Hamas, which murdered 1,200 peaceful Israelis. Or the Israeli government, which is murdering 15,000 (and counting) mostly innocent Gazans.

The Palestinian/Israeli situation is a blood feud, with fear, hatred and revenge at its heart. Maybe at its start one side was more to blame than the other, but a century of killings later blame is irrelevant. In fact, since it is most often used as a justification to continue killing, it is dangerous — the rocket fuel for a vendetta.

There is a moral high ground. It is to try to stop the slaughter of more innocent people. We in this country should support it in any way possible.

James Dealy, Providence