Reconciling Disparate Conflicts — Kashmir and Israel-Palestine (2022)

Foreword

In Gaza, over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel’s invasion into Gaza as a reaction to Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th which killed 1,200 Israelis of whom 38 were children. Over 15,000 of those killed in Gaza were children. Today, an Israeli strike in Rafah set fire to a camp which housed displaced Palestinians. This strike killed at least 45 people. Netanyahu was quoted saying, “Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night there was a tragic mistake.” I challenge my readers to reconcile 15,000 dead children with a supposed policy of “utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians”. John Mearsheimer, in a talk 10 days ago for the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), explained the trajectory of the crisis in Gaza: Israel is on a trajectory of cleansing the region of the Palestinian people. This is an urgent crisis, and I encourage you to search for independent news outlets to inform your opinions. And watch the videos coming out of Gaza, this is happening right now, this has been happening for decades.

The following article, written in 2022, may help you understand this history of violence through international law, an analogy with Kashmir, and the structure of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Introduction

This article compares the Israel-Palestine conflict with the Kashmir conflict (involving India and Pakistan), in an attempt to identify…