HAMAS IS TO GAZA AS BLACK LIVES MATTER IS TO MINNEAPOLIS.

That is, in the sense that both organizations would rather have constituents in a parlous state so as to whip up outrage than have those constituents becoming prosperous.

If the residents of Gaza, after the War, had developed those beaches and become a tourist destination, the internationalist left and the Islamists would not have had a population kept in a parlous state, the better to mau-mau Israel or neoliberalism or American hegemony or whatever with.  Chicago might be facing a similar fate.  That is, unless that Democrat base in Chicago tires of the ongoing crime and the importation of even more people to be kept in a parlous condition.

Northern Star reporter Devin Oommen recently interviewed three social scientists who might, inadvertently, have confirmed the maxim that the world offers challenges, and the university responds with departments.

Ches Thurber, an associate professor of political science at NIU, said Hamas’ attack was a strategy to bring attention back to Palestine and to take advantage of  disruption within Israeli courts.

“The ongoing discussions about a potential peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel along the lines of what the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Bahrain and Israel had signed a few years ago. Hamas probably wanted to disrupt that kind of peace deal, try to make it not happen, as well as try to exploit these fissures within domestic Israeli politics,” Thurber said.

Thurber said Hamas’ attack was a response to the state of peace negotiations.

“But that being said, I see those as kind of small symbols of a bigger phenomenon, which is that the Palestinian issue had not been at the forefront of political leaders’ attention regionally or globally in a number of years,” Thurber said. “There’s been no progress on peace negotiations.”

Thurber said an outcome that maintained the status quo challenged Hamas’s existence.

“I think the Israeli government believed that they could contain violence from Hamas, not negotiate with the Palestinians,” Thurber said. “Either Hamas or the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), which is the group that is the leader in the West Bank region, and we’re just going to, over time, continue to maintain a blockade of Gaza, continue to occupy the West Bank and gradually increase the territory that it was directly controlling through the expansion of settlements. This represented an existential threat to Hamas.”

That's an intriguing Complex Proposition.  I'm not sure how to break it down.  That "disruption" within Israel's courts might have led to a fracture in the country's government  or created a theocratic state in a way that could have driven a wedge between Israel's government and the secular-progressive Jews in the United States.  That "disruption" of the peace talks between Iran's longtime enemy in Saudi Arabia and Iran's enemy of convenience in Israel is a distinct motive.  Hamas tacticians, if there are any, might have hoped for one, or both, of those outcomes.  They got neither. "Thurber said the response from Israel’s government indicates they are no longer considering diplomacy."  There's a War Emergency government in Israel, and the seculars and the true believers agree that Hamas must be extirpated.  "Normal people are being brought together," indeed.  That center-left coalition forming to protect the courts can wait for now.

Stroll over to the anthropology department, and expect the expected.

Emily McKee is an associate professor of anthropology and said it’s important to understand the current events’ context.

“There has been an ongoing decades-long situation where Palestinians have been living without self-representation and without statehood; and in some cases, more clearly in the West Bank, still under direct occupation and direct settler colonialism,” McKee said. “But Gaza is also a part of that and being controlled. All of this is important as context. I think it’s important that none of this is saying any particular actions are justified, like Hamas’ actions of murdering civilians. This is simply understanding how and why things are happening, and I think it’s really hard in news coverage, often to distinguish between when context is being given to understand why things are happening versus when context is given to justify things. But, I think that context is really important.”

Always with the "contextualization," whatever that means.  In my gloomiest moments, I reflect on the Old Testament and despair.  Whenever somebody sings the praises of the rules-based international order, I have more recent cause to despair.

Israel's founding in 1948, which most Jews celebrate but most Palestinians remember as the Nakba (catastrophe), involved a mixture of prior land purchases, arbitrary line drawing by the United Nations, and a war in which the nascent state was attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Some of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who fled their homes planned to return after the anticipated Arab victory, while others were forcibly expelled.

I lose track of everything that happened since. For that matter, I lose track of what happened when after 1973. We have President Carter coordinating a peace accord between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat; Mr Sadat's security forces showed their gratitude with their guns. The Ayatollah fomented a rebellion in Iran and somehow there's still a theocracy in charge there. Lebanon went from a tourist destination to just another third world garden spot.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been spilling into Lebanon since 1948, with the establishment of Israel and displacement of Palestinians, or what the latter call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

In fact, no Arab country has been more affected by this conflict. About 110,000 Palestinians took refuge in Lebanon in 1948. Today, the number is about 210,000, and they are denied basic rights.

In surveys, many Lebanese have said they resent the Palestinian refugees in the country and blame them for the eruption of the Lebanese civil war, which took place from 1975 to 1990. An estimated 120,000 died during the fighting, the scars of which can still be seen in the capital of Beirut.

Israel was deeply embroiled in the Lebanese civil war. It supported Christian militias and pursued its own fight against Palestinian militias, who used Lebanon as a base to launch attacks against the Jewish state. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in order to wipe out the Palestine Liberation Organization and establish a pro-Israeli Christian government in Beirut. Neither objective was achieved.

War or not, negotiation or not, Egypt didn't want to regain administration of Gaza; none of the neighboring states wanted either to administer Gaza or to have more Palestinians in their country.

Back to campus, where nobody can sling the semantics like a sociologist.

Abu Bakarr Bah, chair of NIU’s Department of Sociology, said the way the conflict is understood depends on how the beginning of the conflict is defined.

“Palestinians and Jews or Israelis have actually been fighting for this space or this piece of land in that area since the end of the second World War,” Bah said. “So, the Israeli state was established there, and there were already Palestinians and Arab countries surrounding the actual state of Israel. It is a war that has been going on for decades, especially since the 1960s.”

Bah said different narratives exist in arguments surrounding Israel. The points of origin for the narratives vary from biblical times to the post-World War II relocation of Jewish people to Palestinian challenges to Israel’s existence as a country.

Israel has expanded its settlements over time, moving Palestinians into a smaller area and occupying the land.

“Occupation is a form of colonial rule,” Bah said. “In international relations, it means one group is coming and ruling another people.”

Israel’s occupation of Gaza involves a blockade of what goes in and out and restricts the movement of citizens, according to the Associated Press.

“The bottom line is that it is a system of oppression no matter what you think about the reasons for it,” Bah said. “What has been going on for the past two decades or more is actually the Israeli occupation. It is a conflict about land – it’s not about anything else.”

Bah said conventional warfare is fought between two countries that both have standing armies and follows rules of war. Militant groups often engage in asymmetric warfare, which is between a country and a less powerful entity that is not a country.

“The state of Israel has a conventional military,” Bah said. “The Palestinians, in this case Hamas, have a militant group that is actually fighting for Palestinian rights.”

That ought to clear things up. You don't equivocate about terrorists being freedom fighters, those are actually militants.  Or maybe insurgents.  War remains cruelty.

Just for fun: I wonder if any academic institutions in Bethlehem have a land acknowledgement that refers to the house and lineage of David.

Bah said there are two dimensions to how the label of terrorist is used.

“Those who support Israel will call them a terrorist organization,” Bah said. “That actually has two dimensions to it. One is just to delegitimize the organization in general. Sometimes also it is because militant liberation fighting organizations will use asymmetric warfare, meaning that it’s a guerrilla kind of fight.”

From this perspective, Bah said Hamas is a militant group that engages in acts of terrorism.

“Hamas is actually a liberation fighting organization. It’s a militant organization fighting for the liberation of Palestine,” Bah said. “Do they commit acts that you can say they are terrorist acts? Sure, but just like every other entity involved in war commits terrorist acts.”

Bah said the situation is tragic.

“I think it is important to note the multiple layers of tragedy here on both sides,” Bah said. “How you get out of this thing, I think, it is never an easy thing.”

As it was in Exodus, it is now and ever shall be, conflict without end?

Cold Spring Shops headquarters is on land that was in Wisconsin Territory before Illinois became a state. We recognize the labor applied by those settlers marking the trails that contemporary Illinoisans use to visit Lake Geneva, the Dells, and Door County, and to watch their teams get owned in Green Bay.