Sunday, May 23, 2021

Israel and Palestine both - equally improbably - claim victory

It's a depressing confirmation of just how ridiculous war makes people that both sides in the recent Israel-Palestine exchanges are claiming victory.

Rich and militarily-superior Israel claims to have decimated Hamas' retaliatory capacity, and given the poor downtrodden Palestinian people a resounding warning not to mess with their masters. Even more improbably, the Palestinians are parading round the battered remains of their Gaza towns, claiming victory for something or other, presumably just the fact that some of them survived. Expectations are low in Palestine.

I guess when you live your whole life in the midst of internecine existential warfare, you do what you can to remain positive and upbeat. From the outside, though, it just seems faintly ridiculous for either side to be claiming anything other than deep loss.

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