Should Israel invade Gaza?

Submitted by Prashant, Sep 30, 2019 at 21:52

Dear Dr Pipes,

While researching your blog about whether Israel should invade Gaza, I can across an article (ref 1) about Christians of Gaza running away from Gaza. The article is dated Sept 29. Your blog was written just a week prior. That may or may not be a coincidence. I do not like wars but perhaps Israel should invade Gaza for the purpose of saving the Christian lives in Gaza. There is a full-fledged Wikipedia article on 'Islamization of Gaza'. This article describes incidences of polygamy and deteriorating rights for women in Gaza under theHamas rule.

The Gaza story is very much like what happened in India's Jammu and Kashmir. You and your readers might have kept track of recent Indian actions in Jammu and Kashmir. J&K is a disputed territory partly occupied by Pakistan (Pakistan militarily attacked and captured part of Kashmir in 1948 while India was still celebrating her independence). Recently, India, by an act of her parliament, ended the special status granted to Kashmir since 1951 and declared it a part of the Indian union.

What many people do not know is that Jammu and Kashmir is not entirely a Muslim state. A big part of J&K is Buddist (the Laddakh region) and a substantial part is majority Hindu (Jammu region). In the 1990s, Islamists started their act of ethnic cleansing in the Kashmir valley which is majority-Muslim. Lots of Hindus were forced to leave Kashmir valley under the threat of Islamization and under acts of violence. The Algmeiner article (referenced below) is aptly titled: Christians Flee Gaza Due to Hamas — and No One Cares. It is also a Déjà vu (Islamic Déjà vu, that is). In the 1990s when Hindus were being driven out of Kashmir no one cared. No one even knew!

By changing the status of Kashmir overnight the tough Indian PM Narendra Modi, essentially, freed Buddist and Hindu population of J&K from what was essentially an Islamic rule. Modi divided J&K so Ladakh is now a separate secular territory. The future of Muslim majority and Hindu minority J&K is still not completely known. I would also like to state that while Indian controlled J&K still has 33% Hindus and Buddists remaining, the Pakistani controlled Kashmir --you guessed it-- is 100% Islamic! The biggest worry of the young people in Ladakh region today is not that they will be forced to wear Hijabs. Their biggest worry is that tourists from India and the rest of the world will now change the essential pristine character of their mountainous land. A better class of problem to have!

I am of the opinion that theocracies occupy a lot of land mass on our planet, do not belong to our planet. That is because they hurt fundamental rights of their minorities. So I think if it leads to preserving the multi-cultural and multi-religion character of Gaza, Israel should attack Gaza. Friends do not leave friends in Islamic lands as dhimmis. That is the bottom line.

ref: https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/09/29/christians-flee-gaza-due-to-hamas-and-no-one-cares/

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