If a person wanted to know how the Iowa landscape changed, a trip along Interstate 80 from Iowa City to Des Moines will provide the information. Thursday, while picking up my spouse, the green of emerging corn and beans was visible under large cumulus clouds set against a vast expanse of blue sky. Nothing remotely like the prairie that was here in 1830 remains. While indigenous people called Iowa “beautiful land,” there is nothing beautiful about the extractive economy of row crops, eggs, hogs, and cattle. It is ironic half the corn crop is used to make ethanol which is blended with gasoline that fueled my vehicle on this trip.
The round trip was uneventful, if the interstate was crowded with Class 8 truck traffic. I was so intent on traffic, I forgot to turn on the BBC News Hour on public radio. No worries. I have plenty of other sources for news.
A news alert hit my inbox in the wee hours of Friday reporting the U.S. military began Gaza aid deliveries from a floating pier President Biden directed be installed in the Mediterranean Sea. That such a facility is needed speaks to the problems in the Hamas-Israel War. There is no logical reason Israel couldn’t let aid vehicles through to Gaza via land routes. In fact, I would argue they are required to do so. However, they won’t.
South Africa asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to order Israel to cease all military operations in Rafah. Israel’s closure of land routes into Palestinian territory aim to destroy “the essential foundations of Palestinian life,” South Africa asserted. Israel’s belligerence toward the Palestinians has been on display in Gaza for many years. As Al Jazeera said in October 2023, “What is happening in Palestine can no longer be described as genocide, or even ethnic cleansing. It is beyond mass extermination – it is total erasure.” Israel is set to respond to the court.
Most Iowans I know believe the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel was uncalled for. The coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, had its reasons according to the combatants. If a person knows anything about Israel, they would be expected to respond. However, that Israel would knowingly uses artificial intelligence to target Hamas operatives in a way that included children and women in their blast zones violates our common humanity.
There are rules in warfare. Article 77 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 states:
Children shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault. The Parties to the conflict shall provide them with the care and aid they require, whether because of their age or for any other reason.
Knowingly targeting Hamas operatives and indiscriminately killing children along with them seems a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. It is also just plain wrong.
Iowans can’t hide from the conflict in Gaza in traditional farm country. It affects us all. What is happening to the Palestinian population may be a war crime. What is the complicity of the U.S. government with Israel in perpetrating this atrocity? People have their opinions. Mine is the U.S. Government should do everything possible to collar Israel’s undo belligerence, including pressing for a change in their government. We can’t let what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people stand.
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