Hannah Scheidecker

I went on a major Arab network late last night. The anchor asked this as a matter of fact: Why did #Israel hit #AlAhliHospital in Gaza? I answered: I haven't yet seen evidence proving that Israel did it. However, even if it were Israel, Biden tomorrow will double down on America's support of Israel because the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy have -- after October 7 -- said in a joint statement that #Hamas is terrorist, Israel should take it out, after which the world would sponsor resumption of peace talks. I said this war was one way for Israel, there was no going back to October 6 (ceasefire with Hamas) because Israel has discovered that a fence is not enough to keep Israelis safe from Hamas's crazy outbursts that might kill 1,300 Israelis in the future. An Egyptian guest on the show went bonkers over me not being certain that Israel hit Gaza hospital, questioning my motives and agenda. He then thrashed my argument that Biden would continue to support Israel, said Arab countries cancelling the summit with him in Jordan taught him a lesson, and that tomorrow in Israel he would walk back his support of Israel. If he did not, America risked one large flame engulfing the region. Hezbollah would enter the war, Iran, and also nuclear Russia. The world would explode, and hence after the hospital attack, Biden would backtrack and force Israel to stop the war. Today, Israel presented evidence that the hospital blast was not an Israeli attack but an errant Palestinian rocket. Using their own ways and sources, half a dozen Western intel agencies came to the same conclusion. Biden visited Israel and reiterated his full support of taking out Hamas, saying even ISIS was more rational than Hamas. Western media, for its part, burnt its fingers when it first endorsed the Palestinian unfounded claim that Israel struck the hospital. Western media later walked back its reporting. Today, even The Washington Muslim Brotherhood Post did not call it an attack, only a blast. The only group on planet earth that is still living in its own lala land and believing an unfounded rumor that it had put out, without offering any evidence (not even pictures of hospital rubble), has been the Arab World, all of it-- governments, populations and media. It seems that Arabs think that if we keep on saying it, and shame any Arabic speaker for not supporting our claim, it'll become true. It's been 11 days. My line of argument on Arabic media has been to explain things and not succumb to the wishful thinking that many Arabs are trafficking in. According to wishful thinking, the world would force Israel to call off decimating Hamas, or even better, Israel would just disappear. In reality, Hamas will be decimated, and the Arabs will only come around, half heartedly, because reality will leave them behind. This insistence on living in fairytales, detached from global reality, has cost the Palestinians everything over the past 75 years. Arabs have been crying victim for 75 years hoping that would shame the world, always thinking that global opinion is changing in Arab favor, often citing deranged Western intellectuals or antisemites and perceiving them as an expanding mainstream opinion. Palestinians deserve better. The faster we in the Arab world come to terms with reality, the shorter Palestinian misery will be. I know that reality might not accord with wishful thinking and emotions, but the cost of living in fantasy world has brought us here. Let's try reality and see where it takes us. #musings #exhaustion