Israel’s invasion of Gaza is destroying tunnels, ammunition dumps and Hamas fighters, yes. But I’m afraid it’s also helping to pulverize the recognition of shared humanity that in the long run allows people to live beside one another in peace. I pressed her, and she insisted it was fine even to kill a 5-year-old Israeli child, because “they are all Jews and Zionists.”That conversation pretty much broke my heart. “Extremists need each other, support each other,” Eyad al-Sarraj, a Gaza psychiatrist who died in 2013, once lamented to me. He complained that Israel’s blockade of Gaza since 2007 had turned Hamas fanatics into popular heroes.

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Persons: it’s, Benjamin Netanyahu, “, ” Netanyahu wasn’t, Eyad Organizations: Islamic Locations: Gaza, United States, Israel, East Jerusalem, Palestinian