Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.
Let me rephrase that - it’s not a useful form of terrorism for achieving reasonable goals. If one’s goal is to perpetuate a pointless and bloody sectarian conflict so that one can hold onto power over their own people even as the overall prosperity of the nation suffers, I guess murdering civilians is useful.
When killing is mostly or entirely random, all that happens is that the civilian population at large begins to consider themselves (rightly) under threat, and the conflict is perpetuated by mutual fear and spite rather than fear being a means to leverage negotiations or achieving policy.