Sir Isaac Newton’s laws on thermodynamics (my op-ed title is one of them) suddenly came back to me as I was reading Aviya Kusher’s “How it feels to leave Israel when an attack is coming, and every airline is cancelling flights.”* She notes that multiple sources predicted that Iran will attack on August 13, when Tisha B’aAv starts in the evening—the saddest day in Jewish history.** Nearly every airline had cancelled flights to and from Israel except El Al whose seats to Europe and the USA had sharply increased—a seat to New Yok City was $5,200 one way.
The more I read her article, the more I began to recall the events in Gaza after the brutal attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Israel messaged Gazan civilians to move south because they were going to bomb the north. Thousands did, but later Israel warned them to go north because they were going to bomb the south.
Where do Gazan/Palestinians go when the only options are closed: Egypt and Israel? The most densely populated real estate on the planet, Gaza has absorbed Palestinian refugees several times since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
The dilemma in Gaza and now Israel in early August 2024 are similar in a bizarre way. Israel has only the immediate option of airlines that are cancelling: Gazans have no options. Both are surrounded by enemies. Only a flotilla of ships could help in both cases, but speed is of the utmost importance.
The world needs to pay more attention to United Nations’ resolutions and to rulings of the international Court of Justice.
I write this op-ed on August 14, 2024(in the USA). and we shall see when the predicted retaliation by Iran will happen. History suggests that Iran is not in a hurry and tries to remain true to ‘an eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth.”***
*Forward, August 6, 2024.
**Several disasters fell on this week, including the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Roman forces.
***The deliberate bombing of a civilian Pan American flight 103 over Scotland on December 1,1988 is now considered by many to be in retaliation for an Iranian civilian flight 655 shot down by the US Navy on July 3, 1988. The US Navy apologized and said it was a mistake. The Pan American flight had almost exactly the same number of passengers and crew that the Iranian flight had.
