CDR SALAMANDER: Prelude to Slaughter: How Israel & Everyone Else Got Here.

Entire books have been written on how the Gaza Strip came in to being. We’re not going to go back to Biblical times on today’s post, but we will stick to living memory that goes back to 1950 when the Gaza Strip had a population of about 120,000. Today, it has a population of about 2.3 million. The various Arab-Israeli wars ebbed and flowed around Gaza over the decades, but even in peace Egypt never wanted it back. Israel tired of being an occupying force, and under pressure from local and international Smartest People in the Room™, they hoped for the best in 2005 & unilaterally withdrew its settlements and security forces from Gaza. The Gazans then had “elections” and in the end Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and have had it ever since.

Hamas. You know, the terrorist organization. Those guys.

Yeah, those guys. Remember how Reuters used to tell us that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.