Butler is a husband, father, grandfather, business executive, entrepreneur, and political observer.
The bloody and tragic conflict in Gaza could continue for months and even years. It is an extension of conflict that started before most of us were born and seems intractable. But Israel cannot eliminate Hamas, in the same way that the United States has been unable to eliminate Al Qaeda, ISIS or the Taliban.
These terror groups are not just people, but extreme ideologies. Attempts to eliminate the people of Hamas, especially with the inevitable and tragic “collateral damage,” will ultimately result in more ideologues. Only those who both support Hamas (whether actively or through their inaction) and live with the direct results of that support can end the ideology.
How did it get to this point? The land now referred to as Israel and Palestine has been the home of both Jewish and Arab peoples, and their ancestors, from before the beginning of recorded human history. The area has been conquered and controlled by a range of national entities over the centuries, with the local Jewish peoples usually being oppressed and sometimes forced from the area, later to return and re-establish themselves in what they saw as their homeland.
In modern times, since the end of World War I, there has been an international consensus for a two-state solution and, in November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution for a “Plan of Partition with Economic Union” that provided for “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.” This two-state solution was rejected by neighboring Arab countries, which invaded Israel the day after it was formally established in 1948.
This begs a thought experiment:
Where would Palestinians and Israel be today if on May 15, 1948, the day after the creation of the state of Israel, the Palestinians had declared their own state and initiated diplomatic relations with Israel and the broader global community? What if members of the Arab League had welcomed this new state of Palestine and initiated diplomatic relations with Israel? I’ll leave you to think through what might have been, but we should also consider what could be.
Arab nations and the Palestinian Arabs themselves (or at least their leadership) continued their resistance to a two-state solution for decades before beginning to temper their views. This began when Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, with a final peace agreement signed in 1979. So momentous was this step that Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Sadat paid for this bold move with his life when he was assassinated by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981.
Following the first Intifada (from 1987 to 1993) the Oslo Accords were signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, wherein each party recognized the other party’s legitimacy and established a framework for future negotiations. There was resistance to these Accords on both sides, and when the second intifada broke out in 2000, the Oslo process came to a halt. While the PLO ostensibly continues to support a two-state solution, Palestinian and Islamicist resistance continues. And yes, there are Israelis who also resist a two-state solution.
More recently, with the Abraham Accords, the historically anti-Israel countries of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan each recognized Israel, and diplomatic relations were established. Whether directly or indirectly, the agreements all supported the two-state solution and a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Most recently there appears to have been progress in peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that included support for a two-state solution and a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. There is speculation that Hamas, with the backing and encouragement of Iran, timed its Oct. 7 attack on Israel in part to pre-empt any such agreement.
So, while the Arab nations originally opposed a two-state solution, the trend is in this direction, though painfully slow and with tragic and violent interruptions. Several Palestinian and radical Muslim groups, including Hamas, continue to subscribe to the idea of a single Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” and the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people. In 2006, the year after Israel unilaterally ended its occupation and settlement in Gaza, Hamas won the first (and so far, only) Palestinian legislative elections. Because of Hamas’ history of violence and its continued intent to eradicate Israel, most of the international community refused to recognize it as the legitimate leadership of Palestinians. But given Hamas’ influence and strengths, it has controlled Gaza ever since.
The barbaric attack Hamas conducted on Oct. 7 has prompted Israel to conduct its retaliation as a full-scale war with the explicit intent to eradicate Hamas. This has resulted in a higher level of civilian deaths, injuries and displacement than past responses. The human tragedy is obvious. But given the goal to eliminate Hamas and given the Hamas strategy of embedding itself among civilians, this is not surprising. Even if one believes Israel is doing its best to avoid such results, which is contradicted by the video evidence, we grieve for those civilians, and we know more Palestinians are being radicalized.
Israel made it clear from the beginning that this would be a war and not a mere retaliation, and that it would continue the war until Hamas had been eliminated. I wish Israel had made it clear to the Palestinians that they could avoid the coming war. How? By rising up and overthrowing their real oppressors – Hamas. This may seem impossible, but so does Israel’s objective of eradicating Hamas. The only people that can do that are the Palestinians themselves. Doing so would almost certainly require a violent revolution and likely many Palestinians would perish in the effort. But after 75 years of dying in a failed and futile effort to destroy Israel, when does it become obvious that another approach is in order? For those Palestinians who recognize two states as the only solution, for their children and grandchildren, they must renounce the Hamas ideology and remove the Hamas organization from power.
So let’s extend our thought experiment. What would result if the Palestinians themselves put an end to Hamas and sought peace with Israel in the framework of a Palestinian state? Again, I’ll leave it to you to think through what can be. For those who support Palestinians from afar, especially politicians and protestors, and most especially those who find it difficult to blame Hamas, what would result?
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.