The more time goes on, the more scared I get for Palestinian civilians, and especially the Gaza population. Say what you will, but Hamas has given Netanyahu and his government the perfect excuse for the extermination of Palestinians. And I need you to understand just how little I'm exaggerating when I say "extermination".

All food, water, medical supplies and all electricity have been completely cut out from Gaza. There are approximatively 2.3 million people living there, of which half is under the age of 15. Israel has been targeting entire neighbourhoods, residential buildings, hospitals, and UN schools which have had to be reconverted into more hospitals and shelters. It has threatened Egypt to bomb its humanitarian aid and supplies, prompting Egypt to retract them.

Worst of all, Israel has bombed the Rafah Border Crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip (right after instructing Gazan civilians to flee through it). In other words: the only escape route for Gazans is now destroyed. They are completely trapped in Gaza, a region under siege. And if you think they will not soon do the same to the West Bank, you're mistaken.

I have said it, and I will say it again, I wholeheartedly support Palestinian liberation. I understand that decolonisation is a violent process. I do not have to like it, but I understand it and accept it. No people have ever overthrown their oppressors by asking nicely. But I truly hope that either the international community will be able to pressure the end of the fight (which, given how hypocritical they have proven to be, I sincerely doubt), or that Palestinians will succeed in taking back enough land and power; because if they don't. If they lose. The fallout will be more horrifying than anything I think we've ever seen in the history of this conflict.

Right now, all I know is that thousands are starving, thousands are dying, and besides speaking up about it I know there isn't much more I can do. it's driving me insane.

I hate Hamas, but fuck, I hope they know what they're doing, because I do not want to see the fallout of this if they don't.

Can you tell us more about the rivalry between TJeff and Ham? If it was like the musical or different, I'd like to know more about it

Here you go. Two days and three thousand words later, all sources come Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation by John Ferling. Here you go:

It is probable that Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson met for the first time in 1783 after Madison in an effort to get Jefferson back into public life after the death of his wife, Martha finally convinced him to take a position as an envoy to Paris, France. Traveling to the coast before his departure, he reached Philadelphia just after Christmas, about two weeks before General McDougall and his officers arrived from Newburgh to urge commutation and spread rumors of a possible officers mutiny. Hamilton, of course, was a member of the Congress, and it is probable that he met Jefferson sometime during the Virginian’s seventy five days in Philadelphia, especially since they both counted Madison as a friend.

Both had contrasting views on the Constitution- Hamilton was a member of the Federalists who wished to ratify the constitution and Jefferson was opposed to the thought of it. Their rivalry does not start there- they barely knew one another in this time while Jefferson was in France during which the Constitution was birthed into life.

While it is probable they met in 1783, it is certain they met in 1789. This was the year that Washington was made president of the United States. Washington first began to fill his cabinet, he first offered Robert Morris the position of Treasury Secretary but he declined and recommended Hamilton. Jefferson, on his way back to the States stepped off into England to learn that Washington had nominated him to be secretary of state and that the senate had already confirmed the appointment. That was not the reason that Jefferson was returning to America, however and did not want to job- only accepted after a second offer from Washington.

The half year in the cabinet together was peaceful, though they disagreed with one another nearly every meeting- they also were good at speaking. Hamilton was even invited to Jefferson’s for dinner several times and they dined together.

In 1790, Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton negotiated the “Compromise of 1790″ in which Madison badly wanted the capital to be located on the Potomac. Hamilton asked Jefferson to intercede with southern congressman to support the Assumption Bill. Jefferson had remained on the side lines during this battle. The agreement that they allegedly reached called for Madison and Jefferson to persuade a couple of recalcitrant Virginia congressmen to support assumption, and for Hamilton to convince some Pennsylvania representatives, who longed for Philadelphia to be the nation’s capital, to consent to locating the capital on the Potomac. Madison had long since mastered the arts of backroom negotiating and Hamilton was the master at intrigue. Ever after. Jefferson depicted himself as a guileless innocent who was taken advantage of by Hamilton.

Jefferson had not fought any of Hamilton’s proposals, and the two secretaries had maintained a cordial, though not close, relationship. The bank changed that. Jefferson was already aware of the consuming hostilities in Virginia toward Hamilton’s initial economic program. On almost the very day that Hamilton urged the bank, the state legislature denounced the assumption of state debts as unconstitutional and asserted that funding would provide the president with “unbounded influence”. Jefferson understood that Hamilton was committed to crafting America on the English model. If Hamilton succeeded, Jefferson feared the promise of the Revolution would be dashed. After Washington allowed Hamilton to debate it out and write- he chose Hamilton’s over Jefferson’s and passed the Bank Bill. Jefferson was stunned.

Post Bank Bill signing, Jefferson cobbled together a network of friendly congressmen and capital insiders who could be trusted to report to him any scuttlebutt they learned about Hamilton and his plans. He also launched a campaign to lure Philip Freneau, a journalist to publish a newspaper to combat Hamilton. Jefferson payed him and began organizing those who opposed Hamilton next. Hamilton heard of this cabal but remained unconcerned, thinking his friend was exaggerating and he was friends with Madison.

Hamilton proposed that manufacturing be facilitated through federal subsidies, liberal immigration policies, nation defense contracts, government owned arms factories, publicly assisted improvements to the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, and the labor of women and children. Jefferson disproved of neither manufacturing within his Arcadian America nor making the United States more independence of Europe. However, he objected to the subsidization of manufacturing, which he saw as yet another step in dangerously expanding the read of the national government.

Jefferson was aware of Hamilton’s many suggestions to monarchy while he was in the constitutional convention. In the spring of 1791, while dining with Adams and Jefferson, Hamilton remarked that the sway of monarchy and commercial interests over parliament made British government “the most person… which ever existed.” Jefferson was shaken. Washington offered to be “the Mediator to put an end” to the battling between his cabinet members, but Jefferson refused. During 1791, his criticism of Hamilton grew more intense.

Hamilton knew that Jefferson and Madison opposed part of his economic program, but was slow to realize that they had taken steps to piece together a concerted opposition. Hamilton was startled by Madison’s opposition. Hamilton now saw Jefferson as “a man of profound ambition and violent passions” who was guided by an “unsound and dangerous philosophy”. Of course, Hamilton’s impression of Jefferson was a tangle of truths, half-truths and misconceptions. He believed that Jefferson had from the first opposed the Constitution (partially true); that he shared the “temperament” of a radical French Revolutionaries (true in part, though an exaggeration; that Jefferson returned to America hoping to serve as treasury secretary (incorrect); that from the first he had secretly disproved of funding (inaccurate); and that, above all, Jefferson was consumed with an ardent desire to succeed Washington as president (he was badly mistaken). Jeffersonians portrayed Hamilton and his faction as favoring an elitist system in which the citizen remained deferential and acquiescent while the “true republican” sought to fulfill the American Revolution.

In September of 1789, Hamilton desperately wished to avoid discrimination against British trade. George Beckwith, a British official en route from London to Quebec, paused in New York. Beckwith was under orders to communicate to Washington’s administration that London would retaliate should the United States discriminate against British trade. Beckwith delivered his message to Senator Schuyler, who arranged a meeting with Hamilton. Hamilton was not only desperate to stabilize and enlarge the American economy, but he also believed that close ties with the former mother country would further the political and social agenda he had pursued for years.. Hamilton had one diplomacy mission and it had failed miserably. After falsely assuring Beckwith that the sentiments he expressed were those of President Washington’s, Hamilton gushed that he had “always preferred a Connexion with Great Britain” politically as well as economic. Beckwith, concluded that the United States was desperate for Britain’s friendship. Unaware of what Hamilton had just done, Washington dispatched Gouverneur Morris to London as a secret envoy. His discussions got no-where and Hamilton was to blame for that. Hamilton also, inappropriately divulged that Jefferson, while “a gentleman of honor” was given to “predilections” respecting Britain and France- in other words he told Beckwith was a severe Anglophobe and a Francophile. Hamilton added he wished to know everything Jefferson and Beckwith would discuss. George Hammond, arrived in Philadelphia in 1791 and rapidly entered into discussions with Jefferson. Jefferson was cordial and with the practiced hand of a veteran diplomat, he proceeded at a leisurely pace. Hammond was irritated with Jefferson. Aware of what Hamilton had told Beckwith, Hammond had crossed the Atlantic expecting to find that the past child country craved the normalization of relations with London, so much so that it was willing to pay a high price to achieve a general agreement. He blamed Jefferson. Hammond turned to Hamilton and the treasury secretary was all too willing to enter into private talks with the minister, a step that went beyond imprudence. Hamilton’s behavior was treacherous, for he had to know that he risked subverting the diplomacy of his nation’s chief diplomat. Hamilton falsely depicted that secretary of state as staking out positions that were not in accord with those of Washington, communicated confidential information regarding the status of United States’s negotiations with Spain, and divulged that despite the State Department’s renewed talks with France concerning a new commercial agreement. Hamilton’s conduct was scandalous and indefensible, and had that president known of it, Washington would have no choice but to expel his treasury secretary.

After Jefferson found out of the Hamilton-Reynolds affair, he remained silent about Hamilton’s affair and blackmail, but the news helped reassure his feelings that the secretary was indeed corrupt. Through France’s wars, all the key players in Washington’s administration agreed on one thing: The United States must remain neutral in this war. Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson may have agreed on little else, but each was convinced that another war so soon after the War of Independence would be economically ruinous and possibly fatal to the American Union. The cabinet officers skirmished however, over whether to maintain the Treaties of Alliance and Commerce with France. Hamilton wished to suspend the, and Jefferson preserve them. In the end, Washington sided with Jefferson.

More tension was settled in when President Washington listened to Hamilton instead of Jefferson and the Whiskey tax passed a deeply divided congress. When Washington marched on those who rebelled of the tax, Hamilton tagged along. The campaign provided Hamilton with little glory, as the insurgents did not put up a fight. The army rounded up some 150 suspected rebels, many of whom were treated harshly before being released. Jefferson neither defended nor assailed the whiskey rebels, but he was appalled by Washington’s decision to send “such a armament against people at their ploughs.” Hamilton was convinced that the Jeffersonians would harm the nation, even that they loved the United States less than he did.

The same day that Hamilton first saw the Jay Treaty, Jefferson received a copy from one of Virginia’s two senators. Jefferson’s reaction could hardly have been more different from Hamilton’s enthusiasm. Hamilton wasted no time before publicly defending the treaty. The election of 1796 rolled around Hamilton remained in the shadows of his campaign while Jefferson with poking from Madison, reluctantly tried for the presidency. Using a pen-name, Hamilton through the press maligned Jefferson from pillar to post, and especially sullied his character. In one of his attacks, he drew attention to Sally Hemings and in all likelihood, he was telling Jefferson that he was aware of the story and would make it public if he or any of his party revealed his tryst with Maria Reynolds. Neither Hemings nor Reynolds surfaced during this election.

Hamilton may have also believed that Jefferson could do even greater harm as vice president, for in that office he would “become the rallying point of faction and French influence.” Jefferson was sworn into the vice-presidency, and Adams, the president. Jefferson cautioned Adams about Hamilton. Of course, Adams already knew of every one of Hamilton’s tirades and he intensely held in disdain Hamilton’s character. But what was the most shocking was Adams decision to recall all of Washington’s old cabinet- a collection of individuals whose first loyalty was Hamilton himself. James McHenry, stayed on as secretary of war, had been the best man at Hamilton’s wedding and Treasury Oliver Wolcott had served for four years as a comptroller of the Treasury under Hamilton. Timothy Pickering, the disputatious secretary of state, had never been as close to Hamilton as the others, but the two had known each other since their days as fellow officers in the Continental army.

Adams soon asked Jefferson if he would sail to London and seek negotiation with the Brits, but Jefferson refused (his old age) and recommended Madison. Madison immediately declined, for his fear of sea travel. Adams soon told his cabinet who in turn threatened to quit unless Madison’s invite was stopped. Adams caved. Hamilton pulled the strings in Adams’s cabinet, friends voiced his foreign policy views in congress. Had the Jay Treaty been rejected, Jefferson believed that they would have destroyed the Union rather than gone to war with Britain. Of course, after re-assigning the positions for three envoys, Adams chose a Democratic-Republican and two Federalists; just as Hamilton had wished.

1798, Alexander Hamilton held no political party. Barely an influence among his own party after his attempted take over of the entire American army, his cold shoulder from Adams and the fire of all of Adams’s cabinet members who were puppets of Hamilton. He slowly watched as all of his dreams vanished. Hamilton knew his chances of holding meaningful power in the near future were slim. After his publicly assaulted John Adams near the end of his presidency in a fifty-four page pamphlet; his public assault on Adams was ruinous to him. To Jefferson, Hamilton’s latest act was merely further confirmation that he was indeed “the evil genius of this country.”

During the House of Representatives take over of the Election of 1800 due to the tie between Jefferson and Burr, Hamilton immediately jumped in. He backed Burr over Jefferson, portraying the Virginian as the lesser of two evils and began his attacks on Burr. Hamilton’s voice carried no weight anymore. Nobody contributed more to the Federalist parties demise than Hamilton. In his quest for glory he had created an army that much of the citizenry feared and heated; in his scorn for Adams, Hamilton had sundered a party in which many members both continued to believe in the president and yearned for the honorable peace that he sought. Jefferson was now president. Despite his decade-long fight against Hamiltonianism, President Jefferson never touched the Bank of the United States, continued borrowing by the federal government, and never sought the wholesale removal of Federalist officeholders.

Alexander Hamilton was not in Washington for Jefferson’s inauguration. He never set foot in D.C. Reading Jefferson’s inauguration speech in the paper, Hamilton agreed with the more moderate Federalists who thought it “better than we expected.” He publicly remarked that the address provided “a ray of hope” that Jefferson would not pursue a “violent and absurd course”. He was especially happy that Jefferson had neither designated funding nor the Jay Treaty as abuses. Hamilton maintained that nothing mattered to him anymore but his wife and his children. He was submitted into gloom after his exile from public life and yet, he grew despondent observing the swirling social and political changes of Jefferson’s world all about him and he was fallen in melancholy.

In 1801, Hamilton joined with friends to found a Federalist newspaper, the New York Evening Posts. It was his initial attempt to crawl back to public life. He wrote eighteen essays attacking Jefferson in his paper. His pieces were turgid, painfully repetitive and nobody payed any mind to them.

After Hamilton’s death by duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, Jefferson learned of Hamilton’s death five days after the duel and simply mentioned it to Patsy in correspondence; he was always absorbed with grief over the death of his fifth child, Polly who died few months earlier. The years passed and Jefferson said little of Hamilton. Not even Adams was to entice Jefferson to speak critically of his former rival. Adams and Jefferson resumed correspondence in 1812. Adams told Jefferson that Washington and Hamilton had been “jugglers behind the scene” who manipulated his cabinet and portrayed Hamilton as a puppeteer with strings over Washington. Jefferson did not take the bait and merely remarked that he and Hamilton had “thought well” of each other. Jefferson recalled Hamilton as “a singular character” of “acute understanding” who was “amiable in society”, valued “virtue in private life,” and was “disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions.

In his last letter, Hamilton wrote that “our real disease… is democracy”. He called it poison and foresaw it as certain to grow “more violent”. Though Jeffersonian America was seen as overly Agrarian, Hamilton would have seen evidence of the nation’s transformation into a modern capitalistic society. The year Jefferson died, residents were three times more likely to work in a factory than to own a farm. Hamilton would have been dismayed by much that he beheld, though he might not have been appalled at discovering that Americans had become people totally absorbed in the individual pursuit of money.

Jefferson was the more revolutionary of the two. Jefferson may not of been forward looking, but it was Hamilton who sought to construct what later generations would see as the modern nation state. Jefferson resisted that trend, preferring a loose, decentralized union of states. Jefferson saw Hamilton as counter-revolutionary. Jefferson was instrumental in stopped Hamiltonian. No one knows what the United States might have be come by the fifty-fifth anniversary had Hamilton and the Federalists got their way. Hamilton’s focus was on a strong and independent United States, Jefferson dreamed of making the world a better place. Jefferson also feared that in time the world Hamilton wished would consist of a prosperous few who lived sumptuously while the great majority remained property less and mired in squalor. Jefferson envisaged a promised land of virtuous, property-owning farmers who had little need of a powerful centralized government, who would never yearn for the rile of “angels, in form of kings” and who would be independent of the long and awesome clout of the social and economic elite. Such a society, overseen by republican governance, was the “world’s best hope”, he said in his inaugural address. It was a dream, and dreams do not always come true. But for the most members of the several generations after Jefferson’s death, America more closely resembled Jefferson’s dream than it did the reveries of Hamilton.

Today’s America is more Hamilton’s America. Jefferson may never have fully understand Hamilton’s funding and banking system, but better than most he gleaned the potential dangers that awaited future generations living in the nation state that Hamilton wished to bring into being. Jefferson saw that Hamiltoniaism would concentrate power in the hands of the business leaders and financiers that it primarily served, leading inevitably to an America plutocracy every bit as dominant as monarchs. Jefferson’s fears were not misplaced. Modern America, concentrated wealth controls politics and government. The American nation, with its incredibly powerful chief executive, gargantuan military, repeated intervention in the affairs of foreign states, and political system in the thrall of great wealth, is the very world that Jefferson abhorred.

Hamilton and Jefferson had their champions and detractors in their live times, and both have been lionized and criticized by politicians and scholars.