My Response to Ambassador McFaul’s Tweet on Gaza

(Former) US Ambassador Michael McFaul’s Tweet

The short twitter feed answer:

Evacuate the civilians before using force. Cut off food and water slowly to force them to leave. Provide food etc. only outside. Search everyone who leaves for weapons. Detain Hamas fighters who try to sneak out. Only use force after all civilians are safe.

The longer non-twitter feed answer:

Evacuate the civilian population from Gaza before using force. Establish checkpoints at the border and search everyone leaving for any weapons. Tell them not to bring any weapons including guns, long knives, incendiary materials etc. Set up tents in the desert with plenty of water, basic food, vitamins, other amenities and some sort of benign entertainment as well as medical facilities etc. etc. Cut off food and water as is already being done, perhaps slower however, to force the civilians to leave. Identify and detain Hamas fighters and officials who leave. Those who cannot be linked to war crimes should be prisoners of war. Those culpable for war crimes — murder of civilians etc. — should be arrested and stand trial in some credible international court, not Israel judiciary. Wait until ideally all or most of the civilians are out of the way. If Hamas is not willing to surrender at this point or earlier, then attack. Civilians should be free to return to their homes after Hamas surrenders or is destroyed.

(C) 2023 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.

About Me

John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).