( FIVE MINUTE READ)

The world today looks very different from the way it appeared thirty years ago.

It is one thing to express your opinion, it is another to do so in a way that actually puts a stumbling block in the way of others.

It’s okay to want to find ways of expressing some nuance.

Not about the wickedness of what’s happened. Not about the horror at loss of life. Not about the fact Hamas are terrorists, committed to the total destruction of the Jewish state.

But about where (like all war’s) is this war going before it ends as all wars eventually do.

How do you draw the line between retaliation and self-defence?

What proportion of vengeance is acceptable?

Is sending hundreds of thousands of troops into Gaza wise?

Is cutting off water and electricity act of justice?

These are complex questions.

Palestine is not a country. That’s the whole point.

Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel all live under various regimes of organized discrimination and oppression, much of which makes life nearly unlivable. But in terms of what happens now, and how the response plays itself out, there might well be room for nuance but first and foremost, we must unequivocally condemn the Hamas attacks for what they were. Any attempt to justify these actions is morally indefensible, and we must firmly oppose the arguments of those who seek to rationalise them.

However the line between punishing evil and revenge can be a fine one, but it’s an important one.

For example, I think Hamas are freedom fighters, turned into terrorists by the west and their recent barbaric acts.

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Let’s distinguish between those questions on which we can be clear.

The conflict and tensions in the Middle East are complex and deep rooted.

Let’s be equally honest about the complexity of this situation and not white wash away the sins of either side.

There is no Biblical justification to what Israel is doing.

There is not Promised Land anymore.

Why?

Because the events are and were unavoidably, part of a 80 year long story of modern times.

A further episode of horror. Israel – using unprecedented violence on a largely defenseless and penned-in population, in part to cover for its own fatal mistakes and embarrassment.

You might even think that Palestinians are the ones colonizing the land of Israel, no less. And you probably believe that Israel, which holds ultimate control over the lives of 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and yet denies them the right to vote in Israeli elections, is a democracy.

WAR IS WAR.

NO INTERNATIONAL LAWS or INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY WILL CHANGE THAT NO MATTER WHERE A WAR IS OR TAKING PLACE.

The one thing war and bloodshed do for us is leave us longing for a new world.

Palestinians always act while Israel only reacts.

(It is amazing that such a poorly trained and equipped group of Palestinians from Gaza could overcome the best intelligence in the world found in Israel. The Israelis were caught napping and their response is influenced by this.)

It is not appropriate to see Hamas as separate from the Palestinian people.

It is a fundamentalist political group, supported originally by Israel, that responded to the secularism and corruption of the Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority.

Whilst we may disagree about what is proportionate. What Hamas have done is wicked, “unprovoked”

What exactly counts as a provocation?

Not the 248 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 1 January and 4 October of last year.

Not the denial of Palestinian human rights and national aspirations for decades.

Israel have human rights, as do other nations, but there are terrorists on both sides, including those in power currently in Israel. Mutually dependent on each other for survival. Yet neither can win.

The Palestinians will remain. They cannot be eliminated. Israel too will continue to exist.

There are roughly 14.5 million Palestinians in the world, according to a 2023 estimate from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the vast majority of whom are Sunni Muslims, though a significant minority is Christian. Over 5 million live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and another 2 million in Israel. The remaining population lives elsewhere, mostly as refugees, with the largest communities in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

As of 2019, about 5.6 million Palestinians were considered refugees by the United Nations because they or their forebears were displaced by wars with Israel.

Today Palestinians are a minority. 1.8 million Palestinians form around 20.8 percent of Israel’s population. They’re not equal. One dominates while the other is dominated. One colonizes. The other is colonized.

Desperate western attachment to morally bankrupt double standards bears a large portion of the blame for this and the resulting wars that have plagued the region.

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The future is full of unnecessary and horrific bloodshed all around.

There is and has been wrongdoing and bad decisions on both sides.

Calling out either one, does no good.

Was the land stolen from Arabs living in the British Protective of Palestine. The land was granted them by an UN charter.

Unfortunately the “land without people for a people without land” was flawed as there were people on that land and that was stolen from them.

We are ignoring the painful context. 

If we once again ignore the big picture, then all this will just keep happening.

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THAT THERE IS NO DENYING (BEING LIVE STREAMED IN FRONT OF THE WORLD.) This new outbreak is turning into a Genocide.

SHOULD THE UNITED NATIONS NOW EXPEL ISRAEL? ( LIKE IT DID WITH SOUTH AFRICA DURING ITS APARTHEID.)

SHOULD INTERNATIONAL SPORT AND CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS &  COMMERCIAL CORPORATIONS NOW BOYCOTT ISRAEL, WITH TARGETS BOYCOTTS. TO AVOID BEING COMPLACENT AND TARNISHED WITH A GENOCIDE?

SHOULD THERE BE A LARGE DE VESTMENT OF INVESTMENTS IN ISRAEL?

SHOULD THERE BE A MILITARY EMBARGO?

SHOULD AS 83% OF IDRSAI TO DAY SUPPORT ETHNIC CLEANSING ISRAEL BE BAN IN COMPETING IN THE OLYMPICS, THE WORLD CUP AND ALL OTHER SPORTING EVENTS.

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EVEN WHEN ALL OF THIS COMES TO A STOP THE ROOT CAUSE WILL NOT JUST DISAPPEAR FROM THE MAP.

WE MUST APPLY PRESSURE AND NOT BE COMPLICITY.

WE MUST NOT ALLOW GOVERNMENTS TO CLOSE DOWN OR UNDERMINE ANY FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION OR SPEECH SUPPORTING A CEASEFIRE AND POLITICAL SETTLEMENT.

ISRAEL DOES NOT REPRESENT ALL JEWS ETHNICS. CLEANNESS IS A JEWS VALUE NOT GENOCIDE.

HERE ARE A FEW COLLECTIVE ACTIONS THAT WE ALL CAN APPLY.

Boycott:

Hewlett Packard helps run the biometric ID system that Israel uses to restrict Palestinian movement.

Siemens is complicit in apartheid Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise through its planned construction of the EuroAsia Interconnector

Soda Steam is actively complicit in Israel’s policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab (Negev).

AXA invests in Israeli banks, which finance the theft of Palestinian land and natural resources

Sabra hummus is a joint venture between PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that provides financial support to the Israeli army.

A barcode starting with 729 usually indicates a product of Israel. ( But this is not always reliable.)

Palestinian refugees have long claimed that international law guarantees them the right to return to their homes, citing U.N. General Assembly resolution 194, adopted in December, 1948, which states that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.

For its part, Israel largely considers this claim a non-starter, fearing that the return of millions of Palestinians is neither feasible nor just and would demographically overwhelm the country, erasing its Jewish character.

Sadly, 2023 has been a violent one on the global stage.

Many proposals have been put forward for how the current conflicts could, or should, be brought to a close. All will involve concessions that will effectively appease one side or the other without tackling their underlying cause.

The unanimous conclusion rest on a common belief: That wars should, and usually do, end in negotiation and compromise.

The first problem is that they don’t.

It is true that the majority of wars do not end in absolute victory. Ceasefire, armistice and stalemate terminate most conflicts, even if the ‘peace’ is infirm or short-lived.

The second problem lies in the fatalistic quality of many arguments ruling out the pursuit or even possibility of defeat. The third deficiency of arguments to ‘settle now’ is their reliance on false analogies. The fourth and greatest problem is a failure to take account of the character of this war and the outlook of a systemic adversary viscerally hostile to the ‘collective West’ and the international order it claims to uphold.

Negotiation, compromise and reconciliation are undertaken with new regimes only after old regimes are defeated and removed.

This war might not meet legal definitions of genocide, but the barbarism and the serial war crimes that have taken place – material, cultural and now ecological – have not been witnessed in Europe since the Second World War. The war is being waged on an industrial scale OF DESTRUCTION.  

Western policy must be underpinned by a long-term strategy – political, military and industrial – based on a sustainable definition of victory, not on a search for negotiation with an adversary whose minimal terms flatly contradict Western interests.

Outlier events cannot be ruled out.

The only way I can foresee either the Ukraine War or the Palestinian Israeli War possibly ending is a change in leadership with new agreed compliant political federation regime installed.

THERE WILL BE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE MANY WARS TO FOLLOW.

Wars of the 21st century will be fought over something quite different: climate change, and the shortages of water and food that will come from it. If you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.

All human comments appreciated. All like and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com