A post from another conversation, some of which may nay make sense in context but this is pretty much how I am feeling now about this hideous situation in Gaza. I am ashamed at the garbage people pump out to justify murder. I was brought up to believe in Israel, we all were in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK. I made an effort to find out more about the reality of the situation about 10 years ago. How badly we were misled. My heart is broken by the carnage in Gaza and my ability to love my fellow man is bruised almost beyond redemption by some of the stuff I have heard and read in defence of this action. To blame all whats happening here on Hamas is beyond chutzpah. The blame lies with the Zionist mentality that expelled people from their homes in 1948, fought continually to expand their territory in a wholly aggressive manner notwithstanding the rhetoric about defensive wars, has continued with a policy of Settlement and colonisation in the West Bank and turned Gaza into an open air prison camp that the UN health bodies say may be wholly uninhabitable by 2020 - and that is before the current slaughter. The comment that it is only 700 people that have been killed, even in the context of that conversation defeated me. You know that you would not be saying anything like that if 700 Jews had been killed; you know that you would not be justifying the way Gaza and its people are treated if that were Arabs doing that to Jews, or white settlers doing that to black people. And for the nation that has voted in the likes of Begin and Shamir as Prime Minister to get righteous about people voting in terrorists would be risible were not the outcome so tragic. The belief that because people of the Jewish faith lived in modern day Palestine over 2000 years ago, in land that they stole from the Caananites according to their own books, gave the Zionist movement the right to kick out the people who lived on that land is one of the more unpleasant of recent times. After the first Zionist conference in 1897, 2 Rabbis from Vienna were sent to explore Palestine as possible Jewish home. The Rabbis recognised that there were people living there and that they had rights. they wrote home the bride is beautiful but she is married to another man (see Avi Shlaim, the Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World). Despite this, Zionists pushed forward, numerous diary entries, letters and other documents that they decided to push out non-Jews, financially if possible, by violence if necessary. (Nur Masalha Expulsiion of the Palestinanans, the concept of Transfer in Zionist Political thought) This is what the conflict is about, and for supporters of Israel to say 1948 is nothing to do with it now but then go back 2000 years as justification for ethnic cleansing makes me weep. And do not talk about the Exile, the Romans did not exile people, its a myth probably invented by the early Christians to convoke Jews to convert. Looking at the current conflict in context: Go back a few months: the breakdown of ongoing negotiations by Israel; the war on Hamas in the West Bank that killed 5 people following the murder of the three yeshiva students, which it is doubtful Hamas planned and for which absolutely no evidence to that effect has been produced, the false arrest of 500 of its activists many of who were released originally under the 2012 agreement; stopping payment of salaries to Hamas workers in Gaza and the Israeli governments opposition to the unity government, which might have brought the organization into the political sphere. There is easily enough evidence to suggest that the Israeli government wanted this conflict as an excuse to reassert control of Gaza and suppress the population by fear. Add to the above the killing in cold blood of 2 young Palestinan teenagers by the IDF , the siege and the continual attacks on Gaza fisherman then any objective observer would note that if the Womans Institute of Blackheath or the Daughters of America from Tucson were put in charge of Gaza then they would probably be moved to resist by any mens necessary, to blame it all on Hamas is beyond contempt. I am also sick of the Human Shield narrative designed to further the narrative of Hamas being nothing but bloodthirsty bastards. I dont deny some of them are and that human shields have been used - Israel has also done this with Arab kids -but the idea that they are telling people to stay in place: over 140,000 people are now refugees in a strip of land that is a prison camp due to the siege, Israel has also made 44% of Gaza off- limits hence reducing the places to which people can run. And of course Hamas is going to try to hide its gear, all Guerrilla movements move and hide within the host population, including Irgun and the Stern Gang. Do you expect them to leave their limited military capability out in the open for Israel to easily destroy? I do not support Hamas, but given what these people have been through I can see why they have support. And be honest the tragedy of Gaza only gets noticed when they make this kind of noise. If you believe all this stuff that its all down to Hamas then you are very foolish, if you know deep down that that view is just Israeli propaganda used to justify mass murder but you still peddle it, then you are guilty of something much worse. You should hang your heads in shame at the misery that you help perpetuate anyway.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 20:25:28 +0000
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