This is a world map of the support of governments for Israel in the present war against Hamas and the Palestinian people. It does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the populace of each nation.
It’s hard to know where to begin with regard to the horrors emanating from the Middle East right now. The vile atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, followed by the ongoing revenge attacks on Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli government forces, have evoked so much comment and often bitter side-taking that the first response is to walk away, leaving official media outlets to their lurid headlines and social media to it’s manic hysteria.
Yet, to ignore it is to surrender to a false normality; to bury one’s head in the sand and allow all to pass over apparently unnoticed. It cannot go unnoticed, and must be seen and noted in the context of all that is happening in our world today.
Our media rushes from one catastrophe to the next, leaving the first pushed into the oblivion of interior pages and near forgotten. The ongoing war between Ukraine and Vladimir Putin has been relegated to the dark depths of the media as the broadsheets line up and take sides in this latest conflict to enthrall their readers.
The argument is simple: who is in the right? Joe Biden is quick to tell Netanyahu Israel has a right to defend itself. In the next breath he says they must abide by International Law. Netanyahu nods, but is not listening. Three days later 8,000 Palestinian innocents are dead. Meanwhile, Israel buries 1,400 of it’s citizens, the victims of the slaughter by Hamas.
Who is in the right?
The answer to that question is buried deeper than any funeral corpse. It plunges far into the depths of history, back at least to 1917. Then all the land now occupied as Israel was known as Palestine. The history of the area from 1917 onwards is well-written. After WW1 the British controlled the area under a Mandate, but reconciling the growing Jewish populace and the Arab Palestinians proved too difficult. The Arabs rejected what they considered unfair solutions put forward by the British, and revolted against them. In typical, heavy-handed, colonial fashion, the British police and army slaughtered an estimated 2,000-5,000 Arabs.
Who is in the right?
It’s been a question asked almost incessantly since then. The British and Americans came down heavily on the side of the Jewish people, who despite being banned from immigration into Palestine between the two world wars, were easily smuggled in with the assistance of Zionist organizations.
Eventually Britain pulled out of Palestine and handed it to the newly-formed United Nations who decided to partition the land. The British Mandate ended on 15 May 1948. Twenty-four hours earlier the State of Israel had declared independence. It sparked the first Arab-Israeli War.
“The war ended in 1949 with Israel’s victory, but 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, and the territory was divided into 3 parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.” [cfr]
From then until the present day, Israel has used overwhelming military might to push the Palestinians off the land ceded to them on the West Bank, and use it for Israeli settlements.
There can be little doubt that the aggressive and often brutal actions of the Israeli government, especially under Ariel Sharon and later Benyamin Netanyahu, coupled with it’s intransigence to adopt any form of compromise during peace talks, has escalated tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. When Israel erected a huge security wall around Gaza it effectively became a prison for two million Palestinians. Israel became the jailor in control of the sea, airspace, and all fuel, water, and medical supplies into the area.
When that huge number of people, half of them children, are imprisoned in an area of 141 square miles (365 sq kms) with little or no hope of any sort of decent life, resentment builds like a pressure cooker. They see the Israelis as their jailors, which in every practical sense they are. The Israeli government keeps them trapped by military force.
Whatever one may think of Hamas, and there can be no doubt as to their innate brutality, as witnessed on the 7 October by their murderous incursion into Israel, the Israeli government over many years has created a foment of hatred in Gaza that exploded on that fateful night. It has resulted in the desperate situation we witness today.
Hamas seized control of Gaza after the failure of the Palestinian Authority to win better conditions for it citizens. On the 7 October, 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered and two hundred taken hostage, because the successive government’s of both failed to sit down and work out a compromise that would allow for a peaceful, civilized outcome for both sides.
As always in such confrontations it is the innocents who suffer most. Over 8,000 deaths in Gaza and 20,000 injured; over 1,400 Israeli innocents killed and more than 5,000 injured. There will be many more.
While power-hungry egos on both sides work their murderous intent with bombs, rockets, and mortars, it is those innocent human beings, Israeli and Palestinian, who are the true victims of the insanity that has prevailed in this region for over fifty years.
Who is in the right?
No-one. Two wrongs can never make it right.