The armed illegal settlers on the West Bank are now seemingly out of control and are beginning to kill their Palestinian neighbours.
Today the Israeli government said that Hamas have bought a load of plastic dolls from China and the people holding up shrouded babies who have been killed in the conflict are lying to the news media. 61 Palestinian journalists have been killed so far, and rising. They fear for their lives and the IDF refuses to embed journalists from anywhere else in the world.
The other things that I know are that Hamas will not be defeated by eradicating the entire nation of Palestine and peace is not achieved by bombing.
The Brits are not showing heart-rending footage shot in the Gaza region by Al Jazeera, the highly respected company who the Israeli government have blocked from the airwaves.
I have to say this now. I am getting too angry and depressed to hold back.
I've been too afraid of sounding unsympathetic to Israel for what happened on October 7th (and for fear of offending our mutual blogger friend who lives there) to say much of anything, but you're absolutely right. What Hamas did was inhuman and horrible, and I wouldn't say to any nation not to defend their people, but this is madness. And it's not helping.
ReplyDeleteYes, my feelings for her and every other Israeli friend has held me back too, but the situation has gone beyond personal sensitivities now.
DeleteI agree with everything you say. This war is not going to eliminate Hamas. BN continuing to state he is looking for and eliminating Hamas makes no sense. End the madness. The war is not going to bring peace to the region. A well defined two state solution is required. Both Israel and the Palestinians need to feel equally safe and secure.
ReplyDeleteBut this has been talked about for 70 years.
DeleteI think what makes things difficult right now is the noise. The sheer noise. Everyone clanging and banging on. You cannot grieve for the children of Palestine without being labeled antisemitic. I'm not. I am not at all antisemitic and goddammit, disagreeing with a country's actions is not antisemiticsm. I am ashamed that my country cannot stand in the middle of this and simply say it out loud. Two thirds of the victims of this war are women and children. It was unacceptable when Russia did it. It is unacceptable now. (You can delete this comment).
ReplyDeleteYou can grieve for the children of any nation. It certainly is not their fault. I depsise warmongers of any nationality.
DeleteI'm sorry to say these things, but imagine one day there were three thousand or more terrorists breaking into your homes, in Bath, Yorkshire or wherever you live. They would shoot missiles at you, burn your houses, rape your daughters, cut off organs from living people and children, take your children and grandmothers captive, and continue to torture them in captivity, burn your children with motorcycle exhaust, deny them food and other horrible things. And all this after years of them shooting missiles at you.
ReplyDeleteHow would you protect yourself? Do you understand that Hamas uses the children and women there as human shields" would you be willing to wait quietly until you are next in line?
Do you think that Israel would not be willing to take a different path if it were possible? Do you think our hearts do not ache at these sights? There is no one to talk to here and we can't wait to be the next victims. Yes, I am angry with you and disappointed by your comments.
Right at the very beginning of the awful murders on October the 7th, I said here that if anyone did the same thing to my family I would probably go on a rampage of revenge too, and I understood why Israel did. The difference would be that I would eventually be stopped by the higher authorities.
DeleteAs the war continues it has become clear to me that in asking for the impossible - that 2.5 million Palestinians be told to go into Egypt for their own safety - your government is creating a situation whereby the entire nation of Palestine would be destroyed along with a few thousand potential and actual murderers who make up the unacceptable factions of Hamas.
Also at the beginning, you said that the murderers who broke through the fence on October 7th were ISIS. I believe that is true.
There can be no open warfare in Palestine. It is too densely packed with citizens who want peace and freedom more than anything else. They were destined to be human shields every since the fence went up.
If Netanyahu is fighting a war of survival, he is using the wrong tactics. He will not be allowed to kill every last Palestinian in Gaza and he will not kill every last Hamas militant as he has pledged to do. He has created thousands more terrorists out of previously peaceful citizens by killing their families and destroying their homes.
I understand more about the history and the founding of Israel than you may think, but now is not the time to go back into the past to try and fix it. The present needs immediate attention and the killing of thousands of blameless men, women and children has to stop. If the USA ceases to back Israel because of political pressure, then the country would be seriously unstable for years to come.
It is time to bring an end to the revenge and work toward a truce or solution for the sake of everyone in the area.
Do you know how to do it?
DeleteI have had a few ideas over the years, but the situation changes very rapidly depending who is in political power in the region. The emergence of groups like ISIS - who do not care who dies, including themselves - have altered everything and now is not the right time to talk about future progress, but I do know for sure that genocide and the ethnic cleansing of civilians is not the right way to bring about the downfall of Hamas. Everyone knows this.
DeleteYour use of the words genocide and ethnic cleansing is so worrying, the trolls on my blog are already impersonating you when they want to attack me. That means something.
DeleteAnd just to remind you - on July 23, 1943, the Allies, led by England, killed 45,000 people in shelling. In the cities Dresden, Essen. Cologne, Leipzig and more killed tens of thousands of people from hundreds of tons of bombs. We know who threw them.
I have said from the beginning that this was not the time to trawl back through history until the immediate emergency in your part of the world has been dealt with, but you force me to react to your comment. I will not delete it as you have done on your blog to everyone who disagrees with you in the slightest.
DeleteYou miss out Hamburg from your list of towns and cities which were blanket-bombed with firestorms by your allies in WW2, and you miss out Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were nuclear bombed by the Americans toward the end of the war. Many people still describe these actions as war crimes, but they do not include many Israelis.
WW2 was the last world war which I would describe as justified - even though some of the later allied actions were dubious - and my father dropped many of the bombs on the cities occupied by the Nazis on the towns you mention.
Israel's first Prime Minister was a terrorist member of the Stern Gang who killed many British by shooting and planting bombs in civilian cafes and public places, so we know what terrorism is.
All I have been saying is that you do not defeat terrorism and create a secure environment for Israeli children by indiscriminately killing thousands of Palestinians which you have fenced into a tiny patch of the land which they have resided in for thousands of years, just because it was given to you as a homeland 70 years ago, even if they committed horrible atrocities to your own people a couple of months ago.
It makes no sense in the long term and never will. I did not want to go into so much detail about the past, but you force me to.
I only deleted comments from the anonymous troll, I didn't delete any comments from someone who identified himself by name. Even if you are very right in your positions, I expected you as a friend to show more understanding and compassion for my pain, I was disappointed. I won't comment here anymore.
DeleteI am sorry you will not comment here anymore, because I think that more people are sympathetic to you than you believe. I have to say that you deleted all the comments after Cro's silly and irresponsible one, including the ones from people who named themselves, and you deleted one or two short ones today which were from named people who also wanted to tell you that Cro was not telling the truth when he said those things.
DeleteNot true Yael - you have deleted named comments, including one from Tom. Fine, delete as you will but at least be truthful about it.
DeleteAs I write this comment there are still alarms going off here. You have to understand that Israel would never have started such a war. Learn the history. Look who was interested in keeping the people of Gaza in a state of refugees and not rehabilitating them.
ReplyDeleteYou will never understand our war of survival here. The difficult history because of anti-Semitism and the murder of the Jews in your countries. This was supposed to be the only safe place for us and we have no choice but to fight our war of survival, a war we didn't start.
And it is a war which you will not end either, without help which you freely accept.
DeleteA feud of over 3000 years ago, still carrying on.
ReplyDeleteNot right on either side
70 years.
DeleteIt is horrendous on both sides, but I am glad Tom is speaking out. A photo I saw of two children yesterday, spattered with blood, their faces howling with pure misery reminded me of the 'napalm child' of so long ago.
ReplyDeleteYou should also have seen the picture of the pregnant woman whose baby Hamas took out of her womb and beheaded, the other heads they beheaded of the babies in the kibbutz in Israel that morning, the children who were murdered in front of the parents' eyes and the parents who were murdered next to the children. the girls who bled from the rape and more.
DeleteHamas, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Egypt Muslim Brotherhood, Iran all frighten me. I do not see anything but love bringing peace and love is not around.
ReplyDelete'How shall we fuck off, Master?'
DeleteMy feelings exactly Tom - I watch the programme with John Simpson on 231 on Sunday morning and that's it. The horror of watching it every day is too unbearable. What has the world come to.
ReplyDeleteHow is it that I did not read a single word of condemnation from all of you for what Hamas did here? Life here is not a TV show.
ReplyDeleteNot one person here backs Hamas, and each have said so openly. October 7th was a horrible day. The suffering of the innocent did not stop on that day. I grieve for the children. The children are NOT Hamas.
DeleteDebby is right. We have all expressed our condemnation of Hamas and our horror and anger at what they did on October the 7th. We are all humans.
DeleteAgree, I too have condemned the Hamas attacks but, in the same post, had the temerity to express concern for the thousands of children that are being killed in Gaza. That did not go down well.
Delete25,000 civilians and rising.
DeleteI grieve for you, Yael and I wish it was over for you all, but I cannot grieve for ONLY you. I cannot grieve for ONLY Israel.
ReplyDeleteMost of you tried to be very balanced, you constantly used the phrase "the other side", and tried to create a situation as if we could talk about a balanced equation after what happened here. You don't understand that this is the biggest disaster that has happened to us since the Holocaust. But it doesn't matter what you think anymore. You can stay with your wrong opinions out of the desire to preserve as if about "humanity", you are losing it in my opinion, and yes, I am angry with you and people who think they understand what is happening but they really don't. I hope you can have a merry Christmas without Christmas market attacks.
ReplyDeleteThink carefully.
DeleteMy best holiday wishes to you. I will wish for peace on earth. Entrenched thinking will prevent it. I will hope for it all the same.
ReplyDeleteGod cares, but not necessarily one way or the other.
DeleteThank you for opening up an opportunity to have a reasonable discussion on this topic. You and traveller did a good job.
ReplyDeleteSay what you believe, and if you are wrong someone will put you right.
DeleteThe brutality and barbarism is beyond belief or understanding. Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't know what the answer is but killing and maiming people is not it.
ReplyDeleteA divine intervention will do. Jehovah, Allah and Christ need to come out of the closet, but they will not.
DeleteDear Tom - I just can't watch the News at present - cowardly I know - but with my time left here on earth limited that things should come to this I find it quite unbearable to watch the pain, the destruction, the suffering, no aid getting through, families absolutely bereft - I could go on but find even writing it unbeable. Love to you at Christmas old friend.
ReplyDeleteYes, Weave, and love to you too. All will be well, and every manner of things will be well.
Delete