I’ve kept very quiet about the catastrophic situation in Gaza. As a little known blogger, I can choose what I write about and what I don’t write about and Gaza has been one of the latter. I have always been a supporter of Israel and its right to exist and, so, opposed to the terrorist group Hamas, particularly though not solely after their murderous attacks on innocent Israelis on 7th October 2023. But there comes a time when being a supporter of Israel in any way other than supporting its right to exist becomes untenable. That time happened for me a very long time ago.
The argument I had been making about what has been happening has essentially dissolved into semantics. Is it ethnic cleansing or genocide? Given Jewish history with genocide, I’ve found it a difficult subject to write about, in all likelihood because of my limitations of a writer. I came to the conclusion that this was always ethnic cleansing and agree that what is happening is genocide, pure and simple.
The daily stories of starving people being murdered for the crime of queueing for food as they starve to death, and the pictures of skeletal children are simply too much to bear.
At the heart of this genocide is the far right Israeli government in general and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. ‘Bibi’, as he is known, has joined a group of people without whom the world would be a far better place. Other than mass murder and hatred, what is he there for?
At the heart of this terrible crisis is the simple question: why can’t we live together? Why do we have to be divided for reasons of religion, culture, race, colour, sex and sexuality, creed or anything else? Why is it that differences have to be played out by violence and murder?
I write from a position of hopelessness. I have no idea what can be done. In the Middle East, I support the so-called two state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side, happily ever after, though in my impossibly perfect and simplistic world, they’d all be able to live in the same country. Why do we need to be led by the purveyors of hate, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to Netanyahu to Nigel Farage to the hate speech that dominates our media, particularly here in Britain?
Another version of hate is going on in the UK right now, as figures from the political right are all but encouraging another summer of anti-immigration violence and attempted murder. The likes of Muhammad ‘Zia’ Yusuf from Reform UK Ltd and Tim Montgomerie are talking openly about how Britain is a tinderbox, ready to explode. Allison Pearson of the Telegraph literally calls for a coup in her unhinged column. The gutter press, especially the Sun, Mail and Telegraph. are all but encouraging people to get out on the streets and we remember how that ended last year, with gangs of people trying to set fire hotels and murder refugees and asylum seekers. if there were to be deaths, you just know that they would be welcomed by the fascist right. This is how it works. Why do we allow this to happen? Aren’t we better than this?
I had reason to visit a local NHS hospital yesterday and met with numerous medical staff, including surgeons, who were carrying out life-changing and in some instances life-saving work. Many of them were black and brown people. I could not have admired them more. I am grateful that they are here, working for and with us. Where they were born, why they came here, which God they believe in – none of these things matter a toss to me. Why can’t we live together?
My life experiences tell me that there are good and bad people from every walk of life. Some of the worst and meanest people I have ever met have been those with considerable wealth. Some of the best and most generous people have been those with next to nothing. Instead of looking for differences, whether here in Gaza or Bristol, why can we not look for things we have in common?
I see the pictures coming from Gaza and I wonder why someone with compassion and vision can’t come along and offer something better than this. Not every Palestinian supports Hamas, not every Israeli hates Palestine, not many Bristolians hate the overseas doctor who is removing their cancerous tumour or emptying their stoma. And when you bring things down to that level, the world is a stupid, crazy place.
I repeat: I have no solutions, otherwise I’d be a highly effective leader of the United Nations but hell, I’m not even a highly effective blogger. I genuinely try to find the best in people but it is getting harder and harder to do so. Even journalists in Gaza are facing starvation and death. It’s not that we can do better than this, it’s that we couldn’t do any worse.
