Watching the BBC news and for that matter any other news broadcast has become almost unbearable.  Over the last three weeks or so the television screen has been filled with images of violence, grief, and suffering.  Images of innocent men, women and children killed or maimed or kidnapped. Images of grieving relatives, images of people with little or no hope.  And as I watch I am consumed by overwhelming sadness and as I write this blog, I cannot avoid the tears welling up.  And I am angry, angry at those that could perpetuate such crimes against humanity.  I will not take sides as I know that I understand so little about the conflict in Israel, Gaza, and the surrounding area, but I do feel the need to comment.  It seems to me that there is shared blame across the countries involved, the region, and the rest of the world.

As I watch the news, I see reports of protest across many countries, and I see a worrying development of Islamophobia and Antisemitism.  The conflict is only adding fuel to the actions of those driven by hatred and it provides plenty of scope for politicians in the West and other countries, to pontificate, and partake in political wrangling and manoeuvring before showing their abject disregard for morality and humanity. The fact that Hamas, as we are constantly reminded by the BBC, is a proscribed terrorist organisation, proscribed by most countries in the west, including the United Kingdom, seems to give carte blanche to western politicians to support crimes against humanity, to support murder and terrorism. How else can we describe what is going on? 

The actions of Hamas should and quite rightly are to be condemned, any action that sees the killing of innocent lives is wrong.  To have carried out their recent attacks in Israel in such a manner was horrendous and is a reminder of the dangers that the Israeli people face daily.  But the declaration by Israel that it wants to remove Hamas from the face of the earth would, and could, only lead to one outcome, that being played out before our very eyes. The approach seems to be one of vengeance, regardless of the human cost and regardless of any rules of war or conflict or human dignity.  How else can the bombing and shelling of a whole country be explained?  How else can the blockading of a country to bring it to the brink of disaster be justified? How do we explain the forced migration of innocent people from one part of a country to another only to find that the edict to move led them into as dangerous a place as that they moved from?  There seems to be a very sad irony in this, given the historical perspectives of the Israeli nation and its people.

We don’t know what efforts are going on behind the scenes to attempt to bring about peace but the outrageous comments and actions or omissions by some western politicians beggar belief.  From Joe Biden’s declaration ‘now is not the time for a ceasefire’ to our government’s and the opposition’s policy that a pause in the conflict should occur, but not a ceasefire, only demonstrates a complete lack of empathy for the plight of Palestinian people.  If not now, at what time would it be appropriate for a ceasefire to occur?   It seems to me, as a colleague suggested, politicians and many others seem to be more concerned about accusations of antisemitism than they are about humanity.  Operating in a moral vacuum seems to be par for the government in the UK and unfortunately that seems to extend to the other side of the house.  Just as condemning the killing of innocent people is not Antisemitic nor too are the protests about those killings a hate crime.  Our home secretary seems to have nailed her colours to the mast on that one but I’m not sure if its xenophobia, power lust or something else being displayed.  Populism and a looming general election seems to be far more important than innocent children’s lives in a far off land.

The following quote seems so apt:

‘…. politicians must shoulder their share of the blame. And individuals too. Those ordinary citizens who allowed themselves to be incited into hatred and religious xenophobia, who set aside decades, sometimes centuries of friendship, who took up sword and flame to terrorise their neighbours and compatriots, to murder men, women, and children in a frenzy of bloodlust that even now is difficult to comprehend (Khan, 2021: 323).’[1]

If you are not angry, you should be, if you do not cry, then I ask why not?  This is not the way that humanity should behave, this is humanity at its worst. Just because it is somewhere else, because it involves people of a different race, colour or creed doesn’t make it any less horrendous.

Khan, V. (2021) Midnight at Malabar House, Hodder and Stoughton: London.

[1] Vaseem Khan was discussing Partition on the Indian subcontinent, but it doesn’t seem to matter where the conflict is or what goes on, the reasons for it are so hard to comprehend.