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Bellatrix's avatar

Spot on Ely. Thank you.

On a total sidenote, I’m so glad about the new New Zealand coalition! Glad Jacinda Party gone!

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Mara's avatar

Good to hear the voice of reason - and humanity!

The Hamas attack itself was horrifying, but seeing and hearing people support them, justify this behaviour, and deny or minimise the savagery has been in many ways even more shocking.

Back in 1981 I travelled in this region, down from Turkey through Syria to Jordan by bus, and thence to Israel via the Allenby Bridge. I was inspired by the Israeli stories of experiments in communal living in the Kibbutzim, and the experimental regenerative agriculture, making the desert bloom. I delved into the history of this region, and just yesterday, I reviewed it from 3 different sources.

Both the Jewish people and the Arab peoples have arguable historical claims to this land, and once you start to give validity to those claims, you run into trouble and an impossible situation. (Sort of like Australia right now, but that's another story.)

But let's start in the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Turks controlled all this part of the Middle East. There were Jewish settlers, and Arab settlers, and most of the time in those days they co-existed fairly peacefully together. At the time of WW1, the British enlisted the help of both Jews and Arabs to fight the Turks, promising the land to both groups. The British withdrew, leaving the UN to sort it out, and a plan for partition was proposed. The Jews accepted, the Arabs did not. Then a coalition of Arab countries launched at attack on the newly formed state of Israel - but the Israelis won that war, and claimed more territory as buffer zones in order to protect their own lands (a bit like Russia in Ukraine).

This was the "Six-Day War" in 1967.

And so it continued, with sporadic fighting and eventually the Yom Kippur war in 1973, which resulted in another redrawing of Israel's borders (this time relinquishing the Sinai back to Egypt, etc).

Both parties - Israel and Palestine - have also had to deal with huge influxes of refugees, Jewish refugees not just from Europe after WW2 but from other Arab countries, and Arab refugees from all the various wars in the region (not all of them caused by Israel). This has had a further destabilising effect. But Israel assimilated the Jewish refugees, while the Palestinians weaponised the Arab refugees, until this whole smouldering mess developed and festered in the settlements.

The current situation in Gaza is horrible, but it's a lot more complicated than simply an oppressed people trying to fight for their homeland (though it's more popular these days to frame it that way).

The Palestinian people have refused all offers of negotiation, right from the beginning, and instead they were (and are) fixated on trying to wipe out Israel and all Israelis.

Some say Hamas was created by Israel to counter the PLO (which I think is true, though Israel lost control of Hamas way back).

And some are saying that Hamas is the legitimate elected government of Gaza (which is technically true, though it is not clear just how much organic support they have) - in which case, it rather strengthens the Israeli case for a retaliatory attack.

My feelings of support and admiration for Israel lessened over the past 40 years, and my sympathy for the Palestinians grew - but that has all changed in the past 10 days.

Seeing and hearing the pro-Palestinian rallies - including here in Australia - has re-activated my concerns about Islam and its Jihadic agenda. And the anti-semitic sentiment has been particularly shocking.

I want to stand for peace, not one side or the other. But I fear that the reality is that the Palestinians are not amenable to peaceful co-existence. In which case, the Israeli government does not have a lot of options.

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