The Associated Press: Hamas dispenses politics along with aid to Gazans

The Associated Press: Hamas dispenses politics along with aid to Gazans

What's going on with Gaza?

He used to be a right good footie player, until he got in to all that drinking and crying lark. Now he’s a bit of a nutter, getting all depressed and going on benders and not looking after his family properly. Shame that.

Seriously though, this past few days has seen yet another furore caused by those Nazis at the BBC. First they let Jonathan Ross go back to work so he can make rude comments about shagging octogenarians with Alzheimer’s, then they refuse to show an appeal to raise money for the little kiddies in Gaza. Frankly, if you don’t like it, don’t watch the BBC! Surely it should be up to them what they put in their programming and who they employ to facilitate that? There are a lot of people out there who seem to think that because they pay their licence fee that they have the right to tell the BBC what to do. Perhaps they should consider their licence fee as a small bribe not to have watch pointless, condescending advertisements on their television and have excellent programming thrown in as a cherry on top! I know I do.

The truth about Gaza is that whilst there may well be a “humanitarian situation” on hand, much of this is self-inflicted by the population of Gaza. Having read many comments across the media, the detractors complaining about the BBC seem to have entirely overlooked the facts and are bent on using emotional blackmail to try and get the BBC to change their mind. I’m sorry for the little kiddies and the women and the civilian population at large, but suffering is a fact of war. People get hurt, their homes are destroyed, the water is bad if there’s any at all, disease is rife, women and children get raped or worse, people go hungry and lose everything, including their “humanity”, not to mention their dignity. It’s why I’m a pacifist, it’s why I get involved in direct action against war, it’s why I sometimes get very frustrated at not being able to do anything about it in real terms.

This particular conflict has been going on for many, many years, almost a century, and I can’t remember a time in my 45 years on this earth when there hasn't been conflict in the Middle East, conflict that has always appeared to be about land or oil, both of which are in plentiful supply, so none of it has ever made any sense to me and I don’t get why people can’t just get on.

My history may be a little shaky, but as I see it the Islamic countries in the Middle East don’t much like Israel. Here in the white, Christian-run West we are given the impression that Israel is inhabited solely by evil Jews and they stole the land from the Arabs, probably in the dead of night when no-one was looking. This is simply not the case.

The reality is that the land was declared to be the home of the Jewish people in 1917 by the League of Nations, formally known as the British Mandate of Palestine. The Jewish people were dispossessed and had no country they could call their own. They were going back to the place from whence they’d come, a long time before Christianity or Islam existed, and they were going to share it. The Mandate declared:-

…in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

There are two particular points of irony here, one is that the League of Nations was set up to bring about peace in the world and put an end to war. The second being that the Mandate, having been set up to bring people together without prejudice, led to the Partition of Palestine in 1948 and the continued conflict to the present day.

The conflict is silly if it’s truly for the reasons given. There is plenty of room for everyone. To put this into context the population of Greater London in around 7.5 million and they live in an area of 610 square miles. The population of Wales is around 3 million in an area of 8,000 square miles and Wales is, for the most part, very sparsely populated. The area of Mandatory Palestine was originally 45,000 square miles, 35,000 of which was annexed by Jordan and in which Jews were not allowed to reside. Just prior to Partition in 1948 the population was around 1.8 million, who lived in the remaining area of 10,000 square miles, 8,000 of which became the State of Israel. The population of Israel today is a little over 7 million. The reason for the jump in the population of Israel is that they accepted 1.5 million Jewish refugees in the first few years of its existence, some had fled Europe following World War II, and 870,000 of which were ejected from Arab states following partition. Most of the population live around the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

When put like that, it seems obvious to me that this conflict is not about land. Most of the land is Arabic and mostly Muslim, with a smattering of Christians. The State of Israel is multicultural, multi-faith and cosmopolitan (certainly by Arabic standards) and the truth is that the Arabs insist on keeping up this conflict and will refuse to stop until the whole area is run by and for Muslims. They don’t want to share, especially not with anyone who has different ideas and beliefs from them. I insist on calling the people who are in conflict with Israel Arabs, because Palestine is what the Jews call the area and they, ultimately, consider themselves Palestinian, too. (Syria deserve a special mention, as they seem to just want all the fighting to stop. Their neighbours don't much like it though.)

The Israelis have called ceasefire after ceasefire, only to have it broken by yet more attacks from Hamas. The Israelis have ignored many attacks by Hamas, on the understanding that Israel know they have a bigger, harder and more organised army, knowing that they can cause a lot more damage to Hamas than Hamas can do to them.

Hamas remind me of my niece when she was about two years old. She went through a biting phase, as do lots of children, and she bit me several times. Once day, I’d had enough and wanted her to understand she can’t go round biting people without consequence, so the next time she bit me I told her if she did it again that I’d bite her back. She bit me again, so I bit her. Not hard, there were no marks on her skin, but I bit hard enough for her to know that I had teeth too. She screamed and ran to her mother. My sister shrugged and said “well, she did warn you…”. I never had any trouble with my niece after that.

Unfortunately, Hamas don’t seem to want to learn from their experience. They continue on and on, insist on biting the Israelis over and over. Hamas broke the ceasefire again yesterday and now Israel are seriously pissed off and have retaliated by bombing just a couple of the tunnels through which Gaza gets supplies., I suspect as a warning for the damage they could really do. It's probably too late for a bite without marks now and I doubt Hamas will take any notice, but will instead escalate the situation and whine to the international media about how badly done to they are.

In spite of what I’ve written, I don’t take sides in this. I don’t support the Israelis attacking their neighbours, I could never support any act of war and still sleep at night. I certainly don’t support Hamas in their absolute refusal to compromise from their ridiculous demands to have everything their own way. This is not how conflict is resolved.

Back to the BBC and their refusal to show an appeal for the victims of this so-called “humanitarian situation”. If this is the case, then the BBC must show an appeal for everyone who is the victim of war and not just those in Gaza. In this particular case, if there is no way that anyone who has any contact with the media is not aware of the DEC appeal and whether this is shown on the BBC should not affect someone's decision to make a donation or not. Further to this, this war has been going on for a long time and women and children have been hurt in it for a very long time, so why all the fuss at this particular time? My personal feeling is that, whilst I have no doubt that civilians are suffering terribly, this is being exploited by Hamas, even though they continually exacerbate the situation and refuse to make any move towards resolution.

This crazy war in Palestine will not stop as long as people refuse to see the facts. If what it takes is for everyone in Gaza to die, then so be it. Hamas continue to inflict this war onto their own citizens and have done so for decades. Every possible solution has been considered and yet no resolution, nor any step towards it, has been reached. These are not reasonable people and any money from appeals will, I fear, end up in the hands of these terrorists and not be spent on clean water and food, but on yet more artillery with which to bombard their neighbours.

The only other possible solution I can see, is to fly in lots of water laced with MDMA, and wait for them all to get too blissed-out to fight, then walk in and get them all to wear smiley face t-shirts and wave glow sticks instead of guns.

Fantasy aside, it took a long time and a good deal of effort to reach some kind of peace in Northern Ireland, and the opposing sides there were about as extreme as it gets. Resolution in Northern Ireland is still shaky, but seems to be on the right path, so if it can be done there why not anywhere?