"The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten"

[flashbac]

She nails it on the head:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/27/war-gaza-lesson-western-hypocrisy-international-community

What rock were you hiding under or why weren't you paying attention sooner?

Because after decades, it becomes overwhelming, the constant knowledge that there are endless conflicts and civilian deaths. The blethering and indifference of major powers. The idea that some children matter more than others.
This one happens to be the current centre stage.
There are 74,000 children trapped in an ongoing war zone in Timbuktu right now. They’ve been under siege since August.

Yes, my link works

Thank you @flashbac completely agree and with the other posters about how this has really exposed myth of humanity

Thank you for all the posters who have spent their time and energy talking about the Palestinian people and the injustices they have faced, esp in the face of intense arguments on this board

We all know now that human lives are in a hierarchy of rights, that people will close eyes to genocide and suffering because they want to uphold their status quo or refuse to see reality beyond what they want to see, and that dehumanisation of a people is not just possible but championed

Most countries and societies seem to have their fair share of awful wars, sadly.

"Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.".

The UK and USA quite rightly stand behind democracy and will do what it takes to preserve our rights and freedoms and that of democracies like Israel. In war people die - it is terrible but Hamas knew full well what would come. Most people in the UK know whom to blame.

Okey-doke

GCSE history doesn’t touch this issue with the proverbial bargepole. The most recent period of history my children have studied is the Cold War ie until the late 1980s.

I learned nothing of the history of the Middle East at school and the tiny amount I understand now has been cobbled together from documentaries or from reading articles that give background information. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. It’s not through a lack of interest that many people in the UK are not well informed on the political history of the Middle East; perhaps many of us also just don’t know where to start because it seems so incredibly complex.

If you throw in the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic simply for believing that the Palestinian people need and deserve to live their lives in peace and with enough space around them then it’s not surprising that many people are wary of showing an interest in the issue or articulating an opinion. Just my thoughts.

'sadly'. That's it? For thousands of children blown to bits?

Your heart, if you ever had one, is broken. Perhaps three ghosts will visit over the festive season and remind you of the value of your fellow passengers to the grave.

It's considered too 'problematic' to teach in schools. Which sources do you include and which sources do you exclude? Who sets the narrative?

https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/47784-most-britons-have-sympathy-for-both-sides-in-israel-palestine-conflict

According to YouGov we are pretty split down the middle when it comes to "supporting a side" in this war. Most people support both.

Divisive rhetoric like that of @Xenia is never helpful.

The UK and US have been standing by this 'democracy' for decades. What have they achieved? Clearly, this method isn't working and just fuels even more hatred and bloodshed.

Exactly. I’m not a history teacher but I can imagine most would shudder at the thought of teaching this area of history especially in certain parts of the UK where there’s a large number of pupils from either or both “sides”.

'Most people in the UK know who to blame'.

This sentence sums up the issue. This is what has been puzzling me about posters on here. This self perception of moral clarity and superiority. I don't know who is to blame. I don't think it's one side or the other. I think there are many variables and contributing factors. The lack of any awareness that people can and do have a differing point of view and then an accusation that because you hold a different POV you are a 'useful idiot' or in the minority is dark. Anyone so firmly married to an hypothesis and who never asks questions, just puts out finite statements is suspicious AF. Nobody is the oracle who knows everything.

Asking people to go through the cognitive dissonance of 'We want you to condemn these disgusting animals who attacked, maimed and killed us before we even deem to talk to you then you must also praise and understand our equally disgusting animal response of attacking, maiming and killing thousands. If you don't you are an anti-Semite and if you tolerate this, your children will be next'. It isn't convincing anyone with any ability to critically analyse, they just won't accept it.

Where has the expectation that people will unquestioningly do this come from? The IDF have failed in security (they haven't protected their own people at all), intelligence, propaganda, military technique, human rights and haven't even been able to secure the release of their own hostages and we are meant accept that they are 'the only democracy in the area' and hold some moral prevalence? They are no better or no worse from an outsider perspective.

The lack of footage coming from Iraqis within Iraq is why I was saying it took a lot longer for the people of the U.K. to realise the war wasn’t the fight for good against an evil dictator that had been put on all international mainstream news. All I saw was footage from US and coalition military. Everything else that leaked from Saddam’s government was either censored or called propaganda. We bombed a hospital and were told it wasn’t a hospital but was a weapons cache with a cross painted on the roof mimicking an hospital like camouflaged. We bombed a baby formula factory and were told that’s just propaganda it was really a factory making chemical weapons. We bombed every vehicle fleeing Baghdad whether it was military or not and created what was called “The Highway of Death” civilians/soldiers indiscriminately bombed while running away. That full footage wasn’t released, only edited bits showing the vehicles that were Iraqi tanks. It took months of war before protests started and it took years for most of the mainstream news censorship and the whole truth to be exposed to the public.

Today, we have footage coming in real time from journalists in Gaza. Today we have ICRC and UNWRA workers in Gaza reporting on deaths, injuries, starvation, disease. We didn’t have these sources of information during the Iraq war. If all we had was the footage of grainy black and white airstrikes from the air blowing up buildings and the IDF guys showing us heavily edited abd spliced video tours of tunnels and basements (that could be anywhere), it would be almost impossible to object to the war on Gaza as quickly as the public has. There would not be the evidence.

@Weddingpuzzle Couldn’t agree more with your paragraph on cognitive dissonance.

I blame Hamas and the Israeli government. I support, equally, the Israeli and Palestinian people.

@Weddingpuzzle
Agree absolutely.

I know it’s usually not helpful to lay the “Who is to blame” card on the table. but I’ll stick my neck out and do it anyway.

I firmly believe that those who are to blame for the current situation in Gaza are the antisemites of Eastern Europe from the 15th to 20th centuries.

Without them, there would be no need for an Israel. Jews have generally been happy assimilating in any country that has not been too hostile. For centuries the Jews, up until the second world war, had lived pretty peacefully (with a few, rare exceptions) alongside their Muslim neighbours from Morrocco to Persia. They had a lot in common, they spoke Arabic or Farsi, they were monotheistic, they had similar culture, the men cut the ends off their willies, they prayed at least 3 times a day and neither of them had ham on the deli counter. Although living in dhimmi, the lot of a Jew was not too bad in the arab world and it certainly wasn’t the wretchedness of pogroms and ghettos.

Meanwhile back in Eastern Europe life was miserable and so the birth of Zionism, which would not have arisen if Jews in Europe had been treated with respect.

From the end of the 19th century they went to the land that is today Israel giving rise to ever increasing tension between the Palestinians and the incomers, until we have today the tragedy that is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

( I know I've skipped a lot, Hebron, Jerusalem, Jericho, arab revolt, but 1917-1948 you can get from wiki)

Jews wouldn’t have needed an Israel if it wasn’t for the Europeans.
And to those people who believe that they can only be truly Jewish in their spiritual home, I say you are misguided. Any God worth his/her/its/they/their salt cares more about your decency as a human being, than your grid reference.

It's quite an important bit of British History, though, it seems remiss to skip over it.

Thank you for sharing the article OP. It expresses the reality very eloquently. And yet still we have people arguing that it's ok for the Israeli killing machine to keep going until it feels like stopping.

Just wow.

So, you're agreeing that the reason Jews need Israel is because of persecution everywhere else they've tried to live BUT you dispute their desire & need to return to Israel which is not, by the, way just a spiritual home but actually where they came from in the first place. It's not the grid reference that makes them safe, it's being surrounded by other Jews. If only the people around them would stop trying to exterminate them, of course.

The war in Gaza is not new and I have long been appalled with the tacit support of Zionism from the Governments of the West. It's awful that the bloody atrocities of 7th October seem to have woken the world up to what has been going on for decades. I just can't get my head around the notion that the Apartheid situation imposed by Israel is justifiable.