After seven years meeting five or six times a year in Wincanton,, we decided, Greg Atkins and John Baxter, to base ANVIL as an open discussion group to meet monthly In Martock.
Our first session was on Friday 23rd Feb. 24 and was introduced by John Baxter with a response from David Warden. The subject was HAMAS AND THE GAZA WAR. Some 35 came and all had been sent (and said they had read! John’s introductory paper.
Revised and updated as the situation has changed, this is now attached as:
ISRAEL, HAMAS AND THE GAZA WAR
An attempt to understand this complex conflict and suggest a way ahead for Britain.
Israel, Hamas and the Gaza War
An Attempt to Understand this Complex Conflict and to Suggest a Way Ahead for Britain
By John Baxter. Email johnbaxter119@nullgmail.com. Paper revised several times as things have changed. This version completed 10-7-2024.
What lies ahead in this terrible war since the first days of Israel’s reaction to the Hamas attack on October 7th 2023? We have seen one week of prisoner exchanges and the violent resumption of shelling ever since. Now, totally predictably, the rain and the cold has come and mass starvation wreaks havoc in Gaza. Despite Israeli claims that they are out to “destroy Hamas” and double speak about not aiming at civilians, what is happening in Gasa is a manmade famine. Is this ethnic cleansing or is it genocide?
October 7the 2023 The Hamas Attack. Just What Do We Know Took Place?
The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. burst out of Gaza through its Israeli constructed border fences, barriers and watch towers. Its fighters killed 1,180. This consisted of 278 soldiers, 859 civilians 67 police and security. 247 were taken captive, consisting of soldiers, civilians, including foreign workers, women and children. Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners, 107 of whom were between 14 and 17 years old, and three-quarters of whom had not been convicted of a crime, although some were awaiting trial in a military court. In exchange, Hamas released 105 civilians, which included 81 people from Israel, 23 Thais and one Filipino. (I can find no cases of any of them being ill-treated while held in captivity in tunnels)
This attack came as a deeply traumatising and totally unexpected shock to Israeli society, who simply thought, after the Gaza uprising/intifada of 2014, that Hamas had been effectively broken. That was when the IDF had destroyed a third of Gaza City and killed 2,251 Palestinians. However, just before Oct 7th there were conscript warnings that they had seen suspicious behaviour on the Gaza side. These warnings were apparently ignored by their superiors. In addition a report in the New York Times claimed that a year earlier the IDF obtained from its agents (working within Hamas) detailed plans of what Hamas intended, but again army and political leadership chose not to believe the Palestinians were capable of carrying out such a plan. We now also know that Shin Bet, the Israeli Security, met at one am on Oct 7th to discuss Gaza and decided not even to alert those on duty that anything could happen. This however raises a question. If the IDF had been alerted, did they then in fact have plans all ready for what they would do if Hamas attacked and was the mass destruction and mass killing of Palestinians which took place extremely quickly after Oct 7 and which soon reached 25,000 deaths, something which had been carefully pre-planned as an expected possibility?
Certainly Oct 7 was the biggest killing of Jews since the Holocaust. and stirred up vivid memories of it. It also traumatised Israeli society because from day one it was reported by sources within the IDF as having been carried out with the greatest brutality. This was illustrated by smartphone videos, horrible accounts of multiple rape, torture and the killing of babies. There were also IDF escorted tours of the sites involved for journalists. Among those killed and captured were those at a music festival during or after their military training. Described by Israelis as innocent young civilians it is doubtful that Hamas would have seen them this way. What has also emerged is that some fifteen were killed by IDF fire and a helicopter when a response to the Hamas attack was made. Certainly the Hamas fighters were surprised by how successful their attack turned out to be. They also exhibited the most terrible hatred towards Israeli Jews, and the Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said, “everything we do is justified” “this is just the first time and there will be a second, a third and a fourth.” It seems then Hamas proudly admits to the killings and taking of prisoners but denies the rapes and tortures as “unislamic” and as Israeli propaganda and this denial it seems is now generally believed to be the case by Palestinians. At the same time Hamas has admitted in the report they issued that “some mistakes were made.” Certainly It is hard to see why the Hamas leadership might have thought the use of sexualised violence could be in the interest of their cause when they have denied ordering it. In the past they have always been ready to take responsibility for such actions as suicide bombings.
What Is the Context That Lies Behind the Oct 7 Attack?
The question of context. Why has such hatred against Israeli Jews developed amongst Palestinians? This is a question which has to be explored, but which Israeli government, army and media has so far loudly refused to do. Instead it has claimed that sexualised violence was the deliberate policy of Hamas aimed at “intimidating Israelis” so Hamas are thus justifiably seen to be monsters.
Certainly the rape and torture of “dozens” (the Israeli claim) of mainly women immediately after their capture if substantiated are foul war crimes, crimes that those who committed them and those who ordered them should be held accountable for, as in fact the Internation Criminal Court has done charging Yahya SINWAR (head of “Hamas” in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (head of the Political Bureau).
The whole population of Gaza, however, is certainly not guilty of such crimes. This has been widely asserted by Israeli media and reported in the extreme statements of Netanyahu, President Isaac Hertzog, and members of the Israeli Cabinet. These are all quoted by South Africa in its ICJ (International Court of Justice) case against Israel for intentionally committing Genocide. The International Criminal Court has also charged “Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Are All the Hamas Fighters Guilty of War Crimes?
If some Hamas fighters committed sexually driven war crimes, does committing a war crime apply to all those other Hamas fighters who took part in the surprise attack on Israel on Oct 7 with orders and the intention of killing or capturing as many as they could of their occupying enemy? Did they not face an enemy with a huge conscript army of men and women who as they saw it had been involved in, whatever their age, the carrying out of the systematic oppression, torture, imprisonment, mistreatment and killing of them and their families for all of their lives? Hamas fighters did this in the expectation that if they entered “the Zionist entity” they would have to fight on until they were martyred/killed by the IDF – in fact they were met by almost total unpreparedness which came as a great surprise. Certainly the response that then came of the Israeli government and the IDF in going after them and in the process killing and permanently wounding non-combatant Palestinians in what will soon amount to at least 40.000 of whom 60% are children, constitutes a grossly disproportionate reaction and a possible genocidal war crime in itself. What is more it is now becoming clear (In Intercept reports) that babies were not killed and that some of the alleged rapes did not happen although the killings certainly did. The BBC thinks there is good evidence rapes took place but when it comes to numbers, at present we just do not know.
On the Palestinian side 60% of the deaths are women and children. As so many bodies remain uncounted under the rubble it is impossible to be certain of numbers except that with no pause in the fighting and shelling, they are rising all the time. Of the numbers involved BBC Verify says: “Israel faces growing concern about the number of civilian deaths, after at least 30,000 Palestinians were reported killed in Gaza – as well as pressure to show it is eliminating Hamas as it vowed after 7 October.”
BBC Verify examines Israel’s claims about how many of those killed were combatants. “The Israeli military says it has killed more than 10,000 fighters in its air strikes and ground operations but there are concerns about whether it is able to separate fighters from ordinary civilians.” That is a polite way of putting it. It seems Aljazeera reports Israel routinely strips the men and boys it detains to their underpants, “to see if they are wearing suicide belts,” blindfolds and handcuffs them for hours prior to “interrogation” reported by the few having been released as consisting of beatings and torture to decide if they support or fight for Hamas. Are those regarded as Hamas fighters treated as POWs or “terrorists” to be executed? We do not yet know.
Awaiting “interrogation”
Photo Aljazeera
The Plight of Palestinians
The numbers of Palestinians killed will now it seems inevitably continue to rise towards 40,000 (a ratio of 17:1) as a result of the targeted destruction by shelling of what were labelled safe areas together with the UN shelters, schools, a university, hospitals, residential blocks, and homes in both North and South Gaza and Khan Younis. Add to this the cutting off of fresh water, electric power and fuel, even as the Israeli government continues to insist on controlling (and holding back) access into Gaza of UN food, medical and humanitarian aid. This leaves hundreds of thousands homeless and without food or shelter so disease and starvation can wreak havoc upon them while the US sends more ammunition and Blinken makes statements asking Israel to “avoid unnecessary civilian casualties” which in practice Israel appears to ignore.
The Holocaust and the Creation of Israel
How have we reached this? First a perspective. We should never forget the Holocaust for no Jew ever can. Most have family who died in it. The planned extermination of six million Jews (together with millions of others) under Nazi rule can never be forgotten. It is why Jews came to Palestine to escape antisemitism just before and after the Second World War when they discovered after the Nazis came to power that they were not welcome in the US, Britain or South Africa despite the terrible persecution they endured. This led in May 1948 to their declaration of the creation of a State of Israel. Their aim was to set up a state of their own where all Jews could settle free from antisemitism. They went for Palestine for their scriptures referred to Jerusalem and the Promised Land as given them by YHWH and a Jewish kingdom 3,000 years ago (king David) that lasted in different forms until the 66 CE revolt against Rome. That resulted in the Romans expelling the Jews to join the already large diaspora around the Empire.
The problem is that although since Roman times a small number of Jews returned and lived in Palestine around Jerusalem (Scholch estimates 4% of the population of 1,970,000 in 1850) alongside Orthodox Christians and other minorities, its population for almost twelve centuries (since 635 CE) has been overwhelmingly Arab, always living under Muslim rule as part of the Muslim Umma. (transnational community) until Allah brings about the Apocalypse. All these communities pre-date the European and Nazi antisemitic Holocaust. It also means both Muslims and Jews (and during the Crusades Christians also) claiming Jerusalem and Palestine as theirs by divine right.
Prior to 1948 Palestine was under a British mandate – set up after World War 1 by the then League of Nations to provide eventual autonomy for the area – Jews however resorted to terrorism against the British to end the mandate as with the end of World War 2 those fleeing post war Europe arrived in more desperate boatloads having again been turned back and refused entry by several countries. They did this settling Jews from Europe on Arab land despite Arab objections. There were also tit-for tat killings as Palestinian groups justifiably felt pressured by these new Jewish refugees, while the Jews felt they had no-where else to go. This then escalated into ethnic cleansing lead by Jewish militias. As a result around 750,000 Palestinians fled for their lives to Gaza and out of Palestine immediately before the State of Israel was declared in 1948, labelling their experience the Nakba – Catastrophe.
Wars followed involving the surrounding Muslim states who like the Palestinian communities totally rejected the right of the Jews to set up a Jewish state in Palestine. Faced by a large, well-armed and well-trained army which became the IDF (Israel Defence Force) they were conquered by Israel in a series of wars culminating in 1967 with the conquest of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Hights. In these occupied areas the native Palestinians have been progressively dispossessed, losing their homes, their land, their properties, and on many occasions their lives. As a result many have been forced to live in refugee camps outside Palestine. 250,000 are in Lebanon where Hezbollah, the Iranian backed anti-Israeli Shia militia is strong. There are also 2,180,000 in Jordan where most have been given Jordanian citizenship. Inside the Palestine area they live under Israeli military occupation in steadily worsening conditions. This has meant in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem.
A minority (1 .5 million) were initially allowed Israeli citizenship, but not equality. Post Oct 7 they have been subject to considerable harassment and arrest, but while showing sympathy towards those in Gaza and the West Bank, they have not revolted against Israel.
From the start the new Jewish state of Israel has been seen as an enormously important focus of identity for Jews both religious and secular and it was given enormous and regularly increasing financial and military support by the US and its Jewish population (7.6 million in 2020) even as diaspora Jews have moved to Israel. It has developed a much admired innovative and creative “democratic” for Jews culture, together with the biggest, best (US equipped) and most powerful army in the Middle East., the IDF, (Israel Defence Force). This is based on the conscription of all citizens, men and women. (Except the Israeli Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews who can choose to opt out of national service.)
The Present Context for Palestinians
So where are we now? It appears the total Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel stood at around 7.5 million pre–Oct 7. This is larger than Israel’s total Jewish population of 7 million. It means that in the whole of the Palestine area, the Eretz Yisrael or Greater Israel of Zionist Jewish aspiration, over half the population live without basic rights and under military occupation. This means they are constantly ordered about and checked by the young male and female conscripts over what they can and cannot do or go in what they see as being their own country. Gaza alone, pre-7 October, had 2.3 million forced to live fenced in what has been widely described as an open prison. It is a prison the IDF evacuated from in 2005 after a disastrous attempt at military rule. However water, electricity and fuel has remained under tight and deliberate Israeli control which amounts to a continuing occupation which under international law places Israel under obligations to provide water, food, and power and to respect hospitals, schools and UN facilities. Gaza’s unemployment rate was 46% and the youth unemployment rate 70% pre–Oct 7. It is now off the chart. Unable to produce enough food most became dependent on UN and other international food aid and only a small number were able to get employment passes to work in labouring jobs in Israel. That has now stopped entirely.
Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinians, or roughly 20% of the total population and 40% of the male population of Palestine, have been imprisoned by the Israeli state at some point. About 100,000 have been held in administrative detention. That is without “trial” by the Israeli military courts – where it seems 99% are found guilty. 70% of Palestinian families have had one or more family members sentenced to jail terms in Israeli prisons as a result of “activities against the occupation” (Wikipedia reports). Pre-Oct. there were 2,070 Administrative Detainees, 200 child prisoners and 62 female prisoners and Israel admitted holding 7,000 political prisoners. The numbers now have surely more than doubled and are far greater and hard to estimate as IDF daily raids continue.
These huge detention and imprisonment numbers, though they apply mainly to the West Bank and East Jerusalem rather than Gaza, are under reported in Western media, possibly because they are old news and have been going on for so long. (i.e. particularly since ‘67) To have such a proportion of the population denied legal, property or political rights, subjected to imprisonment (and often the demolition of their family homes) and the serious mistreatment, beatings and torture that is widely reported as going with it, perpetuates in Palestinians a deep sense of injustice and in many a visceral hatred of Israeli Jews. It shows that for Palestinians prisons are not about the punishment of crime, but of the brutal, systematic oppression and intimidation by those who occupy their land. This goes with the use of a relentlessly discriminatory bureaucracy backed by force and fear. This also motivated Hamas to launch Oct 7 and take hostages (or as they would say captives) since it has linked the freeing of prisoners in exchange for hostages as essential for any pause or cease-fire in the war from day one.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas
So what of Hamas, the body whose members have been ruling Gaza since 2007 and are also strong on the West Bank? HAMAS is an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement which defines what it is about. It was founded by Palestinian imam and activist Ahmad Yassin in 1987. This was after the outbreak of the First Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation. Severely disabled he was seen as their spiritual leader until his assassination by Israel in 2004. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007. That is since Israel chose to withdraw after years of hated military occupation. Hamas broke away from the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat (which was nationalist and non-religious) as it adopted the Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to Palestine. This is that Palestine, after a thousand years of Muslim rule, is historically a Muslim land, part of the Ummah, traditional Muslim community, and Muslims should be committed to armed resistance against Israel until it can be replaced by an Islamic Palestinian state. Thus, Hamas rejects the rights of Jews to settle on Palestinian land and set up their own state. This also means they have rejected plans for a two-state solution. (By far the best and most comprehensive article on Hamas I have read has just come out by Joshua Leifer in the Guardian Weekly 29March 24. It shows Hamas is a movement with various leading figures and policies though all united in rejecting the right of Jews to impose a Jewish state on the land and people of Palestine. At the same time pre-Oct 7, they were more pragmatic than Israel now makes out and were ready to negotiate some place for Jews in Palestine.
In 1988 Hamas revised its clearly anti-Jewish charter saying it was not against Jews, but “the Zionist entity” of Israel. The Wikipedia article also lists several occasions when it was willing to negotiate. Now Hamas rules Gaza as a one-party Islamic autocracy which tolerates a small Christian minority. Because from the start Israel has carried out a policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders and potential leaders, current Hamas leadership roles and locations are kept hidden except for the three charged by the ICC and from a group in Qatar they are constantly on the move. Two smaller affiliated parties also dedicated to fighting Israel, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP are tolerated and work with Hamas (and took part on Oct 7).
Gaza is blockaded by Israel and Egypt and Hamas is labelled by them (and the US and UK) as a “terrorist state” for its use and support of the suicide bombing of Israelis living their normal lives. All Palestinians however are aware that Israeli adults do military service in the IDF which often involves them in military and security duties, and they are ready, as in this current war, to be called up. This means that for Palestinians they are not seen as simply civilians.
Hamas tolerates little dissent concerning its basic opposition to Israel, but runs Gaza with different and on occasion differing, departments and with no single leader. These include External Relations (Based in Qatar) Defense, Health, Education, the Economy and Social Services. These are run well enough to get support. Its military wing is filled with young men ready to die as “martyrs” who have known nothing but unemployment and the harsh restrictions of Israeli rule all their lives. It has built a complex and extensive network of tunnels across Gaza and under most buildings to store men, arms and rockets. The rockets have been used for years against Israel but have been largely ineffective as Israel has obtained an effective defensive missile system from the US. The tunnels have been the declared focus for IDF action in the current war, justifying their destruction of everything and everyone above them on a massive scale.
According to observers Hamas has the backing of the majority of the populations of both Gaza and the West Bank in its opposition to Israel, having many full time and part time fighters among the male population. Given what Israel has been doing since Oct 7th this support is hardly surprising. So, deprived of fresh water, land to farm or sea to fish, and a reliance on food aid from outside to survive, it is hard to imagine a more difficult place that Gazans had to live in than this grossly overcrowded strip of land.
The Two State “Solution”
The two-state solution is what the PLO, The Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yassar Arafat had agreed to aim for at America’s instigation under Jimmy Carter as the way out of an endless conflict. It was signed at Camp David by both parties, Israel and the PLO in 1993, but it was never implemented after the assassination of the Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by an Israeli opponent. Many on the Israeli side were absolutely against it and in 1996 Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister and he has always been strongly Zionists and against any recognition of a Palestinian state. On the Palestinian side it was seen that the Israelis never made more than quite disproportionate offers, taking all the best land for themselves and building settlements on the West Bank which went right against the two-state policy.
There are now over 500,000 Israeli settlers in the Occupied West Bank and 220,000 Jewish settlers in Occupied East Jerusalem. This has made the two-state aim even more difficult and unlikely as the illegal Israeli settlers are backed by the IDF and they terrify, kill and confiscate land and Palestinian properties at an increasing rate. Since Oct 7 things have got much worse with mass arrests and over 420 killed, 4,500 injured.
So, What Else Has and Could Happen?
The PA Palestine Authority consisting of PLO members nominally runs the West Bank and is led by the 86yr old Mahmoud Abbas. He is without meaningful authority and has been systematically subverted by Israel who has it appears even surreptitiously supported Hamas to weaken any of his plans for a two-state solution. He has now appointed a new “technocratic” PM to work towards a two-state solution without consulting Hamas, who are annoyed by this move.
It seems likely, if unproven, that the Hamas’s Oct 7 carefully planned action of invasion, killings and kidnap was a deliberate provocation of Israel and its mighty IDF for it was pretty obvious Israel was likely to respond in an extreme way that would kill many women, children and non-combatants. At the time Hamas also saw that Israel was getting closer to doing deals with Arab states whose rulers, like Saudi Arabia, oppose the Muslim Brotherhood jihadi approach and have failed to back Palestinians strongly. They now seem more interested in working economically with Israel than helping Palestinians overthrow Israel. Since Oct 7 they have however all been arguing for a two-state solution.
Hamas probably thought that If Israel over-reacted to their Oct 7 attack and killed large numbers of Gazan civilians that might, as it has, stir up anti-Israeli sentiments and pro-Palestinian support in the Muslim world. It could also stir up international sympathy for the plight of Palestinians, again as in fact has happened.
However, again, did the Hamas leadership incite or order the extreme acts of rape and torture which Israel has made so much of and claims took place as deliberate Hamas policy? Or if we believe some happened, were they the work of out-of-control criminal elements? This is what some Palestinians have claimed on Aljazeera. We do not know. Hamas spokesmen either deny they happened at all or suggest they were not committed by Hamas members. Such a reaction suggests Hamas does not see such behaviour as being in its own interest. On the other hand the evidence survivors and Israel have produced of atrocities seems strong. They claim that “dozens suffered” in appalling ways. The Israelis certainly blame the Hamas leadership and the Palestinians who back Hamas as bearing responsibility for what happened. This means so far there has been little Israeli sympathy expressed or felt for the plight of the bombed-out people of Gaza who have been dying – not in dozens, but in tens of thousands.
Since Oct 7 Israel certainly has responded to Hamas in the most extreme of ways. The relentless destruction in Gaza of Palestinian buildings of all types, from homes to hospitals, a university and of everything the people own leaving them with nothing, including what looks like a deliberate destruction of all cultural artefacts, manuscripts, archaeology and old buildings, first in Gaza City, then in the South and in Khan Younis, could hardly be more complete. The scenes of devastation as seen on the BBC and Aljazeera of screaming children, the dead and dying, women and the elderly and children brought out from beneath the rubble to bombed out hospitals where they have had arms and legs amputated have been hard to watch. As rain and flooding add to these pictures things get worse every day with sewage infected pools. Now famine and starvation set in as Israel blocks food, medicine and all forms of humanitarian aid in all but deliberately ineffective ways.
The IDF say these civilian losses are an “unintended consequence” what the Americans have called “collateral damage” as they have sought Hamas in their tunnels beneath the buildings. Their aim they say is “The destruction of Hamas” and all its structures. It is not revenge for Oct 7th. Who can believe that for the bombing and shelling has been so widespread and devastating. What’s more with the IDF claiming the use of advanced AI which gives it unprecedented access to accurate data about who lives where in Gaza as it plans its bombing, it cannot claim what it does is indiscriminate. Gaza city has now been almost completely flattened and after ordering the population to move south, the same shelling has been carried out there. This means Gasa has been turned into an uninhabitable killing field.
Also, what is meant by “destroy Hamas”? Can any amount of force kill the Palestinian desire for freedom from Israeli rule and the creation of some form of Palestinian state? What more could Israel do to make sure their state and every Jew in it is deeply hated by Palestinians? Is not this declared Israeli policy simply a slogan for international consumption to make what the IDF is doing look comparatively acceptable after the horrors of Oct 7? So what might be the real objective of Israel in this war if it is not just “to destroy Hamas”?
Greater Israel. The Zionist Dream
The destruction of Gaza City by Israel and the continued killing of Palestinian civilians increasingly looks as if Israel’s government will now aim, without clearly actually saying so (for fear of upsetting internal and external allies?) to impose, while under Netanyahu, a policy which has long been popular amongst Israel’s right wing. This is to pursue a Greater Israel (Eretz Israel) policy. Certainly this is what members of his cabinet such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir who is responsible for the West Bank, have openly declared to be what they want, both being members of extreme Orthodox parties that speak of Divine Intervention giving them the Promised Land. That means while appearing to be simply going after Hamas fighters and all “terrorist supporters”, they are also setting about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians not only out of Gaza, but out of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such an imposed single state solution will mean the killing or driving out of the country to Egypt, the Lebanon or Jordan all but the most cowed, compliant and demoralised Palestinians. These could remain and would be useful in servant roles and as unskilled labour instead of importing foreign workers from Thailand and Africa totalling some 300.000.
On the other hand surely the shadowy Hamas leadership (whose deputy commander in Gasa has been killed according to the IDF) must have expected an extreme Israeli reaction to Oct 7. Did they expect it to be as extreme as this massacre has so far turned out to be? We do not know. Still, whether intended by Hamas planners or not, and even if there is a rejection of the way Hamas has handled its war against Israel, this mass killing by Israel has very effectively made it impossible for any Arab or Muslim state, be it Sunni or Shia, EVER to accept what Israel is and has done. Again, this seems to be just what Hamas hoped Oct 7th would achieve. Interestingly it now seems that Hamas kept its planned attack on Israel secret both from its own members until the last minute, and from all the Muslim countries, including Iran who had been supplying them with the small arms and mortars.
Openly adopting a Greater Israel policy would certainly provoke dangerous international reactions from Arab states and Iran. At best this would keep Israel on a very expensive perpetual war footing that would drag down its economy. At worst it could set off (as the US, the UK and EU fear) a wider international conflict and possibly nuclear war. (Israel has its own nuclear bomb and Iran wants to build one.)
It will severely test US and Western support for Israel if its actions break international law as South Africa has accused Israel at the International Court of Justice ICJ of committing genocide and then the General Assembly of the UN has called on the ICC International Criminal Court to investigate if Israel and Hamas leaders have committed crimes against humanity.
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Adopting the Greater Israel policy will also provoke antisemitism outside Israel, particularly if diaspora Jews continue to feel they need support Israel’s current policies actively rather than bravely say, as a significant number have, “not in my name.”
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Even a more moderate, attempt to preserve the “status quo” reaction by Israel to hold back the IDF and the settlers in the West Bank from killing Palestinians and taking over their land or a change to a “saner government” that might even talk about a “two state solution” will quickly become extremely expensive as successors or survivors of Hamas target Israelis any way they can after the horrors they and their families have suffered.
Eventually US aid will not be enough to support Israel in the way it has become accustomed and US opinion and even US Jewish opinion (as just seen in the comments of Schumer and in the widespread pro-Palestinian protests on US university campuses)) will become increasingly divided over what has been done by Israel – with unpredictable results threatening Biden. A Trump presidency could confuse everything even more for what he will do cannot be predicted.
The Longer-term Effects of Israel’s Current Policies
Even before Oct 7 Israel was festering with internal divisions with Netanyahu’s attempt to muzzle the high court from criticising the government. It is now surrounded by ever more hostile states. The IDF itself is now a problem as extended military service and frequent call-ups prove to be extremely expensive for the state and intrusive for soldiers with interrupted civilian careers. This is contributing to a crumbling economy, inflation and rising prices as the Israeli economist Shir Hever reports. The slogan “From Start-up Nation to Shut Down Nation” is being used in anti-Government demos as those with funds and specialist qualifications leave and the health service loses doctors. Instability is leading to increasingly autocratic rule. This all makes living in Israel less attractive, even apart from continuing Hamas inspired attacks. As the US VP spokesperson remarked back in December “Israel may win a tactical victory but suffer a strategic defeat.”
As the months pass many of those (22%) dual national and overseas related Israelis and even born Israelis feel increasingly unsafe. As this conflict continues surely, they will ask would they and their children not be better off and safer back in the US, UK, EU etc., despite the antisemitism Israel has provoked world-wide by its behaviour? Already it seems half a million have left since Oct 7 and Israel has stopped publishing emigration data. How many more may start to leave? 20%, 30%, 50%?
On top of this climate change is making the whole area more difficult to live in year on year. The impact of Climate Change on this war has so far been ignored. The Carnegie Endowment reports, “The countries of the Middle East are among the world’s most exposed states to the accelerating impacts of human-caused climate change, including soaring heat waves, declining precipitation, extended droughts, more intense sandstorms and floods, and rising sea levels.” This will make the rebuilding and restoration of Palestine after this war even more difficult as year on year it should be expected climate problems (extreme heat and lack of water) get worse. Will this help or hinder co-operation?
Conclusion. Two Totally Opposed Long Term Goals. Greater Israel or Islamic Palestine.
The Israeli Historian Yuval Noah Harari has summarised where things stand in an article for the FT thus:
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The tragedy of Gaza: both sides are being “rational” |
| Many people see the seemingly intractable differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians as “irrational”. In fact, they’re anything but. For the Palestinians, the “founding event” of their modern identity is the 1948 Nakba, when the nascent state of Israel drove 750,000 of their people out of their ancestral homes. In the decades since, Palestinians have suffered “repeated massacres and expulsions” at the hands of Israel and other regional powers. Their perfectly rational fear is that, were it not for the international community, Israel would seek to “expel most or all of them” and establish a Jewish-only country. Numerous politicians and parties, including Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, have openly talked of creating “Greater Israel” – the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is viewed as part of this “abiding wish”. |
| For the Israelis, of course, the founding event of their modern identity was the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. In 1948, the Palestinians and their Arab allies sought to “annihilate” their new country; when those and subsequent efforts failed (in 1956 and 1967), Arab nations took revenge by driving 800,000 Jews out of their ancestral homes in countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Syria. “At least half of Israeli Jews are the descendants of these Middle Eastern refugees.” The Israelis’ perfectly rational fear is that the Palestinians would happily kill or expel them all – as their leaders have repeatedly advocated. The two sides, in short, both have good reason to believe that the other lot are an “existential threat”. Their decades-long impasse is the result not of “unjustified paranoia”, but of “a sound analysis of the situation” |
What might we (individuals, parties and government) promote here in the UK?
Call for an immediate and Permanent Cease Fire. Allowing the IDF to continue its policies of going after Hamas while killing Palestinian families and the total destruction of everything they have is out of all proportion to what happened on Oct 7 and will not get the 120 hostages back. Netanyahu continues to declare that the military aim is not vengeance, but to “Destroy Hamas”. This is simply impossible. Belief in an independent Palestine, Islamic or neutral, will live on and Hamas has to be recognised as having much support amongst Palestinians if there are ever to be negotiations. (as Peter Hain argues and recently senior IDF officers have also argued)
The basic policy of all three parties, Tory, Labour and LD, the press and the BBC has been DO NOT UPSET THE UK JEWISH LOBBY by saying anything that could possibly be construed as antisemitic. This approach has clearly alienated our Muslims (3.9 million) who include many who have Palestinian relatives. Calling the pro-Palestinian demonstrations which have attracted huge numbers “hate marches” as Conservative Cabinet members have is a great mistake since the police have reported they have been overwhelmingly peaceful and include a large number of non-Muslims and a significant Jewish minority. Labour reticence over a cease fire has also led to the election of four Independent pro-Palestinian MPs in this General Election. This is really serious.
The Jewish State and Antisemitism
Over the last 30 years the UK Jewish population (Total c 271,000 plus.) has become increasingly pro-Israel (as a result of relentless Israeli propaganda) and they have been encouraged to see almost any criticism of Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state as an expression of antisemitism, or if voiced by Jews, as betrayal.
This includes saying that it is antisemitic to declare that the Jewish state is built on the military occupation of land which historically belongs to Palestinians (Arabs and others) and has been taken from them by force. This means denying that they can legally or morally build a state on other peoples’ land while at the same time denying them the vote or legal rights. (Like invading Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea) Still a minority of Jews remain bravely critical of the policies Israel has adopted.
A Two State Solution?
The UK, US, EU, LDs and some liberal minded Jews (and currently former PM and mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert) speak of a Two State Solution as the answer, as interestingly does Israeli historian and critique of Israel, Ahron Bregman. On the other hand the equally critical Israeli historian and professor at Exeter University Ilan Pappe believes Judaism as a religious community does not have national rights to Palestinian land. Both recognise either a two state or a one state solution is far away. Currently two states are surely no more than political rhetoric. Israel has never been honest about proposing an equitable or believable Two State Solution that Palestinians could possibly accept. (See Ahron Bregman. Cursed Victory)
As already noted a great majority of Israelis and members of the current cabinet reject any moves towards a Two State Solution. They have wanted to see a Greater Israel free of “disruptive and untrustworthy” Palestinians develop undeclared, that is bit by bit, house by house and farm by farm. Oct 7 has given them a reason to speed up this process of driving Palestinians out of their territory by killing them in Gaza and the West Bank, (507 including 81 children Amnesty since Oct 7) and taking over homes and farms. We wait to see how far they will continue to push this in the light of foreign criticism. No sign of a let up yet. In fact the opposite has been happening.
A Single Democratic Palestine?
Apparently, when asked, many Palestinians before this war wished for a single neutral federal state with equal rights for all. (As promoted by British Palestinian Dr Ghada Karmi, and Professor Ilan Pappe) The snag for Israel with that is it would leave the Jews as a minority in what would then become Palestine. For them that is currently totally unacceptable. At the same time after Oct 7 it is hard to see Palestinians being prepared to live alongside and co-operate with Jews after what has been done to them in Gaza and the West Bank or for support for Hamas to have melted away. Of course Israelis and many Palestinians would not accept the sort of repressive Islamic state Hamas might want, but it should be remembered that historically Muslim rule has meant toleration for Christians and Jews so long as they do not seek to rule.
Israel an Apartheid State
Despite their rejection of a democratic single state with equal rights for all, Israeli spokespersons have also sought to deny that Israel is an apartheid state based on racial and religious discrimination. Instead they call themselves a democracy. (Just like white South Africans did) With half the population excluded this rings hollow. (Read the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty arguments on apartheid. The case against Israel is overwhelming.)
So what is the way ahead? Surely one thing stands out.
AFTER THIS TERRIBLE WAR IT IS SURELY IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE THAT JEWS CAN EVER FEEL SAFE OR ACCEPTED IN PALESTINE.
Sooner or later all, or a very significant number will want and need to leave and the present State of Israel in its current apartheid form as a Jewish state will become militarily, economically, and politically unsustainable. It will increasingly become an unsafe place for Jews to live in or feel happy in. (This is also the opinion of the Israeli economist Shir Hever)
Despite Olmert we need recognise a Two State Solution is currently not on the table. (Think Serbia and Albania.) We are faced by two deeply polarised communities. It is just not possible to imagine Palestinians working with Israelis to build a democratic Palestine with equal rights for all and a secure place in it for Jews, or Jews handing over a great deal of land, property and political power to Palestinians.
Peter Hain. The Only Way Forward is Negotiation with Hamas
In an article which gives an excellent analysis of where we are based on his political experience in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East, Lord Peter Hain argues in the Guardian (Jan. 24) that war will solve nothing. Only tough face to face negotiations which include Hamas can ever provide a solution which would allow Israelis and Palestinians to live in Palestine in peace and security. Again he speaks of them doing this to aim at a two-state situation. He argues neither side can win militarily and recognises neither side are anywhere near being ready to negotiate or to give up their current goals – which are Greater Israel or Islamic Palestine.
Optimistically he calls for the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria the EU and yes Iran, all getting together to organise negotiations. The hope being this would stop the conflict becoming much wider. It is hard to see this happening any time soon. He also speaks of Hamas being extremist and terrorist which the use of suicide bombing has been. Surely however Israeli governments have condoned or ordered from the start (1948) terrorist and extremist ways of operating when they thought it was necessary. There has never been a time when the Jewish immigrants coming into Palestine have attempted to do anything but create an exclusive Jewish state on other people’s land. At the same time they have denied them any political, legal, or other rights. Because of guilt over its own record of antisemitism and the Holocaust, the West has gone along with this, effectively ignoring the claims of Palestinians for equal rights. But surely, in the face of what Israel has done and is doing now, this can no longer be accepted or tolerated by the West or the international community, particularly as the West and the EU backs the rights of Ukraine.
Without the cruelty, rape and torture perpetrated by some Hamas fighters on Oct 7th the attack on Israel could be seen as being as legitimate as the French underground taking on their Nazi occupiers, or black South Africans taking on white power in the days of apartheid. Similarly, as Hain knows, the IRA regarded the bombings and killings they carried out as legitimate in their struggle for a united Ireland. The point is no Arab or Islamic country accepted the right of the new Jewish immigrants of 48 to set up a Jewish state in Palestine and the UN was only able to get a majority vote in favour of it because Stalin was able to order the whole Eastern block to vote for it. The UK abstained while the US was pro.
It is a mistake then to simply write off Hamas as a terrorist movement as Israel would like us to. The idea of a free Islamic Palestine is not unreasonable for those Palestinians who think the Jews have had no right to set up in Palestine a discriminatory Jewish state. Their view can never be destroyed by force, in fact force makes it grow and become more extreme and jihadi as may have happened. To do that is to succumb to Israeli propaganda. Netanyahu, his government (Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir) and the IDF are all guilty of breaking international law and carrying out terror acts repeatedly. Like the IRA, as Peter Hain argues, Hamas has to be negotiated with.
Israel’s attempt to build a one state solution “from the river to the sea” consisting of a Greater Israel is long standing (48) and they are using this war to further it while denying this when talking to the UK, the EU or the Americans, if not to each other. (See Arnold Bregman. Cursed Victory) As the consequences of bombing and shelling Gaza flat were obvious from day one, the current disease, drought, famine, and death in conditions of mass and unavoidable homelessness and starvation has to be seen as deliberate. It is also impossible to imagine Israelis giving up enough land voluntarily to provide anything like an equitable and acceptable territorial solution for the formation of a state of Palestine. As things stand a two-state solution is far away.
As a critic of the Taliban and Islamism I am not pro Hamas. The carefully planned attack on Israel on October 7th including the highly likely carrying out of truly appalling acts of cruelty on Israelis by those who ordered them or encouraged them as well as those guilty of doing them are war crimes for which those involved must be held to account. (As now the ICC has done by laying charges.) I also see the autocratic jihadi Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood as a step backwards for moderate Muslims who appreciate the values of human rights, democratically based law and government and the education and social liberation of women yet continue to appreciate the basic Five Pillars of their religion. (Belief in God and the Prophet, Prayer, Fasting, Charitable giving, and Pilgrimage) Egypt voted in a Muslim Brotherhood government in 2011 at the time of the “Arab Spring”. They made such a mess of running the country that they were thrown out by popular demand. Sadly, only to be replaced by the repressive El-Sisi military dictatorship. An extremist jihadi Hamas can only be defeated once a democratic Palestine is in place. Then it can lose in an election of Palestinians.
3/3/24 On 29th February the killing of at least 112 Palestinians around food trucks was reported. After an initial denial the IDF admitted it opened fire when its men “felt threatened” by the crowds seeking food from the trucks. A UN report from the local hospital said most of the wounded were suffering from gunshot.
This appalling event and many others like it looks very much like an IDF massacre by out-of-control troops. The changing Israeli reports clearly lacked plausibility as is often the case as we read of the deliberate attacks on hospitals, schools, medical personnel and journalists What possible threat did this unarmed crowd, desperate for food, pose to Israeli troops and their tanks? How long though will Biden and the US continue to accept uncritically Israeli accounts of the multiple atrocities that have happened and what will it take to change the minds of the UK Gov and UK Jews as regards their support of Israel? We shall see.
Here are some points we might discuss besides the need for an Immediate Ceasefire. There may be many more.
1. There needs to be a radical re-evaluation of our relations with Israel with no more pretence that the Jews have a greater right to rule Palestine than the Arabs. For a start we need condemn any move by Israel to further a Greater Israel by forcing Palestinians out of Jerusalem, expanding settlements on the West Bank or occupying what is left of Gaza.
2. Encourage a rebuild. The people of Gaza require urgent relief – just to prevent a health catastrophe, let alone provide them opportunities to rebuild their lives. It looks as if Israel has made around over two million Palestinians homeless and the death toll continues to around at least 40,000. Who will fund that rebuild and the short and long-term medical needs of the Gazan wounded and survivors? Humanitarian aid is desperately needed. UNHCR. Here the US should help for it provided all the weapons for the killings.
3. Call for the repair and reparation by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem where Palestinians have lost properties and call for the right of return to Palestinians to the properties they lost in Israel’s wars.
4. Call for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred sites and the Temple Mount to be placed under UN protection and administration so all may worship unhindered.
~
5. Call for the UK to recognise immediately the State of Palestine as 193 UN nations have.
6. Call for open, free and fair elections for Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem organised by the UN without Israeli or Hamas interference to elect a new Palestinian Authority to negotiate with Israel and run the above with the end in view of an open, democratic state of Palestine.
7. Condemn apartheid Israel for the way its policies and actions provoke antisemitism outside Israel, not just among Muslims, so causing a problem for diaspora Jews everywhere.
And Particularly Here in Britain:
8. Protect and support UK Jews and Muslims against antisemitism and Islamophobia. Protect free speech, argument and public protest while prosecuting hate speech and violence.
9. Remind Jews it is NOT antisemitic to criticise the current State of Israel for its racist and discriminatory policies against Palestinians. Also it is not antisemitic to question the legitimacy of Israel to act as a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine. Many Jews, including distinguished academics have done so.
10. Continue to re-assure our population of the right of free speech and of peaceful public protest and demonstration and that hate crimes will be prosecuted.
11. Support and respect the ICC and the ICJ. Promote consistent criticism of human rights violations, war crimes and violations of international law. Politicians of all parties need to criticise both Israel and Hamas in a consistent way using the same criteria they have used to criticise Russia in the Ukraine conflict. The outbreak of this war saw a dangerously one-sided support for Israel and ignoring of the Palestinians plight.
12. Call for the release by Israel of all prisoners convicted under military law and administrative detention. Recognise they are all, whatever they might have done, the prisoners of an illegal occupying power they have a right to resist.
13. The UK has for years been working closely with the IDF in its development of drones, AI and military technology. This is now being reportedly used over Gaza “in a search for hostages.” This needs to be re-assessed in the light of the civilian deaths caused by the IDF.
14. Encourage a return of Jews to the democracies as Israel rejects the above moves and the conflict continues. Many if not most Jews see themselves as sharing Western, liberal, law-based democratic values, be they religious, or as many are, secular. They do not see themselves, or wish to be seen, as supporters of mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Is it not likely that as the conflict drags on life in Israel will become increasingly unsafe, costly and unpleasant. Many Jews (particularly the 22% with dual citizenship and their relatives) will then have an option. A policy of Come back and Join us and bring us your skills can never be called antisemitic.
The Jews who wish to remain in Palestine
If the war continues with Israel rejecting effective negotiations with any Palestinian group as it fights on for a Greater Israel, what might happen, even if it fights Hamas to a standstill? Surely it will find itself both an international pariah and increasingly unsustainable, economically, politically and militarily. If it broke down would the remaining Jews be ready to live in an impoverished single state Arab ruled Palestine dealing with a deteriorating climate? Would the Palestinian majority in that state who had fought on against Israel or who had simply suffered enormous family losses be ready to accept them?
And what of the thousands of Israeli Jews who had come from the Muslim lands they lived in for centuries (The Sephardim) but which they had to leave after the setting up of a discriminatory Israel, or the large number who came from antisemitic Russia? And what of the Orthodox who might still wish to stay in the Holy Land for religious reasons? The position for all these Jewish groups is really difficult. It will depend on which countries might offer them asylum if they decide they need to leave Palestine.
The other big question will be what sort of Palestine might emerge as the current war grinds on to some sort of endgame. Will there still be a place in it for Jews after this Gaza massacre?
There is one certainty. Oct 7, 2023, will cast a very long shadow for the current government of Israel has carried out a massacre on a scale and intensity which will not be forgotten across the world and particularly by all Muslims. It inevitably brings to mind an earlier Holocaust.
Postscript 7/1/2024
As a student of religion and former specialist teacher of Religious Studies I am not anti-Jewish. I introduced and taught about the Holocaust in two schools years before it was done in History. I also actively supported a Jewish charity that worked to help Russian Jews suffering soviet antisemitism to leave the Eastern Block and go to Israel.
I think we greatly underappreciate what Judaism has contributed in its key thinking to both Christianity and Islam and more than that to our widely shared humane liberal values. I also admire and appreciate the outstanding achievements of Jews who have settled here, adopting Britain as their home, and whose contributions to our society have been out of all proportion to their numbers. In fact the whole development of Western liberal, democratic society has been enormously enriched by those with a Jewish background. Think of the arts, philosophy, politics, the media, economics, science, law, medicine and business for a start. Without their exceptional input our whole Western culture and the international order such as it is, would be greatly impoverished. However, as a former South African who lived under apartheid, I have come to see the way the state of Israel has developed into an apartheid state on Palestinian land as being a terrible mistake. Increasingly in this Gaza war it undermines and betrays the very values and achievements so many Jews have stood for.
Genocide
South Africa has charged Israel with the specific crime of Genocide at the ICJ (International Court of Justice.) I have listened to all 6 hrs of the case being put by both sides. SA presented the case meticulously, far better than this paper does. It argued successive Israeli governments have been out to break, kill and exclude Palestinians from their land, have done so since 1948, and now want to finish the job. Israel’s attempt to deny this rang hollow, as did the attempt to dismiss clear genocidal statements made by its PM, cabinet and army leader. The ICJ preliminary judgement and call for Israel to stop killing Palestinians carefully listed what has been happening. This may yet embarrass the West and encourage a less pro-Israeli stance. However, the Israeli description of how Hamas works in and under hospitals and its use of families as human shields seems believable if pretty inevitable in such a crowded place. This may be the reason the ICJ has not called for an immediate cease fire. Hamas appears to be heartless and cynical in its behaviour towards its own civilian backers as they die from Israel’s bombs in their thousands while its militia fights on from their tunnels. Since we hear no criticism of Hamas from Palestinians in Gaza, we need ask is this because they live under fear or because they back them in the fight? We just do not know. Now the US and the UK bomb the Houthis in Yemen for backing Hamas and firing on shipping. As a result the whole Muslim world (including British Muslims) and the South and East see the West as hypocritical supporters of an apartheid state – even as Ukraine gets starved of support.
Prolonged Occupation
28/2/24PS Things have changed. The UN General Assembly has asked the ICJ to rule on what Israel should do with the occupied territories. Some 50 countries argued Israel should withdraw from them immediately. The court has declared “Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. It’s illegal both in its aim and in its conduct.” This July judgement should make further material support by Israel’s allies (US and UK etc) illegal. We now wait to see what will happen.
4/4/2024 The World Central Kitchen Charity
This charity providing food for Palestinians had seven of its members killed in an IDF Drone strike despite their careful liaison. It looks very deliberate as it has the effect of stopping further food aid getting to Gaza as starvation grows. Alex Younger, former MI5 head said it was “hard not to conclude that insufficient care is being paid to the collateral risks of these operations, one way or another. What happened is essentially systematic of an approach to targeting that has on occasion bordered on the reckless and fundamentally undermines therefore what must be Israel’s political purpose, which is to sustain some moral high ground and some moral purpose.”
Senior British Lawyers Speak Out
The Guardian has published a letter from senior lawyers and three former supreme court justices, warning that the UK government was breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel. Several Conservative MPs have urged Rishi Sunak to stop arming Israel after this strike. For retired judges this is an extremely rare intervention.
Lyall Grant, a former national security adviser, said the facts had changed considerably since the government’s lawyers last assessed the situation in Gaza in December. Since then, the International Court of Justice has suggested in an interim judgment that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza. Last week, the UN security council passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel has not abided by.
The Israeli Assassination of Iranians in their Syrian Embassy. 1st April-24.
Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard generals who were staying in their Syrian embassy, so seriously breaking international law. Iran responded, not wanting they said a full-scale international war, but with a huge launch of drones and rockets aimed at all parts of Israel. They did this after giving a warning and some say using obsolete weapons, they knew Israel could deal with, but which would make a good impression among the Arab and Iranian populations that they were “doing something,” and could do more, but were not ready to take on the US. All but one of these weapons were intercepted by Israel and its allies, in this case supported by US, UK and Jordanian air power. The result was the international backing of Israel by all nations opposed to Iran including the US, and Saudi and Jordan. Netanyahu won all round for attention was taken off the continuing Gaza slaughter urged on by his cabinet right wing.
Plans proceeded for a full-scale attack on Rafah where 1.5 million Palestinians had been driven but where the IDF now claimed contained the last brigades of Hamas fighters. There Israel closed the Rafah crossing so stopping all aid and engaged in fierce fights with Hamas. The UN called for effective food aid and an end to the fighting, but Israel and Netanyahu said that would give Hamas a victory.
South Africa then called on the ICJ to issue stronger orders to prevent further genocide while Israel claimed against all appearances to be keeping to international law and allowing in lots of food. Both claims patently false as Israelis in the North of Gaza raided food lorries and destroyed food supplies. ~
After having declared Hamas defeated in Northern Gaza, the IDF was faced with new Hamas attacks and has returned to the North to fight Hamas again wreaking further havoc shelling and bombing the little left.
June 2024 The Aljazeera Film October 7
As regard Oct 7th I have been carefully looking at the Aljazeera sponsored film made by the British journalist Richard Sanders. He took months after the events to make researching all the evidence he could find. It is entitled October 7 and can be viewed by searching on the Aljazeera website. It is very impressive, but he says ignored by the BBC, the Guadian and US media while viewed globally by millions.
The film acknowledges that Hamas did commit war crimes. It also makes clear Israel and the IDF has lied and exaggerated over the killing of babies (It did not happen) and use of sexual violence and rape (yes, but grossly exaggerated) in order to stir up the maximum hatred and loathing of Palestinians. The US (Biden and Blinken) has gone along with this, always blaming Hamas for failures over a cease fire. Patently Israel has not accepted a cease fire in writing and Hamas simply sees Israel as agreeing to the minimum to get its “hostages” back before relaunching its war “to destroy Hamas”. It knows this really means making Gaza uninhabitable for the 2.3 million Palestinians who lived there who it will continue to kill as the total reaches the 40,000 estimate I made early in this paper. I guess Israel will go on to break Hamas as a fighting force, but Palestinian hatred will remain assured and “terrorist attacks” against “the Zionist Entity” and Jews will continue. Israel will become even more of a pariah state, boycotted and shunned by most countries and rejected by nations as having committed if not technical genocide (That will take years to prove) then certainly war crimes and crimes against humanity as the international court cases will show.
If Gaza is destroyed and both it and the West Bank made uninhabitable for Palestinians, at the same time climate change will continue to kick in with heat waves, occasional flooding and water shortages on an increasing scale. Palestine will simply become another impoverished middle eastern area like Syria, lived in by those with no other option. Bleak? I’m afraid so.
CONCLUSION
The conflict is likely to continue for some time and the hatred indefinitely. That means the total impoverishment, further mass killing and permanent disablement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of whom nearly half are children in an intentional slaughter which morally has to be called a genocide, a genocide carried out by the descendants of those who died in the Holocaust. It also means the economic and political diminishment of Israel into a further militarised pariah state even if they win in the short term a brutal “victory.”
At the same time despite military defeats and almost total impoverishment Hamas and other Palestinians will fight on with a new generation of recruits, using any means they can. including suicide bombings and the assassination of Jews driven by the hatred of those who have lost so much.
Our aim here in Britain should be when all is said and done to support British Jews to return from Israel and British Muslims and others with Palestinian families to also help them settle here or receive support if they remain in Palestine. It is vital that our support for Jews against them suffering from antisemitism here does not lead to our Muslim citizens feeling ignored and alienated from British society. This requires great political sensitivity.
Reference Sources I have Found Useful
Books: A History of Israel 2002 and Cursed Victory 2014 both by Ahron Bregman who lectures in the Dept of War Studies Kings College London. This meticulously written history which focuses on ’67 made me aware of just how deep seated and consistent the Israeli policy of working for a Greater Israel is and what Israeli politicians are prepared to say and do and lie to work towards it.
TV: Aljazeera Freeview 253 on TV gives hourly coverage and excellent reviews. See The Listening Post Series It is pro-Palestinian. Also see its documentary Oct 7 for a careful statement and analysis of claims and counter claims of what happened. The BBC and Chanel 4 News both give good coverage. More on Radio 4. On I-Player Jeremey Bowen has his History of Israel. Filmed 1992 which gives excellent background and he continues to give excellent balanced reports. Bregman was involved in making his film. Wikipedia has huge coverage of every aspect of the conflict. I also read with great care the Guardian Weekly and the Economist for their careful and well-researched journalism. I have also just heard Professor John Mearsheimer speak on YouTube coming to the same conclusions as this paper but with much more authority. Also on You Tube see Professor Ilan Pappe and several other anti-Israel Jewish intellectuals.