Opinion: This is a time for outrage at the direct hits

A hypothetical

If the presumed BUK surface-to-air missile system shot from the territory of pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine had whizzed past Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, it might have been reported sighted and considered a near-miss with some expressing a bit of outrage at such a reckless activity.

Alas! It was a direct hit and with it 298 souls were lost, the consequence of which should have precipitated such outrage at the needless, careless and atrocious waste of human life wrought by bungling rebels with Russia's support.

Then again

Down in the Middle East, literally all the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, whilst terrifying and capable of causing carnage with the loss of life and damage to goods and property, they are in their thousands, near misses. We must for all intents and purposes express outrage at the crude militancy that is no match to Israel’s firepower and organisation.

Then, you watch the missiles fired from Israel into Gaza that has no defence weaponry, literally every missile has been a direct hit, whether intentional or not, people are losing their lives in the hundreds and this calls for widespread outrage, because of the carnage caused, that is presented as a defence.

Between terror and killings

Now, I can understand the terror of missiles coming into Israeli cities, terrifying all, young and old; the government needs to have some strategy and game plan to deal with this nuisance, though I have my doubt that even with the incursion into Gaza, the missiles can be stopped entirely, for there is a deep-seated issue of unrest that is not been addressed towards achieving peace for Israel and its neighbours.

Yet, the terrified can be becalmed, for near-misses belie a stark reality along with a sense of survival. Direct hits are a different story, the people are dead and that is the end of their story.

Blood for fear barbarity

The exchange system between Israel and Palestine of avenging fear within the borders of Israel with the blood of Palestinians in their cooped-up regions as they are ring-fenced from Israel with settlements, borders and walls cannot be the roadmap to peace for all concerned.

What has developed is escalating belligerence with no prospect of peace on the horizon. More pertinently, until we are ready to express unbiased outrage at the needless loss of life anywhere in the world and make perpetrators of the killings accountable for their actions, we acquiesce and grant immunity for more impunity to those have taken the level of their lawless activities to an unspeakable level of atrocious violence.

We must condemn the near-misses, but the direct hits must attract the sternest criticism from all fair-minded members of our humanity as well unmitigated outrage.

Opinion: Finding the right food for the conscience - truth

"We are lying and finding sexier ways to do it." Sarah Firth

Narratives are many

Many current events in the world has forced people to take sides, speak fully persuaded of the narrative that appeals to them and that has become their truth.

Whether there are facts or evidence to support the view they espouse is another thing.

However, there is a tendency to buy into a narrative, to be identified by a Shibboleth and that becomes a sworn mantra to be recited to any that might have ears.

Know who is at fault

From the fundamentals, one can examine the sometimes odiously accepted view that a lady's dress is ultimately responsible for her being raped and that the rapist is excused, exculpated and never needing to account for the crime, that is how the seed of impunity is sown through a contrived narrative that grants immunity.

Yet, all you have to hear in any statement is the qualification, "ultimately responsible" and with that the perpetrator walks, the victim twice victimised and bereft of justice.

How we champion impunity

For decades, we have excused Israeli belligerence against its cheek by jowl Palestinian neighbours and lands adjacent, impunity reigning with the narrative of security and defence without any accountability, except to a contrived sense existential threat.

We all know Israel is there to stay, it is not under threat of extermination, even if words have been spoken to that effect, but it is a political and propaganda tool deftly used by reprehensible politicians to distract us from a deeper truth of untrammelled aggression, unspeakable atrocities and bloody injustices that make the heart ache.

We must apportion blame where it is due, whoever dropped the bomb is responsible for the carnage just as the other side is responsible solely for their own acts.

How deny the truth

I return to the analogy that regardless of the manner of dress, whether provocative or not, the rapist is responsible for the rape and that is where the law stands and where justice is sought.

Likewise, the downing of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam was the sole criminal act of the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, no other contrived narrative is permissible and they should be brought to book.

Provocation is not responsibility

Provocation should never become responsibility, if the provoked should choose to retaliate, the provoked should be held responsible for the consequences of their actions without dissimulation.

Therein is the matter of conscience as expressed in Sarah Firth's quote. Would we accept the lie of a contrived narrative or the truth of clear responsibility for particular actions?

I have a conscience, it has a duty to stay true by supporting the truth. It has the task of expressing my humanity of empathy, feeling, understanding and appreciating the broad spectrum of what life is.

For to know pain, suffering, injustice, cruelty and hurt is to begin to see the truth of aspects of our human wretchedness.

Most importantly we must save our consciences from being seared with narratives untrue that serves to exacerbate unconscionable impunity.

Postscript:

Sarah Firth resigned from reporting for RT today.

Editorial: Israel's legislative nadir

A rotten law

The passing of a law by the Israeli Knesset giving the right of vexatious civil prosecution to petitioners from parts of the Israeli State who have suffered boycotts marks a nadir in the democratic life of Israel.

There might be very little objective reason to boycott the substantive and legally constituted state of Israel; however, there is every reason by conscience, law and legality to boycott the settlements which are viewed by international law to be illegal.

What makes the law egregious, very bad and a departure from common-sense and reason is that petitioner does not even have to prove “economic, cultural or academic damage” was caused, as long as the petitioner can suggest, assume or imply that a boycott can be reasonably expected to cause damage no matter how contrived.

This law as much as it abridges the freedom of expression and choice of the Israelis by inference confers undue legitimacy on these outposts of the law where already too much is squandered in maintaining an uneasy calm on illegally annexed lands of the Palestinians.

Israel wants no peace

Religionists might for their ulterior purposes suggest that modern Israel which is a fraction of the promised Canaan of antiquity to Abraham and his seed is the ancestral land of the Jews; it is without doubt that the imposition of ancient literality over what must for global interests of today be figurative at best is unfortunate.

However, the biggest signal from the leaning of the current Israeli parliament and government of Israel is not of a state seeking peace with its neighbours but one of a belligerent hegemony whose concept of peace is really that of security borne of being superiorly equipped as a threat and menace whilst depriving its closest neighbour of any means of its own defence and military projection if that course of action becomes necessary.

One can so easily conclude that Israel probably enjoys its continual projection of pseudo-victim within a hostile Middle-Eastern neighbourhood; and as long as we are always distracted and confronted with the spectre of an existential threat to Israel the need to force the issue for peace never assumes the needed priority because any useful peace settlement might well make Israel pale into relative regional insignificance.

Justice needs to prevail

It goes without saying that codifying such atrocious laws into their statute books and by so doing conferring legality on an illegality does make the reasonable, fair and just begin to question the legitimacy of Israel – for whilst representative democracy might well be purposeful, it can yet be abused by the tyranny of ideology.

One would hope that the legality of this law gets tested in the highest courts of the land and the bench will with boldness contemn the intent, purpose, process and enactment of this law whilst striking it down with a stinging rebuke to all those who gave support to this travesty.

Thought Picnic: Palestine

Cannot stand the spin

The news junkie in me has started a news Lent very early; I have completely starved myself of news and completely switched off the news channels because they are all camped out on the matter of Gaza.

I have channel-hopped between Cartoon Network and Boomerang keeping my mind away from the misery, the suffering and the lies.

The news has been spun off the realms of information and it has become atrocious propaganda peddling of the most absurd kind, we are expected to believe all sorts of convoluted opinions rather than address the basic facts on the ground.

Addressing legitimacies

The legitimate needs for the nationhood of Israel in some place of approximation derived from some adherence to a holy writ that asserts the promise of Canaan to Abraham and his seed in Biblical times cannot be disputed for all sorts of reasons.

However, the legitimate rights of the people of Palestine who were displaced 60 years ago by the writ of the United Nations where 55% of the land was given to the Jews for the land of Israel and the contemporaneous occupiers then shunted into the remaining 45% without adequate redress cannot be ignored.

This constitutes the powder keg that the Middle East has become and represents how peace would almost be impossible in the Middle East until a man or woman properly weighs those different and critical legitimate concerns and brings an unambiguous, even-handed, visionary and accommodating deal to both sides.

The rhetoric within the history

The whole idea that Israel can be completely wiped off the map by any force or nation is hogwash. It just feeds the rhetoric necessary to run untrammelled through the disputed lands with matchless force in the unattainable quest for peace.

We cannot divorce the creation of the state of Israel from the deep contrition of Europe and the United States for allowing the Holocaust and the compelling expiatory exercise that expedited the creation of Israel without properly negotiated terms for the people of Palestine with respect to the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

It sometimes gives weight to the thought that President Ahmedinejad suggested at one time that a land for the Jews which would probably not be called Israel should really have been created somewhere in Europe rather than in the Middle East.

Is there a new Biblical captivity about?

At the back of my mind I remember the Biblical histories of Jews that suggest that Israel and Judea has always been a nation in flux depending on the relationship of their leaders and the people with God. They were mostly in conflict with the neighbouring tribes and sometimes overrun and taken into captivity until they re-established their relationship with God.

It makes one wonder if the nation is kicking against the goads for another wave of the cycle of Biblical events since the all claims derive from those historical links. It would send a shudder down the spines of all protagonists if the natural ebb and flow of the Jewish nation is interfered with by belligerence that simply exacerbates an untenable situation.

Getting to solutions

This is where the United States has not been a useful broker for peace, brow-beating Palestine into terms they would just have to accept because of the status quo will not kill the aspirations of a people for a land to a call theirs and it would not obliterate the claims of dispossession that others have made for over 60 years.

Be it the 1948 lines, the 1967 lines or the new lines drawn by the wall as a demarcation boundary between Israel and Palestine; some force for good has to be dispassionate about this issue regardless of old allegiances and deliver a plan that all can gather round and all can accommodate with compromise and negotiated for all the people in the dispute.

The Middle East conflict is no more a matter of who is right or who is wrong; the issue of defence and/or revenge is simply symptomatic of a deeper conflict that needs bold and courageous unravelling.

It cannot be assuaged by inaccurate missiles or precision guided missiles – just imagine if Palestine were just as formidably armed as Israel and matched Israel bomb for bomb and missile for missile – I am sure the guarantee of mutual self-destruction would have yielded a kind of peace settlement a long time ago. There are uneven hands in this game.

Between genocide or peace

The implacable extremists (be they settlers, fundamentalists or terrorists, they are all undesirable for peace in the Middle East ) on both sides have to be made to see the futility of efforts for better offers to the majority of the people on sides of the conflict.

In the end, tanks and amazing military force can destroy buildings, institutions and kill people but if anyone thinks the bullets and bombs of one mighty nation seeking peaceful co-existence can subjugate a cause just as passionate as it draws support and the compassion from humanity and deny the legitimate yearnings of a people for land, peace, justice and fairness – you will need a genocide worse than the Holocaust to achieve that.

The war must stop.

References

Blogs on Israel

Thought Picnic: Our Truth

Introduction

A friend once commented that I have a way of making a deep analysis of very simple issues – maybe it is a foible, but true to that observation I have decided to start a topical blog called – Thought Picnic – You get a brainwave and suddenly decide to go out into nature with a picnic basket of snacks and fellowship whilst admiring the beauty of nature.

The Thought Picnic visits the imponderable, sometimes it would admire thoughts, thinking or ideas but then there are times when it would all seem incredible, astonishing, amazing and downright outrageous – but that is a matter of opinion, not necessarily fact.

My first Thought Picnic appears below, it does not follow my stricter attribution system but all references are fully acknowledged with the text.

Lying to the truth

George Michael wrote in his song, Freedom – “All we have to do is take these lies and make them true, somehow”.

We find ourselves in a situation that we cannot trust that we are hearing or reading the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Your opinions against the facts

Sadly, we are caught in a war of opinions about all sorts of issues which is fine and we have Senator Moynihan to thank for saying, “You are entitled to your own opinion but you not entitled to your own facts.”

What then is fact and what is fiction? Who documents the facts, who verifies the facts and who publishes those facts?

Those are the difficult questions and this is not helped by a comment that gives this blog its title; made by an Israeli representative this afternoon about their YouTube uploads showing their precision targeting in one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

“We are showing the world our truth”, she said – that elicited a wry smile from me, but truth has become a commodity to be managed and traded by those who can control access to the raw data that is gathered together to make up the body of facts.

The truth in the grist mill of propaganda

That way you find that journalists are not allowed in Gaza as the defence, retaliation, discipline, containment, war, massacre, carnage or genocide depending on which opinion of the facts appeals to you most from how each side wants you to view the situation.

And so we find that governments are unable in the main to tell the truth and so they repackage it for consumption and for those who do not bother to research beyond the headlines; who do not seek the facts, the detail behind the facts and whose agenda is being promoted; they are the sponges for what is conveniently called propaganda.

They are at pains to offer a perspective that is almost plausible but sounds so hollow to any right-thinking person who applies commonsense to the issue, it makes you cringe.

If I may, propaganda is the manufacture of a perspective to obfuscate the facts in order to create a truth of what is usually blatantly a lie, just because someone somewhere does not believe we can handle the truth – the resources required to maintain the machinery of propaganda is unwieldy.

Fact or perspective?

But in the game that juxtaposes fact against fiction and truth against opinion the big battles for the mind and elicitation of support for each position then becomes.

Almost 400 Palestinians have died in Israel’s precision targeting of Hamas infrastructure in probably the most densely populated place in the world whilst 4 Israelis have died as a result of Hamas’ imprecise and random home-made missiles falling on Israeli border towns - what is the significance of the numbers of the dead and people killed compared to the effectiveness of each campaign?

Is Palestine a worthwhile cause in the face of the purported defence of Israel against terrorism, the walls being built, the settlements that thrive or the supposed aggression of Israel against Palestinians in Gaza?

Is Hamas a legitimate democratic choice of the Palestinians or the pariah of terrorism as seen by the West?

Are the problems of Zimbabwe caused by white rule or black rule?

Should there be a free press including complete Western access to all issues, events and people in Zimbabwe and would this depict the whole truth?

Is the government of Sudan justified in crushing the rebels in Darfur?

Do your research

There are many questions and what suffers in finding answers to these questions is the way the opinions get in the way of the facts, the truth suffers for the portrayal of a preferred lie and the most disgrace propaganda tools are deployed in the process of presenting a manufactured view as news.

The old saying avers that all that glitters is not gold, but if we do not scratch the surface we would have paid for something that is probably completely worthless – it is incumbent on every consumer of information to objectively seek the facts and peel off the veneer of news and opinion to get at the truth – Do not be sold on everything that seems to agree with your pre-disposed sentiment.

Medinat Yisrael - 59

Israel is born - 14^th May 1948

Just a few hours before the British Mandate of Palestine expired David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence for Medinat Yisrael (The State of Israel).

The Shehecheyanu blessing was recited, the declaration signed and the Hatikvah (The Israeli National Anthem) was sung to conclude ceremonies.

59 years on, when shall all the people of the holy lands be able to say in one voice of thanks and ululation -

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam shecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higyanu lazman hazeh.

The Shehecheyanu

Blessed are You,
Our God, Creator of time and space,
Who has supported us, protected us,
And brought us to this moment.

Pause for a moment for peace in Yisrael and peace with her neighbours, chief amongst them being the Palestinians who seek a land of their own and a declaration of their own independence.

We need this before someone goes excavating the foundations of the Temple Mount looking for some long lost ark of the covenant.

Israeli Blog Trail

Farfour free to burn - II - Poor translation?

An anonymous lengthy visit

An anonymous and hence invisible person albeit from Colorado, USA left a comment on my blog pertaining to Farfour free to burn where presumably a child had offered herself as a martyr to annihilate the Jews.

I am no Arabic scholar and I have no knowledge of the language apart from the numbers which I learnt in a thick Yoruba accent from Keu (Madrassa) students in Nigeria.

Apparently, it appears most of the conversation reported might have been lost in translation and thereby we have ended up with a story a lot worse than what was portrayed.

It however then begs the question why the Minister of Information in the Palestinian government asked for the show to be discontinued, extracted a promise to present a different format and roundly condemned the content of the parts that were broadcast.

Other respectable Palestinian broadcasters also expressed displeasure at the content.

In fact, the commentator portends that Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) an organisation based in Washington D.C. which is supposed to bridge the language gap between the West and the Middle-East had committed egregious atrocities in translation which could be deliberate with the view to excite negative review.

Being one who would always bring to the fore any comment that requires airing to bring balance to the topics I introduce, I publish here the full text of the comment left by Anonymous of Colorado – (I know where all comments come from).

If I have erred, I apologise, not meaning to cause offence to anyone, only to highlight issues of concern.

The comments

I would like to point out what can only be called an egregious mistranslation on the part of MEMRI with respect to the words of one of the children who were featured as a caller on the show this story reports on.

I call it that and not simply a mistake, because a MEMRI spokesperson appeared on CNN to confirm his organization standing by its translation "word for word" and "according to the syntax" even though it is easy for an organization that employs Arabic translators to actually see how wrong the translations that were produced at first are.

The transcript claims that "Sanabel", the little girl caller of the show, responds with "I will shoot" to the host's question "Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque?"

As a matter of fact, and as can be seen in the video, it is the clown in the ridiculous Mickey Mouse like suit that says that and even makes the gesture of carrying a weapon.

The little girl Sanabel does however respond, but MEMRI omits her response. The little girl actually said in Arabic "bedi arsem soora", which means "I will draw a picture."

So this girl says she wants to draw a picture, and MEMRI transforms that to "I will shoot."

The second example is the most outrageous one, where MEMRI translates the little girl Sanabel's response to the question "we got that, what else?" as saying "We will annihilate the Jews." This is outrageously wrong and completely invented.

The girl can be clearly heard saying in Arabic "betokhoona el yahood", which means "the Jews shoot us."

The word "betokh-oo-na" can be broken down part by part and explained easily as follows:

betokh: the verb "shoots"

oo: the 3rd person plural subject pronoun meaning "they". It becomes "they shoot".

na: the 1st person plural object pronoun meaning "we". It becomes "they shoot us"

Having pointed that out, what the producers of this show are doing is morally outrageous. Instead of giving their children viewers the joy of watching child TV characters and enjoying that aspect of childhood, they are depriving them of that just as the Israeli occupation is depriving them from other aspects of normal childhood development. Both are equally wrong here.

Farfour free to burn

The future in unspeakable words

A children's television programme was banned yesterday by the Palestinian government when it appeared that a Mickey Mouse-like character called Farfour (butterfly) was indoctrinating kids with jihadist talk.

One child phoned in with these words, "I will shoot, we will annihilate the Jews ... I will commit martyrdom."

It is very much like having Tinky Winky the tellitubby prancing over the hill with handbag in one hand and Kalashnikov in the other shouting murderous obscenities.

It is a despicable misuse of the television medium and it should draw condemnation from any reasonable member of the human race as Hamas should and must cover their faces with shame.

The solution is a free Palestine

Now, we should not forget what gives rise to such venomous indoctrination of children in Palestine, it is the seething bitterness of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned and the desperate who see no progress in general terms to self-determination where a land and country called Palestine would be theirs devoid of occupiers and oppression.

The condemnation of this programme should also go in hand with a redoubling of efforts to reach a settlement between Israel and Palestine which is the nucleus and between the Arabs and the Jews which constitutes the people of the Middle-East.

You cannot have a monster and then starve it in the midst of plenty of food to keep it going, just as you cannot completely nip this kind of stuff in the bud without dealing with the causative issues.

Left with the bread crumbs of Middle East diplomacy

I’m not doing dinner

It probably was an expression of glee that came across my face when last night we learnt that the Prime Minister of Iraq had decided not to join George W. Bush and the King of Jordan for dinner.

I should know the feeling, I should have been having dinner with my agent when for some “personal” reason she pulled out of the arrangement and then invited me for one of those dastardly Christmas parties where, I end up being the only sober one at 1:00AM listening to the drivel of inebriated colleagues – No thanks!

Every which way it was spun; it was a clear snub to the leader of the Free World who had squandered every opportunity to make a positive difference to world as his non-Midas touch begins to turn golden opportunities into cack-handed diplomacy.

We can, without America

There seems to be an “in spite of America” development in the Middle East; the Palestinians have negotiated a ceasefire with Israel which seems to be holding. Iraq has renewed diplomatic ties with Syria, and whilst Dubya was busy sulking about being blown out, the President of Iraq was being feted in Iran.

America should have been speaking to these countries for the peace and stability of Iraq, but their myopic sense of hubris has personalized what can only be realized through deliberation and consensus.

In the end, the country that used to be the mediator of grand Middle-Eastern handshakes was left trying to gather the crumbs of diplomacy falling from the table of self-determinant negotiations between neighbouring countries that recognize their need for each other.

So, Condoleezza Rice is on a scurry between Israel and Palestine, giving assurances and offering lame support, those are circumstances that America has with adept created for themselves.

It all comes out – sooner or later

Beyond that, 35 years before, as the India-Pakistan war came to be, some rather unpalatable things (bitch) were said of one of the principals in conversation, that recorded conversation made the light of day in 2005, tensions rose, with anger expressed, profuse apologies after from Henry Kissinger to the heirs of Indira Gandhi and the Indian people.

It did not stop the President of that time – a Richard Nixon from referring to her as an old witch – historians would be at pains not to consider the views of the President and his Secretary of State as policy or the standard with which they had dealings with India despite protestations to the contrary.

Leaks and no plumbers about

As we humans are the poorest students of history as a means of learning to do things better, Mr Nouri al Maliki’s snub came just when a leaked document from the National Security Adviser questioned the ability for the Iraqi leader to handle the mess that America created in the first place.

Obviously, there was the little issue of supporters at home in Iraq not keen on this Iraqi-American summit.

Mr. Stephen Hadley must have thought his advice would be covered by some official secrets diktat such that the dramatis personae would only have learnt of this poor vote of confidence 30 years on.

At the risk of sounding cynical, one can only wonder what they also think of their man in Afghanistan and beneath of the public veneer of great freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lesser known reality is the bluster is really an attempt to stage a suitable “cut and run”.

For now, it is too late to send any of these American diplomats for a course in Diplomacy 101 – What you never want discovered must never be thought, let alone spoken, if published, you are damned.

Now, taking applications for “How to be nice 001”.

The land of the matter - The Middle-East Cauldron

Good Intentions

(All images courtesy of Wikipedia)

In November 2002, Jack Straw, the then UK Foreign Secretary lamented what the British Empire had bequeathed places it had vacated as the peoples of those lands sought self-determination.

Chief amongst those was that relating to the establishment of the Nation of Israel.

In 1917, in response to desires of the Zionist movement, the Foreign Secretary of that time Arthur James Balfour wrote to the British representative of the movement Lord Rothschild in the following words.

Foreign Office

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may 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."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely, Arthur James Balfour

This formed the basis of what is now known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, where Britain expressed an interest in the creation of a state of Israel in the land of Palestine, but without prejudicing the rights of the pre-existing non-Jewish communities in that region.

As it transpires, Jack Straw indicates that the assurances given to the Palestinians were not met in an honourable way.

Over time there began conflicts between the Arabs and the Jews, part of which was assuaged by restricting the number of Jewish migrations and barring their acquisition of land.

The British Mandate for Palestine

On the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, Palestinian region which was part of the empire came under the administration of the British Empire as a mandate granted by the League of Nations.

Up till 1947, there were conflicts between the Arabs and the Jews at which point Britain was keen to withdraw from the mandate. UN Resolution 818 ended up with this patchwork plan for Israel and Palestine called the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine with the Jews having 55% of the land and the Palestinian Arabs having 45% even though they the Arabs were in the majority.

The UN voted 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstained including the United Kingdom; however, at this point the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had been unravelled, the fact is, there is no way of not prejudicing the existing communities’ rights in old Palestine – and if the Palestinian Arabs were to suffered a deprecation of rights, it should not have been with their majority in numbers ending up with the minority of the land.

Riots, wars, crises, uprisings ensued, which are fully tabulated in the link provided – Arab-Israeli Conflicts.

Herein lays the general framework of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

References

The British Mandate for Palestine

Mandate for Palestine
Key Maps of the region and conflict

Zionism

The conflict of Biblical promise with current realities.

A look at the map of Israel in the biblical times and shows that Gaza which once happened to be the land of Philistines might be the only place the Israeli would be willing to cede of all current Israeli land if the extreme Zionists have their way.

It also shows that the settlers who were unsettled last year did not have any ancient claim to that land for the settlement of the children of Israel. Other maps show changes to that landscape in the 20th Century.

Israel Today

Attaching the burden of history to the Middle-East

The Middle-East conflicts

I have been fielding comments on some of my write-ups about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the current events in Gaza and Lebanon.

I am concerned that most commentary fails to gather the sense of history in this conflict that dates back at least 58 years at the creation of the state of Israel, but has it roots in quite a number of earlier events in Europe from the first Aliyah (migration) around 1881 after extensive persecution of Jews around Europe.

Israel and the Jews have a longer history than the events of the last 130 years with biblical and historical commentary about their living in the Promised Land but never exclusively.

The conflict could even date back to the times of Abraham between mother-child Ishmael and mother-child Isaac – that is a completely different story for now.

I have written a series of blogs on the Israeli-Palestinian issue - it would be difficult to read the context of my views from that one blog or my most recent blogs.

The quest to annihilate Israel is as a result of a long-running scenario where Israel was carved out of the then Palestine without due consideration the displaced people.

New organizations for old problems

Hamas (1987), Hezbollah (1982) and Islamic Jihad (Used by different organisations since the 1980s) are relatively new organisations, which have developed as a result of no movement or inadequate leadership required to resolve that issue of the displaced people and the occupied areas.

Up till when Pope John Paul II visited those lands, I did not know that the largest refugee camp of internally displaced people was really in Palestine.

People have been living in camps in their own land since 1948, it is no wonder that Israel can never be at peace till some justice and movement is seen on the part of Israel.

That agenda unfortunately is mostly hijacked by religious interests that are usually not indigenous and political interests that are neither pragmatic nor diplomatic.

It is important that reviewers and commentators get a general overview of the whole historical context on this matter, fork-lifting current events out of that context provides a poor balance of perspective.

I am not claiming to be an historical expert on the conflicts, but my views, I hope, do attempt to review the whole picture for a perspective on today.

Regardless of the strong religious persuasions on the bless-Israel/curse-Israel divide, having a good critique of that situation from all perspectives is essential and it should not preclude seeking a fair and just resolution even if it does not favour the Jews.

References

The Nation of Israel

Palestine

Israel related blogs

Palestine related blogs