Eyeless in Gaza

I fully agree with my Jewish friend who pointed out that the Arabs could have made the Gaza Strip a prosperous state after the Israelis left, leaving behind efficient farms.

I certainly think that the deliberate murder of civilians is very wicked and half the Israelis whom Hamas killed (perhaps as many as sixty percent) were civilians.

The people of Gaza elected Hamas in January 2006 (some of its leaders were less extreme then) but in June 2007, 16 years ago, Hamas staged a coup and suppressed all opposition. 

Almost half of the inhabitants of Gaza were not alive when the last free election was held, let alone able to vote.

The great majority of them did not support Hamas, at any rate up to October 7. 

Support for Hamas has surged since then, as usually happens in wartime, though support for Netanyahu, already very low, has understandably plunged among Israelis.

But even those who do support Hamas do not therefore deserve to die.

I was disgusted by a friend of mine who thought the Gazan civilians deserved what they were going to get from Israel, more disgusted than by anything else in this pathetic story. She is not Jewish, by the way, but a Scottish Protestant and Conservative.  

She is not unique. Her feelings are shared by others among the small number of British people who take an interest in Gaza. 

They are shared by extremist Israeli politicians in the government.

The people of Gaza were not slaves  but I see a partial parallel with Nat Tate's slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, in which sixty white people, including women and children, were murdered.

When the rebellion was suppressed the slaves who were lynched included many who had not taken part in the revolt. 

Tate's slave revolt was the largest in American history. It struck fear into the hearts of white people in the Southern states and led to a very significant change in feeling in the South, where most leaders (Jefferson, Monroe, etc, etc) had previously supported emancipation, in principle, in the future.

I am also put in mind of the Indian Mutiny in 1852 which aroused a very bloodthirsty reaction in England, including from such Liberals as Macaulay, Dickens and Wilkie Collins. They wanted death to the mutineers. 

There was much wild talk about white women having been insulted by Indians.

What is interesting is the very different reaction that the Amritsar massacre in 1919 elicited in England. English attitudes had changed greatly.

Are Israelis like the English of 1852 or of 1919?

Here is a quotation from the Economist which fills me with sadness.

'Violence perpetrated by Jewish settlers in the Palestinians’ West Bank has risen sharply since October 7th. The Israeli army and the settlers have, in total, killed at least 155 Palestinians in the territory, the core of a would-be Palestinian state, since Hamas committed its atrocities against Israel. This death toll is a fraction of the number killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the same period. But it is rising dangerously fast. The occupied West Bank is getting closer to boiling over.

'Last year was already the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank for 20 years. Settler groups have become bolder and the army has intensified its raids on Palestinian towns and cities. But since October 7th things have dramatically worsened. At the current rate, the four weeks following the Hamas attack will have been more deadly for Palestinians in the West Bank than the whole of last year.'

By all means take a side if you wish in the Arab Israeli dispute but try to understand the other man's point of view. 

It's difficult because of the media which distort everything, for political reasons. 

Some see this as about colonialism, others about terrorism, others about American hegemony or the Holocaust and so on and so on. 

It is about these things but only incidentally.

Actually the Holocaust has nothing to do with it but people keep mentioning it. 

People like feeling angry and get angry with people they are disposed to dislike. Then they find reasons. 

What is clear is that this is a quarrel between two peoples over land, not a fight between civilisation and barbarism or between the West and Islam.