Eyeless in Gaza

My namesake Paul Wood, in a good, balanced article in The Spectator, quotes an Israeli journalist who confirms what I assumed was the explanation for the terrible atrocities in Israel and Gaza.

"All this was set in motion by clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian shabab — young men — in the Old City of Jerusalem. The police raided the Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-most holy site because rocks were being stockpiled there, said the Israeli authorities. Dmitry Shumsky, a columnist in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, accused them of being deliberately provocative, under orders, he said, from Israel’s ‘pyromaniac’ security minister. The raid happened to be on the Night of Power, the most sacred of the Islamic calendar. Shumsky said this was a calculated attempt to cause a violent reaction and ‘scorch’ any hope of forming a new coalition government to replace Netanyahu’s. If so, it worked.

"His Haaretz piece quoted the former Israeli deputy prime minister Haim Ramon’s remark that ‘an unwritten pact’ exists between Netanyahu and Hamas. Hamas needs an enemy like Netanyahu; Netanyahu needs Hamas to keep the Palestinians divided. In firing the first barrage of rockets, Hamas was no doubt trying to make sure that it (and not the Palestinian Authority) would assume leadership of the emerging struggle on the streets."

I am exasperated and bewildered that many foreigners find a need to take sides in the Arab-Israel dispute.

They include British and European people who support Israel because of their fears about Muslims in the West and British and European Muslims calling for the destruction of Israel. 

I recommend a wonderful article by the great Ed West and particularly these lines.

"The Right is just as bad: during the 2016 presidential race, Ted Cruz was addressing a group of Arab Christians when he proceeded to tell them that they have no greater ally than Israel. Perhaps as a great surprise to him, they didn’t agree and he was booed off stage. But then Arab Christians don’t tend to be especially Zionist, funnily enough. And why should they be? It’s not a civilisational battle between West and East."

Exactly.

An article by Irish journalist Kevin Myers, who strongly takes the side of Israel, makes some good points and a bad one- opposition to Israel's behaviour is not anti-Semitic in most cases, though it might be in Eire. There is traditionally a lot of anti-Jewish feeling in Ireland. (By the way, Mr Myers no longer writes for the Sunday Times after making what Vanessa Feltz complained was an anti-Semitic remark about her. He said that "Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price").

"The attack on Israel was not, despite what you’ve been reading in the newspapers, the consequence of the civil court action in Jerusalem, which is fifty years old, has its roots in the property laws of the Ottoman Empire, and is not a case of ethnic cleansing. Nor was it inspired by the disturbances at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Qassam rockets are not egg sandwiches and assembling and firing some 3,500 of them required massive logistical planning, with a pretext to be chosen or even invented as the day for the assault drew near.

"Most importantly, Hamas was confident that western observers would take the side of the aggressors-victims, as they assuredly did.

"....Israel is joined at the hip to a psychotic twin who regularly stops taking the pills, whereupon he thinks he’s a kamikaze pilot, and tries yet again to crash onto the carrier-deck he took off from. For the dependency of this psycho-sibling on Israel is almost total. Gaza gets its food, energy and medical assistance from Israel, while its more serious medical cases are routinely treated in Israeli hospitals."

The murders  of the last ten days (fighting is not an accurate word) will drive Arab and Jewish politicians apart within Israel, as Hamas and Benyamin Netanyahu want, and threaten the peace between Israel and of the Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, which Hamas wants and he does not. 

What is most significant of all is that Israel's Arab citizens for the first time are protesting against the Israeli government. 

This is a huge development.