One week ago, the world changed.
The Islamist Einsatzgruppen of Hamas broke out of the biggest open-air prison in the world to inflict vengeance on the innocent.
Dear reader, that contradictory and entirely accurate sentence contains the intractable core of the problem.
The featured image from Banksy proves that he can say so much with an artfully constructed image that radiates both pain and humanity.
According to the most recent Israeli government statistics, just over 50,000 people there have had their 90th birthday.
A 92-year-old today was ten at the time of Babi Yar in 1941.
Some years ago, I read research that the emotional memory of an atrocity is around 90 years, essentially three generations.
In a few hours, the proxy forces of Iran traumatised an entire nation by reminding them what their grandparents had escaped from.
This was a pogrom in the digital age, with slaughter uploaded to Facebook for added anguish to the loved ones.
The operation itself was partly the result of an intelligence failure that still seems unthinkable.
Of course, this has set the conspiracy theorists concocting various convoluted scenarios.
Such overthinking immediately discounts the ever-present contribution of incompetence and hubris.
The Israeli intelligence community, in short, were played by an enemy they fatally underestimated.
Hamas were training for this incursion in plain sight. They even built a Kibbutz INSIDE Gaza to practice.
Here, Channel 4 News explains in detail what happened last Saturday.
Tragically, the reaction of the Israeli government is everything that Hamas and their backers could have hoped for.
Since the attack last Saturday morning, more innocents in Gaza were slaughtered from the air.
Then, yesterday, there was the expulsion order to create Nakba 2.0.
This Cromwellian fiat shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
No state with a seat at the United Nations has broken more UN resolutions than Israel.
While the major powers in the West remain their guarantor, they know they have a free hand to inflict anything they want on the Palestinians.
Here is Noam Chomsky laying out the historical context of why the Zionist state is so vital to the United States in particular.
The man who invented the theory of language acquisition can speak clearly and simply about complex matters.
That is because he understands them fully.
To excise the events of last Saturday of their context is to betray everyone who died that day.
Amid this apocalyptic chain reaction, a spat between a football club and some of its fans seems disgustingly irrelevant.
Although they sometimes unwittingly play the role of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paradise, the Green Brigade can be on the right side of history.
Admittedly, tone and timing aren’t always their strong points.
However, the decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people by the Zionist state of Israel IS the Apartheid South Africa challenge for this generation.
Organisations like Hamas will flourish until the international community sides with the displaced and oppressed of Palestine.
Criminalising any show of solidarity with the displaced innocents of the Nakba shows an absence of basic humanity.
In this context, the next match at Celtic Park in the Champions League takes on a significance that is way beyond the triviality of the sporting contest itself.
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Not going to comment directly on what’s going on over there as I have mixed views/feelings.
However I’m sick to death of the green brigade bringing the club into disrepute, time and time again they get the club into trouble. They are a massive asset to the club,when they stick to what they’re supposed to do ( help create that spine tingling atmosphere). But the baggage needs to go, how that’s done is Something the club and all of our fans need to discuss. Just please stop harming the club.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas , this is part of our strategy” Netanyahu March 2019 as reported by Haaretz
Yasser Arafat is on record as saying Hamas was created by Israel . Egyptian intelligence warned Mossad that an attack was imminent and Mossad ignored it . Sacrificing a few Israelis to justify the final solution now being played out was it seems a price worth paying .
If you want to google “project for a new American Century” it exposes the neo Cons calling for a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbour to expand US interests globally a year before nine eleven . If you google 5 dancing Israelis it exposes Netanyahu sent 5 Mossad agents to NY to “document the event” if you google 7 countries in 5 years it exposes that all the wars in Sudan Somalia Libya Lebanon Syria Iraq and finishing in Iran were all pre planned as told to General Wesley Clark . A quick read of Operation Northwoods from 1962 shows that the CIA planned to remotely hijack passenger planes and attack US ships and cities in order to justify a war with Cuba. A scenario that Bush claimed nobody could envisage happening.
Netanyahu controls Israel , Israel control the US the US control NATO and NATO control the EU , today they are all singing in Unison in justifying genocide.
Israel is a much deadlier form of Apartheid than South Africa ever was. Half of Gaza’s population are children. That hasn’t stopped the unrelenting bombing and slaughter. As for little Bono: Give him the Brutish knighthood and be done with it.
I respect you Phil but not a mention of what Hamas fighters did to ordinary human beings last Saturday? Take out the historical aspect, there can be no excuses for that. Horrible people doing inhuman things.
Gerry: Important to understand that Israel’s been slaughtering and dehumanising Palestinians since 1948. Of course, there will always be tragic consequences to state terrorism. What’s happening in Gaza is a war crime.
Ask yourself what happened to the PLO?
How Hama’s came about?
What happened when Britain handed over their colony to the UN in 1948?
What is the Zionist ideology?
Look at the context not a single incident.
Look at the root cause of occupation.
The US and the West could get rid of the Zionist state and bring about peace under a single state solution tomorrow, if they wanted to.
“Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity, and heating with winter coming, these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such”.
Ursula von der Leyen, on Twitter, 19 October 2022.
Last year’s rules.
the israeli state ethnically cleaning their stolen backed by the US is abhorrent.
It’s like something England used to do
1650 to Hell or Connacht said Cromwell
2023. To hell or Gaza said Netanyahu except they have decided to now make Gaza Hell. There is not any real option for The Palestinian people a choice of a quick death or a slow one. Then people ask why do some of them then turn to Hamas.
I thought the tone and timing of the green brigade banner was crass. The message behind it not so much, but that was a dreadful time to do that as it only hurts the club. I was against the “let’s all wave Palestine flags” at next game as I saw it more as a support for the green brigade than for the people of Palestine.
Braver man’s ridiculous plan has changed all that. I want as many as possible now. But the message needs to be clear: we want peace and an end to the bloodshed so that ordinary Palestinians and Israelis can get on with their lives.
And I would like to see Netanyahu in the Hague courts.
Martin – agree completely about their crass timing. They’re tone deaf. Don’t they know that all Palestinians are not members of Hamas? By waving flags when they did, they appeared (to those who wanted to have it seen it that way) to be applauding the killing of children and to be making a necessary connection between Palestinians and those outrages. Had they had the nous or the self restraint to pause until public opinion swung against Zionist reprisals then they wouldn’t have embarrassed the Club, other supporters, or themselves.
Their apologia copied above is – at best – disingenuous. Maybe they should treat themselves to a little Irshad Manji. They might learn something about life in Palestine.
Yup well said Phil. All power to the Green Brigade – some of is remember the compulsory Ukraine flags at football grounds last season.
Excellent and balanced article Phil.
An innocent civilian is an innocent civilian regardless of nationality. An atrocity is an atrocity whether committed by a terrorist group or by a state.
The Israeli response doesn’t appear to have a realistic objective:
If Gaza civilians do not leave many more will die as Israeli forces try to eradicate Hamas. History shows is that this will only prove to be a recruiting agent for future terrorists.
If Gaza civilians do leave Hamas terrorists will not in all probability hang around to be killed by IDF. They will most likely mingle into civilians leaving Northern Gaza to fight another day.
As several more informed commentators are now saying the IDF action seems more about retribution and that the only solution to this issue is political.
By the way Bono is a fanny.
Surprised you are only realising that now. As an old joke goes : “What’s the difference between God and Bono?”
“God doesn’t walk about Dublin thinking he’s Bono”.
No, Bono KNOWS he’s God 😊