Israel and Palestine

The Prime Minister has urged Israel and Palestine to de-escalate tensions and show restraint to end violence in the region. 

  • The UK is urging Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and for both sides to show restraint.
     
  • The UK is deeply concerned by the growing violence and civilian casualties and we want to see an urgent de-escalation of tensions.
It is depressing how many people seem to have a problem recognising that both Jews and Palestinians are human beings and the death of a single Jewish child or a single Palestinian child is a tragedy.

You don't need to speculate how we in Britain would react if someone fired rockets at our cities in an attempt to kill British civilians in the way that Hamas has been firing rockets at Israel's cities. Because Nazi Germany did exactly that within living memory, in my parents' lifetimes. 

There is a story that during the "Blitz" while London was burning after a Nazi air raid, the chief of the air staff, acting Air Chief Marshall  Sir Charles Portal (as he was at the time) was called to the roof of the Air Ministry by another officer to view the devastation. After they had looked on the scene, the other officer said, "Well, they are sowing the wind" (a biblical reference to Hosea chapter 8 verse 7, "Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.") 

The officer who said this was Air Marshall Arthur Harris, soon to be known to history as "Bomber" Harris.

Whether the story is true or not, Portal and Harris certainly did their level best to make the prophecy come true, and if you ask the citizens of Hamburg, Dresden, or just about any other German city within the effective range of an Avro Lancaster from the UK they are likely to be able to tell you all about the RAF attacks on German cities which followed Luftwaffe attacks on British ones.

That deadly episode in history was, of course, part of an all-out war. Such a war between Israel and Palestinians is in neither side's interests.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yes the Palestinians are just like the Nazis.
8:22 am
Chris Whiteside said…
The ordinary innocent Palestinian civilians who are victims in this conflict just as Jewish civilians are, and are being used as human shields by Hamas are nothing like the Nazis, no.



But as for Israel's Hamas opponents, many a true word is written in irony.


Nationalist? Check.

Fire rockets at civilian areas to try to kill women and children? Check.

Hate the Jews, recycle every vile slur ever told against them for the past two thousand years from the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then make up more lies of their own, and had a manifesto which aimed to exterminate all the Jews? Check.

Imprison, torture and kill their political rivals? Check.

So yes, Hamas do have quite a few things in common with the Nazis, which is why the UK, the USA and the EU all classify them as a terrorist group.


Comparisons with the Nazi Germany are made far too often these days but Hamas is one of the very few groups who genuinely deserve such a comparison.
12:13 am
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