This Is What a ‘Fresh Raid’ Inside Gaza Looks Like

Israel announced a ‘fresh raid’ in Palestine several days ago and Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes, “The tragedy of the Israel-Palestine conflict is this: underneath all the horror is a clash of two just causes.”

‘Just Causes’ are usually in the minds of those who attack

I make no case on that other than to remind that the first three leaders of Israel were terrorists in their own day and the fascism they fled (or died under) in Nazi Germany has been replicated in the nation they built. Their current leader, under indictment on multiple charges, wouldn’t know a just cause if it ran him down in the street.

Everyone had a hand in carving the turkey that was to become a divided Palestine

As Britain watched its empire collapse, Palestine remained under its mandate, but the Brits still had reasons to placate the Arab nations and handing over Palestine wasn’t in the cards. It’s a racist fact that no one wanted the Jews, but they deserved to be somewhere and, what the hell, who in the West had ever met a Palestinian? With Truman’s quiet blessing, The United Nations adopted Resolution 181 that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end.

Just under the wire.

But wires give way under tension and for 75 years Israel and Palestine traded blame for avoiding a two-state accord. But the difference was that Israel was rich and Palestine had nothing but its history.

History is written by the rich and powerful, no exceptions

Another truth in the writing of history is that wars destroy private lives, while those who start them stand on the sidelines and comment—their children safely in school, their money properly invested and their homes a long way from the front lines.

The fire-bombing of Dresden is an example, if one is needed: 25,000 non-combatant citizens killed and stacked like cordwood, with no strategic purpose other than to terrorize the German population. Those bombers were American, the Russians target Ukrainian housing complexes and the Israelis blast Gaza to rubble. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent—but there are no innocents. Author Kurt Vonnegut was there, cringing as a prisoner-of-war in a basement, read Slaughter- house Five.

Don’t bother to look for blamelessness in a world where terror is the only possible redress for the powerless against the powerful. The Nurenburg Trials could have as easily been held by Germany against the Allies had the cards fallen differently.

Yes, I remember the Holocaust. I was a ten-year-old boy in a movie theater in Wilmette, Illinois when the Warner-Pathe News showed film of the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp. That was how we saw the world, between feature-films in the days before TV. One minute Cary Grant in a romantic comedy, the next minute reality. It was a very quiet crowd leaving the Teatro De Lago that evening.

What a soft and charming word ‘camp’ is. Brings to mind summers in Northern Wisconsin, rowboats and fishing, singing by the campfire.

Jonathan Freedland is wrong, well-meaning but wrong

The tragedy of the Israel-Palestine conflict is this: underneath all the horror is a clash of eight decades of old and unjust causes that men the world regards as statesmen were unwilling to make right.

To hell with causes

Causes poison the minds of honorable people who would, in other circumstances, save each other’s children, feed them and give them a warm place to sleep, a smile and a hug goodnight. That’s what Brits and Americans, as well as Russians and Ukranians, including Israelis and Palestinians do under other circumstances.

That’s the truly amazing thing about living in parts of this wide world that are not America; in an emergency, when the chips are down and there’s no one else to turn to, we reach out, kneel down and do the best we are able to do. We may not speak the language, but the best we can do is always good enough…