Thou shalt not kill | The Jackal

17 Nov 2012

Thou shalt not kill

It's very sad to see an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Palestine recently. After many years of skirmishes and retaliatory strikes, Israel has decided to attack the Palestinians in what appears to be all out war designed to dispossess people who've already lost most of their territory because of unjustifiable wars. The Palestinians are defiant but clearly demoralized, with many years of sanctions and repression weakening the very fabric of their society.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported:

The latest round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas (Black cloud of death hangs once more over Gaza and Israel, 16 November) once again points to the futility of tacit ceasefires that are not shored up by a serious international initiative to resolve the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would enable both peoples to exercise their self-determination, free of oppression or threat. It is also a timely reminder to a victorious President Obama that, as his second term begins, he can no longer fiddle while this vital part of the world burns and the hatred, including towards the US and the West, escalates. Yet no new peace initiative can be launched without a definitive ceasefire, so that has to be the immediate priority.

The potential for this conflict to escalate even further is there, with the Israelis calling up 30,000 reservists and amassing troops and tanks near the Gaza border. Despite a warning from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Israeli rocket and airstrikes have continued unabated, entirely dwarfing the retaliatory strikes coming from Palestine for the assassination of Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari.

In fact the potential catastrophic consequences to allowing this conflict to continue are there, with the United States and Britain supporting Israel and Russia and China somewhat supporting the Palestinians, which makes the fact that there's no diplomatic solution on the horizon and the potential for other countries to get drawn into the dispute very concerning indeed.

Most people won't even remember what this conflict is about, and perhaps the Israelis are also somewhat ignorant to the real causes. It's not just about the Israelis wanting more land to expand into... The roots of this conflict go back to the end of the Second World War when countries were divided up. It also goes back to religious disagreement and the control of Jerusalem.

After WW2, the Allies incorrectly divided many countries up, including Palestine to create Israel to give the Jewish people somewhere to go and rebuild. In 1948 the UN recognized the nation of Israel, which then undertook a number of wars beginning with the Catastrophe in the same year, which was the beginning to the War of Independence, then there was the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which led to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

During this time, Israel continued to implement unfair policy that dispossessed many Arabs from their ancestral lands. The resentments caused from this is the main thing driving the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but it's not the only factor involved.


The Zionists base many of their territorial demands on an incorrect interpretation of the Bible concerning the kingdoms of David and Solomon. The Zionists are taking scriptures solely concerned with a person’s spiritual growth and applying them literally to the world around them. The religious fervour this has caused is why the conflict has continued for over half a century.

Make no mistake, the recent increased conflict between Israel and Palestine isn't about any justifiable retaliatory strike by the Israelis, it's about them wanting to exterminate the Palestinians off the face of the earth. The level of hatred, brainwashing and blind obedience to that cause and support from other countries might just ensure they achieved their most inglorious goal, which would be recorded in history as one of mankind's most vial occurrences indeed. The genocide of the Palestinians would be on par with how the Germans treated the Jewish people during the Second World War, for which there are no excuses.

I'm not in any way anti-Semitic in this criticism of what is driving the Israel and Palestinian conflict btw. However I disagree strongly with the way Israel and a minority group within it is going about achieving territorial expansion at the expense of the Palestinians.

There is a peaceful solution that needs to be acted upon, and only time will tell if an international intervention by the United Nations to remove weapon supplies from both sides would put a halt to the conflict. Who knows how many lives might be saved if the United States and Britain removed their support from Israel, and proposed sanctions on the aggressor nation?

In my opinion, a way forward also needs to be found in terms of addressing the underlying religious differences and the initial incorrect dividing up of Palestine. If these problems are not addressed, the conflict between Israel and Palestine will continue indefinitely.