How many dead Palestinians ....

Thatbags - with you on this!

Not really a diversion, just more tribal warfare not so very far from Israel by Sara Khan.

Beg your pardon: the article is by Robert Fisk. @SaraKhanInspire retweeted the link.

It's all very worrying

Ghaffar Hussain, a tweet. Spot on.

My uncle served in the RAF in the Middle East during and after WW2. He said then that WW3 would begin there. Nothing has improved, except the ability to destroy more of each other in each attack.

that bags.

Very true and the neutral will always be shouted down , ignored or abused by those who see tribal fervour as their right and their right alone.

How often is neutrality a constant though? Those who call for neutrality in certain situations may well not feel able to maintain that neutrality in others. If Germany had not been a threat to us, would it have been reasonable for us to stand by as the Holocaust continued (I realise that there is a chance that that is what would have happened had we as a nation not been threatened with occupation).

Of course, in the Israel/Gaza situation, there are "tribal allegiances" that, in this particular case, have arisen as a result of the setting up of Israel. Before this, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in peace.

I don't feel I have any "tribal" allegiance to either Jews or Muslims. But to me it seems wrong that a group of people have been deprived of their land and homes, have had the meagre strip of land allocated to them gradually eroded, have been denied any meaningful control over their lives and have seen, when they resist, their infrastructure and homes smashed to smithereens and thousands of civilians maimed and killed.

I see nationalism - in terms of flag waving and the sense of superiority that often accompanies it - as a not particularly desirable quality, ditto religious fervour. However, I am sure the majority of people in Britain (myself included) would not be too happy to be forced to relinquish more and more of their land and homes to an occupying force and to have to submit to laws that entrench inequality.

The situation in Palestine/Israel is a political issue NOT a religious one.

Sadly the anti-Islamic and/anti-semetic attitudes are being used and fired up to distract focus from the current disproportionate responses that are breaking international laws.
I agree with thatbags that middle eastern Arabs and Jews have a shared semetic DNA... prone to similar syndromes/illnesses!

I support the Palestinian right to a free and independent state. I do not agree with the actions of the Israeli government. That does not mean I am a Muslim extremist or anti-semetic or anti-Jewish.

Leafleting in support of an end to the siege and bombing of Gaza in town last week most people who stopped were supportive of the PSC aims and the few people who were abusive shouted anti Islamic slogans or accused me of being a holocaust denier and anti-semetic.

I see a sea change in public opinion swinging back to support the Zionist govenment policies after a period of disbelief and horror at the blasting of civilians. The Zionist lobby is hugely powerful.

Never underestimate Western guilt - whether as a result of the death of 6 million Jews being revealed to the world at large at the end of World War II or because anti-Semitism remained widespread in many European countries and in the USA too. Hiving the "problem" off to the British Protectorate of Palestine seemed like an easy answer and no one was especially concerned about a few dispossessed Arabs as long as the Jews kept to their place. Yeah, right...

Yes, a group of people who had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust ended up paying the price for the persecution of the Jews.

I remember as a child and teenager being very supportive of Israel because the predominant version in the media was that Palestine had been almost devoid of people, save for a few nomads who were not concerned with owning, cultivating or building on the land. It wasn't till I became more interested in current affairs and read more widely that I realised this was a completely false narrative that had been peddled to make the seizure of land and the setting up of a new state more palatable.

Oh indeed..there has been a huge and managed longstanding campaign to undermine and wipe out the cultural, economic and social history of the Palestinian people. If you mediate that there were only a few uneducated Bedouin who occasionally wandered through the land and did not care for it anyway you can justify using the land and usurping it more easily. Of course the reality was very different but the horror of the Holocaust was so great that the Western world was pleased to have a guilt solving situation.

Uganda was one of the options looked at for a Jewish state before Palestine was finally decided upon. Just shows you how colonial countries have helped to contribute to so much current instability in the world.

Eloethan I completely agree with what you said here:
"Yes, a group of people who had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust ended up paying the price for the persecution of the Jews."

The horrible thing is, the Palestinian spiritual leader at the time, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, had spent much of the war years in Germany with the Nazis, urging them to kill more Jews.

Thus the whole Israel/Palestine issue was doomed from the start. The Palestinians were led by a Jew hater, and then given every reason to hate the Jewish invaders. The Jewish settlers, of course, contained a lot of holocaust survivors who had been brutalised, traumatised, and had ended up severely damaged, and fiercely determined to regain their homeland at all costs.

It would take the wisdom of Solomon to sort it all out: after all, he was part of the religious history of both peoples.