I really did not, and still do not, want to turn my blog into a political arena, passing views and opinions on various issues that I may or may not care to think about and in the process, invite lunatics and trolls to express their perverse views on my blog.  I set up the blog to express views and opinions on life, work and travel experiences with a desire to have a limited readership of friends and associates but not much more.

However, there is something going on at the moment that I simply cannot ignore.  It is not a simple case of ‘an elephant in the room’, rather, it is a ‘herd of elephants’ that I feel would be remiss of me not to comment on.  Clearly, nothing will change as a result of this post.  I am not an influencer with thousands to followers, nor do I have the name recognition enjoyed by celebrities and international stars such as artists and sports people.

It concerns the city I was born in and what is being done to it so blatantly and violently.  While the world is quite rightly pre-occupied dealing with more pressing problems such as the COVID Pandemic, the national economy, or the environment issues facing the entire world, Israel has laudably brought the pandemic under control and then returned to its old tricks of cleansing the region under its control from all traces of Palestinian presence.  This latest violation of Palestinians rights is different from other areas.  What we are talking about is pockets or enclaves of certain parts of Jerusalem that are predominantly owned or populated by Palestinians such as Sheikh Jarrah.  Way back in 1967 when Israel fought and won the Six Day War, mainly against its then arch enemy Egypt, one of the very first things they declared was the unification of West and East Jerusalem as a single indivisible entity.  In practice, this meant that all citizens of the conquered Jerusalem (mainly the East Side) were immediately integrated in to the Israeli system.  In contrast, all those who lived in any other part of Palestine, newly acquired as a spoil of war such as Gaza and the West Bank of the River Jordan, were considered as ‘occupied subjects’ who were put under military rule for years and decades thereafter.  This remains largely the case to this day. This is why for example, my relatives who live in Jerusalem were given the vaccine like all other Israeli citizens but not the relatives who live in the other, Israeli occupied parts of Palestine, who Israel claim should be the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority.  Strange as it may seem, but I actually understood the logic of their argument, even though the decision is cruel, short sighted, counter-productive.

But what is being done in Jerusalem now is that the Israeli authorities allowing (encouraging even), one section of society to usurp the assets of another section of the same society, on the basis of their religion, culture or the football team they support!  Can you imagine a similar situation happening in the UK where the authorities encourage Londoners to go to Wales and occupy properties owned by the Welsh and severely punishing the Welsh for resisting such an orchestrated grand larceny?  Or the US Government watching New Yorkers travelling to Pennsylvania to forcibly evict Amish communities from homes and lands they built and tended since the early 18th Century, because the Amish live a lifestyle that they don’t like and the land they own can be put into better use.  It is just unimaginable in the West and yet, the World is always ready to compliment Israel on being a true democracy.  I don’t really like labeling people and societies with pejorative words such as ‘racist’ or ‘apartheid’ because it is lazy thinking and it does nothing other than inflame emotions further.  After all, there are many, many fair-minded Israeli citizens and Jews who do not live in Israel who do not agree with what is being done in Jerusalem right now.

Going back to the elephants in the room.  It is bad enough to have one elephant that needs to be dealt with instead of ignored because it is easier to do nothing rather than to have the courage to say ‘this is wrong and we need to do something’.  This particular room is absolutely full of elephants and it is left to ‘social media’ to alert the world to the atrocities that are taking place in full view of all nations to witness and then ignore because it is easier to do nothing.  Israel is not doing this on its own.  The so-called brotherly Arab states have one by one been emasculated over the years through financial inducements, access to Western arms to keep the rulers in power, phony peace treaties and so on.  The irony in our current light is the fact that those friendly Arab states who waged a badly conceived war in 1967, ended up with the loss of the remaining parts of Palestine that enjoyed independence under a coalition of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  They then fought The Yum Kippur War in 1973 but this time they were slightly better prepared and managed to negotiate the return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt but little else.  Now, even the rhetoric is no longer there; they just slither away whistling to themselves and find something else to pre-occupy them.

Then you have the Palestinian leadership, which has the unique talent of being effective at forcing their own citizens to do what they order them to and have absolutely no teeth to resist wrong doing by Israel at this grand scale.  We cannot even have a single entity to run the affairs of the scattered society of Palestinians, we have two, one in Ramallah and one in Gaza.  They don’t seem to find it in their hearts to get together and unite under the one system to serve their citizens more effectively.  What hope is there for the ordinary people when their leadership is, for all practical purposes, is non-existent?

As for the West which holds itself as the paragon of fairness, justice, and democracy by occupying a large section of the ‘high moral ground’, conveniently forgetting that they created the situation in the Middle East to begin with and are still nursing a badly bruised conscience for allowing the nastiest regime to ever exist, to commit the worst ever human act of the holocaust. Their best efforts are to throw money at problems; most of that money gets grabbed by the strongest and least deserving.   When things get really bad, their response is to issue press releases churning out the tired old phrase ‘we urge all sides to exercise restraint’, always remembering the other tired phrase of ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’.  This is a dereliction of duty the likes of which can only be imagined in bad comedies!

Where are the wise men and women of this world, to have the courage to say ‘enough is enough’ and make a concerted effort to resolve this matter and call out those who are truly guilty to answer for their evil deeds?  Many of us should hang our heads in shame.  Israel for so blatantly disregard the rights of Palestinians; the Palestinian leadership for making more effort to secure their personal longevity at the expense of the ordinary people; the Western countries for honing their moral lecturing skills instead of doing anything actually useful; Arab neighbours who use Palestine as a rallying call and insist on acting as our incompetent lawyers where every time we appear in court, they contrive to lose a bit more of our dwindling rights.