Ending the Genocide in Gaza: Peace Justice Food Medicine. Return of Land

 

It has been nearly two years since I wrote my last blog on this website.

It has always been fairly definite that my next blog was going to be about the situation between Israel and Palestine.

The situation over the last two years has been shocking, desperate, savage, and depressing for people all over the world, but no more so than for the Palestinians.

On many occasions over the last two years, I have mulled various thoughts, issues, insights and discoveries. Something has prevented me from publishing a blog; in fact, many things: will anyone read it? Is there any point writing my thoughts when I am not a big mainstream reporter? What will happen next?  How can I write it in a way that aims to understand issues and relate them for different readers or viewpoints? Will my writing be censored? Like many other humans, I can also be lazy and a great procrastinator!

As I begin this blog, I’m unsure how long it will be. Given that it is my first blog in two years, I am going to give myself permission to make it as long as I want!

So, let’s get to it!

Before I get into the current issues of the last two years, I am going to give some background into my own knowledge and experiences as they relate to all things to do with Israel /Palestine.

I grew up in New Zealand (Aotearoa) in the 1960s and 1970s. My father and uncles had all fought in World War II in one capacity or another. I learnt many stories from both of my parents about the war and how it had affected them and the world. Living in a fairly small town in New Zealand, I was mostly around other white New Zealanders. At school, some of my classmates were Māori and Pacific Islander. As far as I knew, there were no people around me who were Jewish or Arab. Our family went to the local Anglican church and my mother in particular walked the talk of being kind to others and supporting charities such as Red Cross and Save the Children Fund. My mother was often collecting door to door for these charities, and had a strong belief as a Christian to show compassion and help others.

My parents had no problem with me watching the TV series ‘The World at War’, a very confronting documentary series from Britain that was released in the early 1970s. As a child, the scenes of the war and the Holocaust in particular, were shocking to see. This series opened my eyes to the tragedies that the war had brought to so many people, but especially Jewish people. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, it was at high school when I heard a joke being made about Jews. I had been raised to show kindness and compassion for others, and I remember my main reaction to the joke being how strange that despite the Holocaust, people were still making jokes against Jews.

In my family, there were many issues and events that gave me a feeling of association with Jewish people. Growing up in a small town in New Zealand, where as far as I knew there were no Jewish people, I only had what I read and saw in the media, and what I heard from others, that defined my thoughts of what it meant to be Jewish. I remember seeing the play ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ with my mother and brother. From that play, I understood that Jewish experience for many included suffering and struggling with economic hardship and being on the move against persecution. There was an idea that misery and suffering and danger were all part of the Jewish experience. In my family, my father suffered from depression. My dad had his own business as a shoe repairer, and struggled financially. My dad had an olivey complexion. All these factors combined to make me think that maybe our family was Jewish. This continued to be a topic I wondered about until I got my ancestry DNA completed about 10 years ago and discovered that Iberian genes are connected to the Scots & Irish, thus explaining his skin type.

As a child, I suffered from phobias and anxiety, thus connecting me more to this stereotype of what it meant to be Jewish.

The 1970s also saw various terrorist events which I became aware of as a child. The media of the time was mostly sympathetic to Israel, and I don’t think that I really understood the Palestinian issue until I was at university.

In 1972 when I was near the end of primary school, the Olympic games were held in Munich, and our class studied and followed the games with interest. When the massacre happened against the Israeli athletes by the PLO, I don’t recall having much understanding if any, about why the terrorists had targeted the Israelis. All I seem to recall is the connection of how despite the tragedy of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, here we were again with more Jewish people being killed in Germany. I remember the day I walked down to the letterbox to get the evening newspaper, and that was when I learnt of the killings in Munich. The front page of the newspaper had a heading (of the event) larger than any I had seen before. I remember feeling deep sorrow for Israel and the tragedy as it was for them. There was no discussion of why people had killed others. There was no discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict, or at least at a level that I could understand as a 10-year-old.

This helps to give some understanding of how myself and millions of others, particularly Westerners, looked at the issue with strong support for Israel, in many ways amplified by an ongoing empathy for Jewish people because people were shocked so greatly by what had happened to Jews in Europe under the Nazis.

It was when I was at university, that I started to become more aware of the situation of the Palestinians. I was very involved in student politics campaigning around issues including anti-apartheid, anti-racism, anti-nuclear, and other national & international issues. Many students showed support for the Palestine struggle, and I began to develop some understanding and sympathy of their situation. I remember one of the other students I was at university with was Jewish and was strongly committed to supporting Israel.

In 1985, I had figured out I was gay and became involved in law reform in New Zealand, organising marches and other activities in support of lesbian and gay rights. Around this time, I became aware of the pink triangle and how it had been used in the Nazi concentration camps to identify gay prisoners. For me as a gay person, the connection to Jewish people was strengthened again.

Later in 1985, I made the move to Australia, having finished university, looking for new opportunities and experiences. Being in Sydney, I began to notice areas around Bondi where there were Jewish people dressed in clothing that identified them. For me, I felt a strong interest to build connections. During this time, I was also a member of a counselling group, where people swapped time to talk about their issues. Many of the people I counselled with were Jewish, which gave me an opportunity to learn more about their issues and challenges. One of the people I counselled with, told me how important it was for her as a Jewish person, to always hear the truth. She believed that one of the challenges for Jewish people is the pretence that all is well, while problems are developing. I developed friendships with a number of these people who I counselled with. I found that most Jewish people I met, had progressive views on most issues like myself. My own perspective on the Palestine Israel situation remained vague. I still had a continued support for Israel, having been raised to see Israel as a safety /protection arrangement to protect Jewish people. In 1990, I travelled to Hong Kong and the US, and while in New York was taken on a great tour around the city by one of these friends. It was great to see places and spaces with so much Jewish presence. From stores with dozens of bagels to choose from and a jewellery area where all the workers were Hasidic; it was a great experience for me. I also got to meet Richard Plant who had written ‘The Pink Triangle’. He was a Jewish German gay refugee who came to New York in 1938. For me, as a progressive person, the links between gay people, Jewish people and the rights of other minorities was very clear. At University I had also studied sociology and political science, and read works by socialists such as Marx and Trotsky who were both Jewish. I had high regard for many Jewish writers and thinkers. One of my favourite books simply because of its name and author was called ‘Capitalist Patriarchy and the case for Socialist Feminism’ written by Zillah Eisenstein. For me there was an attraction to all things Jewish.

Also In 1990, I decided to start a group within the Sydney gay community called Jews and Friends (Yehudim V’Chaverim). It began with a couple of people joining me for a meeting. Over the next 3 years numbers grew rapidly, and at some meetings we had 30 or 40 people. There were many lesbians at one point, but they mostly decided to create their own group. Most of the group was Jewish, but the group was open to all gay people, no matter what their background was. We had some wonderful meetings, and I enjoyed meeting lots of different people. Kitty Fisher was the only member of the group who was not gay, but we accepted her as a special member. At this time, many gay people were keeping their story secret from their families, so there was some caution about being in the group. Kitty was a survivor of Auschwitz and part of her survival was due to potatoes being passed through a fence from a gay Aryan prisoner. Kitty who was then about 14 asked the Aryan prisoner about the pink triangle he wore and when he explained it meant he was homosexual, Kitty asked if it was a religion! Kitty passed away in 2000 a few months after the Pink Triangle Memorial in Sydney was opened, where she told her story. Based on her experience of being helped by a gay prisoner, she did much work in the gay community during the AIDS crisis and built tolerance within Sydney’s Jewish community for its gay members.

I watched the news throughout the 1990s wishing for a breakthrough between Israel and Palestine. When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, I reconnected with a good Jewish friend. It seemed at this time that such hope that had not been seen in a long time, was once again vanquished. Following on from Rabin, Israeli leadership began a downward spiral which it has never recovered from. My viewpoint continued to support the existence of Israel while wanting to see a resolution and return of Palestinian land. In a way though, my commitment to wanting to continue to support Israel, meant that I did not read or focus very much on the details. I had begun to understand that much of the violence being done by Palestinians was in response to repression, land grabs and violence by Israel. But somehow my commitment to wanting to support Jewish people, made me feel awkward about criticising Israel.

Times have changed!

Over the last 10 or 20 years it has become increasingly obvious how much conflict is occurring by the actions of Israel, not just Hamas.

I was staying in Morocco in 2023 when the Hamas attack occurred on October 7. I remember talking with a friend in Morocco at the time, and he was jubilant about the actions against Israel. I remember saying to him that this was going to be a big problem for Palestinians. How right I was.

There are so many new insights that have occurred over the last two years. Divisions within families and societies and countries are big. A lot of the divisions have come from biased media and misinformation. Every time we hear of starvation and killings by Israel, Israel and the media that it controls, lays claim that this is Hamas propaganda.

One of the biggest insights for me has been realising how many people have such limited information and knowledge about the situation between Palestinians and Israelis. There is also so much disinformation and misinformation spouted by different groups and people to justify their position. There have been people saying that there are bad people in every group and that each side has done bad things. But to be fair, this kind of argument does not explain the situation very well. About 1200 Israelis and others died on October 7^th, about how many Palestinians have died since then? At least 60,000 but some academics estimate it could be as high as 600,000. Even Israel acknowledged a few months ago, that over 200,000 Palestinians were missing. I am assuming missing means dead. That’s not an even arrangement. More children are now disabled from these actions by Israel than at any other time in history.

The reprisal by Israel, has seen support by lots of Westerners particularly Western leaders. The justification by Israel for blowing up a building because supposedly some Hamas terrorists were in the building, and we are expected to be okay about all the other people who died at the same time. This is one of the situations that has caused a big shift against support for Israel. Never before has the idea been so promoted to blame a whole population for the actions of some. Well, maybe not since the holocaust. Back then, the actions of Jewish Wall Street bankers, was used as a reason to regard all Jewish people, even all the thousands of Jewish people living in Shtetls in Poland, as the cause of people’s financial disasters.

The parallels between Israeli leaders and Nazi leaders has been another issue that has turned people away from supporting Israel. Hitler and his gang likened Jews to rodents, while several Israeli leaders have referred to Palestinians as animals. Some Israeli politicians talk of the need to kill all the children as well. No one is to be spared. Israel has illegally denied food, water, medicine, electricity to the entire population of Gaza and this idea has been promoted by Zionists to blame all Palestinians for the actions of Hamas. One of the arguments Israel uses against Palestinians is that over 80% of them have voted for Hamas in the past. This they argue proves that all Palestinians are terrorists and deserve to be killed. I see it more as that for decades Israel has punished, controlled and pushed Palestinians off their land as Israel expands into the West Bank. With so much continued violence by Israel, it cannot be surprising that Palestinians have come to support Hamas.

Interestingly, I recently learned that many countries do not regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but more as a resistance movement. The Palestinians are the indigenous people fighting for the return of their land. Similar to Australia or New Zealand, reparations and return of lands is required by Israel to the Palestinians.

When October 7^th happened, I quickly made contact with a friend on Facebook who is Israeli, because I had a feeling that Israel would go even more rogue in the days that followed. I checked that she was okay, to which she responded that she was part of a tough group and that they would deal with the animals. As Israel’s slaughter has intensified, I felt I no longer wished to be friends with someone who referred to other people as animals.

The interesting thing to me as someone who has studied psychology sociology and political science, is how little has been spoken about the psyche of the Israeli population. And for that matter we could say the same about the Palestinians too. What are their collective viewpoints and beliefs about themselves and others?

Over the last 2 years many people have shifted their views on Israel including many within the Jewish community. From what I can understand in the United States, many Jewish families have a division between younger people supporting the Palestinians and the older generation supporting Israel.

As I learned more about Jewish topics in the 1990s, one of my Jewish friends said to me that one of the big ideas that emerged post-Holocaust for many Jewish people was that there is no God. If we look at Israel today, there is a sense that many Israelis identify as Jewish but are not followers of Judaism, similar to many Westerners who no longer follow Christianity. To a large degree, the laws and morality that we follow originates from the religions. But the distancing for many Westerners from religion is different to the Jewish one I suspect. As my Jewish friend said how could there be a god if the Holocaust could happen? The other idea post-Holocaust for the Jewish community was ‘Never Again’. Innocent or naïve people may interpret that to mean for everyone. But as so often is the case, a group takes care of its own. History has shown that Jewish people have often been the ones taking care of their own, just as many other groups do. We may hope that Israel planned to apply ‘Never Again’ for anyone, but we have seen this is not the case.

Compared to the time of Rabin’s leadership in the early 1990s, Israeli politics has moved far to the right in the last 30 years. Today as mentioned, some Israeli politicians wish to eradicate all Palestinians. The majority of Israelis support the current government, and as is usually the case when there is a conflict, support their soldiers no matter what. As we know the conduct of some of the IDF is comparable to the actions of Nazis during World War II. Filming themselves destroying and blowing up buildings, killing people and sharing this on the internet, shows impunity and a sense of protection from their country.

As someone who has studied abuse and how it can affect people’s lives, it is interesting how little has been discussed about the connection between the Holocaust and the actions of Israel today. A group that came close to being annihilated has been given their own country, and little regard has been given to how the traumatised group would conduct themselves. How the British upper class thought it would be a great idea to give half of Palestinian land to the creation of Israel, is another topic for another blog!

The ‘kill or be killed’ mentality which is similar to ‘dog eat dog’, is something that human history knows a lot about. To give half the land in the Palestine region over to a new Jewish state, was a very questionable plan and many people now see this. In addition, because Britain lost control of the region in 1947 and Israel took control, the situation then emerged where Israel was able to take control over the Palestinians. To put a group of people who had survived a near extermination of their group, in a position of power over another group has disaster awaiting written all over it.

Over the last 2 years, so many ideas have been put forward to justify Israel’s actions and so many of them do not stack up. Up until recently, most of the support for Palestinians was coming from Muslims, progressive Jews and people involved in left wing groups or human rights. Now things are moving to a trickier position for Israel. Especially in the United States. For a long time, Israel through APAIC have had a very strong influence and control over politicians in the two main parties. Throughout the last 2 years, many Democrats have spoken against Israel’s actions. Now we are seeing many in the far-right question Israel as well. Israel has killed so many people, particularly civilians, particularly children. Bombing hospitals. Bombing schools. Bombing apartment blocks. Razing towns and cities. Cities that now look more like Hiroshima. There is a point where people start to question. And many Americans are learning how much money they are giving to a country that does all this bombing of Gaza and neighbouring countries. This is now creating opposition in groups where there is a tendency to disrespect minorities and Jewish people are no exception. Israel has been getting into bed with its enemies. Its biggest supporters in Europe today are the ones in the 1930s who would have supported Nazi parties. It seeks alliances against Islam, because most Muslim people & countries oppose the things they are doing to Palestinians.

The accusations of anti-Semitism on people opposing the actions of Israel, is seen by many now as an outright scam. People have become aware of how many Jewish billionaires who own media and support Israel. These owners are using their networks to promote Israel, silencing opposition on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and justifying the carnage. This is now creating an opposition that has the potential to fuse between Jewish and Israeli. This has always been a danger that I have been aware of. The strong Alliance of major Jewish organisations and their support for Israel has potential for blowback against the Jewish communities when the conduct of Israel is so wanting.

As I have written in a previous blog, there is a historical connection from the Middle Ages between Jews and Money. Jewish people in many countries in Europe were not allowed to own land or do certain jobs. Christians were not allowed to engage in certain economic practices. Over time this has created a group that is often more economically successful with initiative and creativity. In a world of capitalism, where being a billionaire is possible, despite so many people going without, and where 35% the billionaires in the United States are Jewish, but the Jewish population is only 3%, problems and conflicts are waiting to happen, with scapegoating, should there be another depression such as 1929. In the meantime, we see a serious issue of information being manipulated or suppressed on the Israel-Palestine conflict because so many large media corporations are owned by Jewish billionaires who are loyal to Israel.

Arguments by Israel include that the area was theirs 3000 years ago. Or that they were forced out by the Romans. Or that the Palestinians came from Arabia or that there was never such a country as Palestine. These issues have been illuminated for many people as we look into the details on these topics. Yes, there was a large Jewish community up until the Roman sacking of Jerusalem around 70 A.D. it seems that many Jewish people were already living in other places like Rome prior to this event. Many of the Jewish people may have left Jerusalem, but moved to other areas in the region. Over the last 2000 years, many Jewish people stayed in the region and converted to Islam by choice or pressure. Genetic studies show that the Palestinians of today share more DNA in common with the Jews of 2000 years ago in the region. They have not moved in from Arabia. The Jewish population is far more varied. The Ashkenazi DNA does have some Semitic connection, but not as much as the Palestinian. Much of the Ashkenazi DNA is European based. While the region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for so long, this does not change the fact that the people living in the area were Palestinian. They may not have been self-ruling, but this was their homeland. They had houses, they had farms and cities and towns long before the Jewish immigration took off in the 1920s. Around 1920 the population in Jerusalem was about 15% Jewish.

There has been a move internationally by the Israeli lobby and certain members of the Jewish community who should know better to define Semitism as relating to Jews. This negates and confuses the truth that not all Jewish people are really that Semitic or that other groups of people such as the Palestinians are Semitic as well. The idea that anti-Semitism should relate to anti-Jewish and not against other Semitic groups such as Palestinian is extremely unjust and manipulative, masking the truth.

Support for humanity only resides in alliances.

Many people made a decision to support Israel, because they never wanted to see a repeat of what had happened to Jews in the Holocaust. Many people feel that Israel has abused and taken advantage of that trust.

Israel is a tough country. A group of people who came close to being annihilated. A nation that switched roles from being victim to being tough. A group that has experienced hardship and is determined to never be victimised again. A group that struggles with the truth that they are colonisers, because the media in Israel sells the lie that the land belongs to them and always has been theirs. Many an Israeli has left Israel because they could not stand the arguing and fighting. The country of people who when travelling as tourists, are increasingly turned away, not because of what they have done to the Palestinians, but because of their rudeness and arrogance and entitlement. 30 years ago, I heard a story of Israelis pretending to be Italian in Nepal because Sherpas would not work for them because of their rudeness and disrespect.

When we see how settlers treat Palestinians in the West Bank, even today, we see a group that were once victimised who have now turned into Victimisers, from abused to abusers. This has to end.

But a group that has a recent history of terror and a fear of it repeating, is highly unlikely to trust or put down the sword. As I have said on many occasions, not from spite, but from logic, Israel is not a country that can be changed through moralism. Israel will either make a deal because it sees a gain in it for itself or Israel if boycotted sufficiently, will realise it has no choice but to negotiate. At the moment with Trump in power, we are in the making a deal phase. Maybe some good can come from this. But maybe not much. How can we get back so much of the Palestinian land in the West Bank that has been stolen by settlers? I suspect that could only occur if boycotts, divestment and sanctions were significant enough and enforced by enough countries to give them no choice but to negotiate.

If you made it all the way through my blog, I thank you for your attention.