Have all our brains been scrambled? Do we now pass by the helpless on the side of the road and turn our head the other way? How much more chutspah and inhumanity must issue from Israel before we say “Enough! This stops NOW!”?

Listen to this, for example: “Israeli’s defence minister says large-scale Palestinian migration from Gaza will go ahead”. That’s the headline. It goes on: ‘Israel’s defence minister has said he is committed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through large-scale migration of Palestinians as part of Israel’s long-term plans for the territory.’

The only insult you can’t throw at Israel is hypocrisy.

On 14 May 1948, Israel declared independence. Soon after, neighbouring Arab states invaded, beginning the first Arab-Israeli war. During the conflict, around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in what Palestinians call the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.” Many villages were destroyed, and displaced Palestinians became refugees in places such as Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

Israel viewed its creation as the establishment of a homeland for Jewish people after centuries of persecution, including the Holocaust. Palestinians, however, experienced the events as a loss of land, homes, and national identity. The consequences of 1948 continue to shape the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict today.

So having dispossessed Palestinians and created the state of Israel on Palestinian soil, Israel went on to keep the Palestinian people in a cramped, appallingly primitive statee – effectively an open-aiir prison on a vast scale. Maybe think of that the next time you’re condemning Hamas’s excursion into Israel and the slaughter of Israeli citizens. 

But now Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has declared that all Palestinians must leave Gaza, and Israel will decide on how the place they destroyed might be tarted up a bit.

Some day, our grandchildren may ask why we allowed something so arrogant and contemptuous of human life was allowed to happen. On the other hand, our moral compass by then may have been smashed to smithereens by Israel’s cruel hammer,

Let me say it: even if six million Jews were exterminated during World War Two, it means nothing if Israel thinks it gives them the right to treat Palestinians worse than the. most hideous dictator. If we showed half the indignation about what Israel is doing as we’ve shown about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel would be taught a lesson that. war crimes have consequences.

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