I try to keep politics to Twitter, but felt the need to say something on Palestine/Israel, in case there’s still any fence sitters reading this.
For anyone out of the loop, there’s an ongoing genocide in Gaza being done by Israel, in response to a major terrorist attack on October 7th in which 1,000 Israeli civilians and tourists were killed. So far, nearly 20,000 have been killed in Gaza, the majority of which are women and children, and almost all civilians. Infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed – hospitals, universities, utilities – so around two million people are displaced without food, water or medical care for over 2 months now.
There’s a lot of history and details there that I’m not qualified to talk about (this has been ongoing for 75 years, after the UK apparently promised the land to both sides), but this scale of devastation hasn’t been seen in decades. The important thing to note is that Israel holds 90% of the power in this conflict (as you may be able to tell by the death counts) and is fully supported by the USA, with the UK government also being supportive. With that advantage, most of what they’ve accomplished has been to kill and displace civilians and take land, instead of any “self defense” goals.
I feel the need to speak up since the UK government (and the opposition party too) are complicit in this.
In my opinion, the invasion of Iraq was the worst thing the UK government has done in my lifetime, and this feels like a similarly awful foreign policy blunder. I’ve been attending ceasefire marches to absolve me of my shitty government’s actions, for whatever that’s worth. I also chipped in £500 to Medical Aid for Palestinians and £500 to Doctors Without Borders.
Humanitarian organizations are saying that their medical staff are being targeted by Israeli forces, so I respect any work they manage to do in these circumstances.
Anyway, this all sucks, and I would like to see a ceasefire and negotiations for long term solutions.
