What happens when the lights go out? #Gaza

The genocidal reign of Israeli fire continues in Gaza with the death toll currently standing at over 1800 Palestinians, the majority civilian and at least a third being children. The world sits by and watches disgraced but largely inactive with the exception of those marching in major cities around the world as people in Gaza list the names of the dead children on a wall.

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Following the news of another UN school being bombed in the past 24 hours, another dozen or so killed and many more injured, weeks of inaction and a refusal to condemn Israel – as though our governments were watching a natural disaster unfold in front of their eyes – there has finally been the faintest signs of movement from the UK government as they seek to review the £8bn arms deals they have in selling weapons to Israel, weapons that are now being used to kill civilians and children in the streets of Gaza beyond the ‘buffer’ zone. Perhaps someone in the upper echelons of our government had their Richard Feynman moment, watching their weapons of mass destruction wipeout an entire population and decided to call for a formal review of our arms policy.

The people largely at fault for the destabilisation of the Middle East are successive UK and US governments with their foreign policies in the pursuit of resources and in the case of Palestine/Israel for giving away something that was not theirs to give in the first place when they created the state of Israel. Our governments are guilty of showing contempt for life in Gaza with their inaction, they are as complicit in the murder of children in much the same way that the mainstream media would have us believe that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the rocket allegedly used by the Ukrainian rebels to shoot down flight MH-17.


Across the water in the United States the blame for this aggression is a simple argument, it is the fault of Hamas, a terrorist organisation – not a government (as though this would somehow legitimise slaying children in schools and hospitals!) and Israel has the right to defend itself. Hamas have killed 60 odd people, the majority armed forces personnel, but it is Israel who are given $3bn a year in aid from the US, supplied arms by the UK and US, who hold the Gazans in an open air prison that is not that far removed from a concentration camp; it is Israel who are targeting UN schools and hospitals, indiscriminately bombing residential areas killing almost 2000 people in the process. This is nearly as many as were killed in 9/11 yet in the UK those trying to send aid to Gaza are having their bank accounts closed claiming that they fall outside their ‘risk profile’. HSBC are happy to launder money for Mexican drug cartels but not process accounts to help people being subject to extermination, you could not make it up.

The fight that Hamas is trying to put up is not all that different from the battles of the ANC in apartheid South Africa, a place where Nelson Mandela and the ANC were at one time viewed as terrorists, terrorist leaders that our leaders of today once wanted hung…in 2013 Nelson Mandela died a hero. The same might be said for Hamas in years to come, but the mainstream media is trying hard to convince us it is terrorism that they are engaged in, commentators such as Sean Hannity from FOX NEWS this past week a perfect example or as John Pilger put it on Russia Today, they are trying to create “worthy and unworthy victims“, no prizes for guessing which side the people of Gaza fall on in this case. Israel is losing the propaganda battle and now the IDF are blocking radio broadcasts, targeting media outlets and power stations – why? Because how else will they continue to get away with genocide if people continue to tweet and stream live images of dead children and obliterated schools into the palms of our hands?

We are living in a moment of history, we all play our part in what happens next – what we do will shape and define it, if we do nothing then the future will be written for us by the warmongers and aggressors wearing suits in public office and their financiers from the military industrial complex in the shadows in its corridors. What will it be?