Rather worryingly, whether we are informed or not, and I am sure there will be no advance warnings, this fight may come to us
I will leave reading the Long War Journal until tomorrow.
Yes I have family in Israel, and friends from Palestine.
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But if you were on a dessert island and could only choose two⌠
(BTW Iâd add the Economist to your list)
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Double jeopardy. I hope they all emerge from this horrible situation safe and sound.
An interesting article from an Israeli lawmaker:
Iâd probably just eat cake 
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I found todayâs This Morning podcast interesting as good to be reminded of the background from Balfour onwards. What was so sad is that it reminds one of the number of times this could have been resolved, or at least calmed. Two links depending on what you use to podcast.
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Excellent podcast Jane. Should be compulsory listening for von der Leyen, all EU premiers, Biden and Sunak.
Thank you, Jane for the links.
History helps to explain how we got to where we are but unfortunately will not provide a clear path on how to move onwards. The tallest ask in the world is to ask someone to forgive, let alone forget.
Isreal need to find it in themselves, as overwhelming as collective grief now is, to forgive the atrocities committed against them two weeks ago.
Palestinians must find their way to forgiving Isreal for having taken what they feel to have been their land and home, as well as the long list of offences perpetrated upon them by Israelis.
The dead cannot be brought back and sending more death to join them cannot be intended the fate of the human race.
The late and very wise Nelson Mandela, in a 1995 speech said
*âReconciliation does not mean forgetting or trying to bury the pain of conflict, but that reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.â
If both the peoples of Isreal and former Palestine could sit down together and work out a fair partition of land for the clear delineation of declared separate countries of Isreal and Palestine it would be reconciliation, and the key to opening the door to the future. Hammering out the provision of water and energy to the new country of Palestine by Isreal would be seen and supported throughout the Arab world.
Over time, borders crossed by trade and workers would naturally narrow the cultural gap and peoples of different heritage and religions, with the same God, come to call one another friends.
Indeed 
@Susannah
Roy Plomley must be turning in his grave.
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Iles flottantes ?
We still need humour in this sort of desperate situation. Israel isnât going to be able to eliminate Hamas any time soon, but when their emergency coalition ends we might see the downfall of Netanyahu and that in turn might be the beginning of something that might in time lead to some sort of rapprochement.
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Well I read what in my day was called Oriental Studies specialising in Arabic and Persian at my provincial UK University, it is now called Middle Eastern Studies.
For the benefit of those unable to read NYT coverage but who might like to include its coverage in their perspective.
By Michelle Goldberg
Watching from afar as people race toward an abyss, I find it hard to know what to write except âno,â over and over. In the face of massacres that for Jews around the world brought back memories of genocide, the language of some Israeli leaders has, in turn, become murderous. On the cusp of a likely ground invasion of Gaza, many people Iâve spoken to, Jewish and Palestinian alike, are terrified that this rhetoric will become reality.
Isaac Herzog, Israelâs president, said that the âentire nationâ of Gaza was âresponsibleâ for the attacks at a news conference on Friday, telling reporters, âIt is not true, this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.â Herzog later clarified that civilians are not legitimate targets, but his words, coming from a member of Israelâs center-left Labor Party, were still chilling, suggesting a broad political consensus that Gazans are collectively to blame for the horror that befell Israel. âAll gloves are off,â Ron Prosor, a distinguished Israeli diplomat, told Politico.
In such an environment, the ruling Israeli right, some of whose members spoke of forcing Palestinians out of Israel even before Hamasâs latest rampage, has little to restrain it. Tally Gotliv, a member of the Knesset from Benjamin Netanyahuâs Likud party, urged the use of âdoomsday weaponsâ on Gaza. Another member of Likud called for a second nakba, the Arabic word referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians at Israelâs creation in 1948.
I can empathize with liberal Jews both in Israel and throughout the diaspora who feel too overwhelmed, at this moment of great fear and vulnerability, to protest the escalating suffering inflicted on Palestinians. It is not fair that events are moving too quickly to give people time to grieve the victimization of their own community before being asked to try to prevent the victimization of others. Nevertheless, as atrocities are piled on atrocities, I hope Jews will attend to what is being threatened in our name. And all Americans should pay attention, given how much our country underwrites Israelâs military.
In Gaza, mass death has already begun. Last week the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, announced that Israel was cutting off Gazaâs water, electricity, food and fuel. There was hopeful reporting over the weekend that at the urging of President Bidenâs administration, water to a town in Gazaâs south had been turned back on, but for many, drinking water is still unavailable. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that clean water has run out in U.N. shelters across Gaza. On Saturday, UNICEF reportedthat, according to local sources, more than 700 children in Gaza had been killed. The number by now is surely higher.
Some readers, I suspect, will respond that while this is all terrible, it is also all Hamasâs fault. In many ways, I agree. Hamasâs terror is clearly the immediate cause of the hell raining down on Gaza; most countries attacked as Israel was attacked would respond with war. That does not, however, license Israeli indifference, or worse, to the lives of civilians. Israelis have a right to their rage; I imagine that if I were Israeli, I would share it. But incitement against Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom have nothing to do with Hamas terrorism, is leading us toward somewhere even darker than where we are right now.
Influential voices in America are intensifying the bloodthirsty atmosphere. Appearing on âFox News Sunday,â the Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas dismissed worries that mass civilian casualties in Gaza will work to Hamasâs advantage on the world stage. âAs far as Iâm concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza,â he said. That phrase, âbounce the rubble,â is a reference to a Winston Churchill quote about apocalyptic military overkill. To Cottonâs right, the language is even more incendiary. âIf it comes down to ethnic cleansing â you want to cleanse my people, Iâll cleanse yours first,â said Joel Pollak, a senior editor at large at Breitbart News, on the webcast of the leading young conservative Charlie Kirk.
We can already see where the total dehumanization of Palestinians leads. This weekend, a 6-year-old boy in Illinois was allegedly stabbed to death by his landlord, who is also accused of gravely injuring the boyâs mother. According to the local sheriffâs office, the victims were targeted âdue to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.â
If this is the atmosphere in parts of the United States, it is exponentially more fevered in Israel. On Monday morning I spoke to Diana Buttu, a Canadian Palestinian lawyer in Haifa who once served as a legal adviser for the Palestine Liberation Organization. âI can understand what my grandmother felt in 1948 when she fledâ from a town near Nazareth, Buttu said. âBecause itâs a climate of total fear that youâre next. And this isnât just in the Gaza Strip; itâs also spread to the West Bank.â Already, according to Al Jazeera, at least 55 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed, some by soldiers and others by settlers. Haaretz reported that five Palestinians were shot dead by settlers in the village of Qusra. A message to the village on WhatsApp said, âWe have no red lines. Weâll punish you in order to make an example out of you.â
Buttu sent me a link to a mostly Hebrew-language Telegram group with over 82,000 subscribers in which people had posted celebratory photographs of dead and injured Palestinians. âThe people of Gaza are not innocent!â said an introductory message for English speakers. If and when those who believe this act on it, we canât pretend we werenât warned.
[Michelle Goldberg is the author of several books about politics, religion and womenâs rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.]
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I know it is naughty to copy and paste news articles copy write-wise. Like paying for one newspaper and sharing it with friends. But I am telling myself that at this critical time it cannot be morally wrong to help keep friends informed. Anyone who would rather not read is free not to.
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Thanks for sharing.
Hereâs one from a Bosnian living in Germany
So sad.
The truth is, there is no such thing as peace after an ethnic cleansing.
I find it hope crushing that humans again and again categorise themselves into opposing groups and then set about denigrating and eliminating the other group. Perhaps that is what happened with the Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens et al. You would think that increased intellect and reasoning would have givhumans more control over their emotions. Perhaps not enough.
These despairing words of Lana BastaĹĄiÄ stay with me
Living in Germany, I see it as my human responsibility to call it out for its one-sidedness, its hypocrisy and its acquiesence in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Walking by Lucieâs stone every day, I am reminded of that responsibility. I am reminded of what silence can do and how long it can haunt a place and a people. I come from a silent place soaked in blood. I never thought I would feel that same silence in Germany.
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Meanwhile, Isreal is creating a large scale human catastrophe and the world appears to be letting it
The rage and misplaced revenge Isreal is currently inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza, and some in the West Bank in the name of eliminating Hamas, is doing impossible damage to the already faint hope of peace.
I really cannot understand how this is being allowed to continue on imprisoned and vulnerable people.
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Without stating the obvious, I think the Hamas attack and atrocity was so shocking that there wouldnât be any other outcome, so Iâm surprised that some are surprised. Did Hamas really expect Israel to sit back after that and do nothing? And as for many other countries, I can imagine that they empathize and also would not want to tolerate such an attack on their home soil. It is extremely sad that human beings can do this to each other, but clearly, nobody wants to step down from their position to broker some form of peace deal. Ridiculous, but reality. But I guess that also refers to politics generally.
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I find Israelâs comments calling for the resignation of the UN Secretary General just shows their attitude, we can take land from other peoples and should not be criticised for it.
The UN has declared our policy illegal, so what.
We can be as extreme as we like because we are a democratic country, but for how long if the change to the power of the Supreme Court is decreased.
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And in my opinion Antonio Guterres is right on the button with his comments, he condemned the Hamas attack while at the same time correctly attributing its origins but also saying that, bad as it was, it was a crime to use it as an excuse to inflict worse on the innocent and helpless people of Gaza.
While we are talking about thoroughly moral men, how about Josh Paul, a State Departement official in Washington who has resigned his job in protest at the US governmentâs one sided support for Israel? His interview on Channel 4 yesterday was a shining example of morality over self interest.
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