Israelis and Jews worldwide celebrated Hanukkah a festival to remember the liberation of the Temple in Jerusalem. This festival is celebrated by lighting candles in homes and synagogues right across Israel. A Jewish homeland was created when the world saw the horrors of the Holocaust, a Jewish homeland that my father often spoke about and we as a family supported. The creation of this new Jewish homeland was flawed in that some 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their home never to return. As in the case of the Holocaust where allies stood by and ignored pleas to intervene and destroy the death camps, the world stood by and allowed the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homes. Again, as a direct consequence of what I call Post Holocaust Guilt, the Western world particularly Germany, the US and the UK have stood by and done nothing, allowing the current Israeli Government and the IDF to engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing which has seen 30,000 women and children killed. Safe places have been redefined as just somewhere you go for a short time later to be killed, using food and water as a weapon of war, collateral damage is a euphemism for the word vermin and destroying schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure creating a lunar landscape as the first phase of creating a greater Israel What is happening in Gaza is akin to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo. However, unlike Gaza, in 1999 the West after failing to persuade Serbia’s President Milosevic to stop his murderous campaign, stepped in to stop the mass murder of Kosovan Albanians. In the case of Gaza, the West continues to supply arms to support Netanyahu’s murderous campaign.
I am led to believe that 70% of the Israeli electorate want to see the end of this so-called war yet have not used their political and democratic might to force Netanyahu’s corrupt and his far-right messianic thugs out of government. I fear that people who have suffered so much have failed to show empathy for the tens of thousands of women and children who have been and continue to be systematically killed by their armed forces, in the name of a greater Israel. I am afraid to say that if LIGHT is a euphemism for “Never Again” that light is barely flickering in the Israeli nation.
Palestinians must speak with a single voice and unite around a democratic system, otherwise, Israel will continue the great British imperialist strategy of, divide and rule but in Israel’s case it will be “divide and expand”. Not to sound like a broken record, but if Israel wants security, peace, good relations with its neighbours and prosperity there is only one answer, self-determination for Palestinians. If the Israeli electorate cannot get behind a Prime Minister who understands this simple choice, then like Christian Zionists you are “Praying for Armageddon.”
Finally, it will be even more ironic if Netanyahu who is currently the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and who has the blood of 30,000 Palestinian women and children on his hands is allowed to attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland. Poland is a signatory to the ICC and is obliged to arrest Netanyahu if he attends the event. Breaking news! Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk shows no teeth let alone balls, to uphold international human rights law, as Polish authorities vow to shield Netanyahu from arrest.
Suneil Sharma
9th January 2025
The Gob 
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