The Gaza maelstrom

 

Subject: The Gaza maelstrom.


Each day, each hour the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza gets worse. The response to the Hamas raid on the party goers and the neighbouring homes of Jewish settlers on Oct 7th killing and taking many of them captive shocked the world as has the bloody response of the Israeli army.
The bombing of closely knit buildings with the inevitable loss of life saw the focus of Isreal’s attack  switched to hospitals, normally a refuge but with collateral damage to the hospital and dwindling medical care offered because of medical stocks running out and electricity also cut off due to a lack of fuel to run the generators, patients are dying needlessly. The sight of new born babies brought together onto one cot to gain what body heat each child emits because there was no power to run the incubators, doctors forced to attempt to repair broken bodies without anaesthetic forlornly try to do their best as they move from patient to patient in a scene plucked from Dante's inferno.
And whilst this goes on the chattering crowd here are up in arms because the BBC refused to call Hamas terrorists and any lapse in the popularist version of events gets rubbished, especially by the Jewish community who these days seem to make up a large part of the media/journalist fraternity.
Arab countries have a very different view of what's going on of course.  Their dislike, even their hatred of Israel goes back many years and includes wars which Israel fought against them in an effort to survive.
Given the history and the diversity of opinion, especially the reporting of the war and its consequences are seen by many through the lens of their own bias. There is a new breed of television output,  basically the right wing represented by what sometimes seems outrageous bigots but never the less representative of many people over here who like me fear the impact of full blown multiculturalism. I think the roots of cultural diversity are not understood in terms of a cultural mix which is more economic than the natural assimilation of people drifting together from a nearby geographically located country and where history has over time assuaged the differences. We, as an island race were cocooned from other societies until after the Second World War when with a decimated male workforce and a feeling of guilt for the fallen soldiers of those countries representing our decaying empire who had rallied to our aid, we began the process of mass immigration which ultimately transformed many of our cities into replicas of the east but without the sunshine.
The large marches of support for Palestine particularly in London attracted thousands of people from this relatively recently formed diaspora and is an indication that loyalty is now not a preserve of the island race which Churchill presided over but one which might, given the circumstances be anti to many of our national persuasions.
Immigration has made the French wary of street demonstrations as it has in many European countries and the continent struggles to find its identity amongst so many conflicting voices which affect its unity.
As ideology constrains the logic of history to the waste-bin it puts little of substance in place other than to rely on the goodwill of the people to maintain order and respect between very divergent cultures. This hope that in the long run we will all see the benefit of cohesion by experiencing the advantages of a settled multicultural society need only to see the implosion of any civilised cooperation in the trauma being played out in Gaza.