To the Editor,

I, like many, note with despair the seemingly intractable situation in Gaza. It likewise appears impossible at the same time, to have a rational, civil conversation about this war without resorting to snide insults. What is happening now has been boiling for at least 70 years and is not happening without context, a context that many are not willing to discuss.

The forgotten history is that Hamas was originally a creation of the Israelis founded to act as a foil against Arafat’s Fatah, that is, religious Muslims  against secular Muslims in order to divide and conquer. It was the intent that the two organizations would fight each other. Professor Avner Cohen who was responsible for religious affairs in Gaza in the 1980’s once said and I quote, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”  It was the creation of a Frankensteinian monster which could no longer be controlled and Israel has been paying for it ever since.  Horrors like the war in Gaza are not created in a void.

In 1897, the modern Zionist movement was founded in Basel by Theodor Herzl who is considered the Father of Zionism. I’m reminded of something an aide to Herzl once said on returning from a visit to Palestine. Herzl asked him what he saw and the aide said it’s a beautiful place, but there are an awful lot of people already living there. In 1882, the people already living there were 92% Arabs and 8% Jewish and living in peace.  Over the decades Colonial Zionism prevailed and we now have the dire, tragic situation that it created.

Einstein, in a 1948 letter written to the Executive Director of the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, said: “When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine, the first responsible for it would be the British (implying the duplicity of the 1917 Balfour Declaration) and the second responsible for it the terrorists built up from our own ranks”. Interesting that Einstein referred to what some would call freedom fighters as terrorists. Perhaps there are those who would call Hamas freedom fighters instead of terrorists. Again, it depends on who you talk to.

The terrorists of whom Einstein speaks were the Irgun, Haganah, and The Stern Gang among others and they killed anyone who got in the way,

Arabs, British, and Jews.

Jim Morgan

Warwick

So, where do we go from here? Is there really anywhere to go from here? Huge casualties on the Gazan side, fewer on the Israeli side. Does might make right? We’ll never know because the dialogue is dead and the only thing left is the screaming and yelling of opposing views.