I do not often post a blog entry on expressly political opinion, much less my own political opinion, but I shall do so now.
Even more rarely do I pass comment on the situation in the Middle East, because I lack both knowledge of the facts and empathy with the peoples on all sides of the conflicts there, but I shall do so now.
It seems to me that both the Israelis and the Palestinians have so much blood on their hands that it is no longer worth debating who has spilt the greater blood, who is at fault for the death of innocents, who is the greater violator of human rights.
Thus when the latest conflict broke out I did not rush to join the millions of woolly-headed Palestinian-wannabes in attacking the evil Zionist regime, because they conveniently- wilfully, sickeningly- forgot about the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hamas' suicide bombers. Israel deserves punishment for the excessive use of deadly force, but I find it extremely hard to find an objective group who can criticise Israeli aggression without lauding and legitimising the inhumanity of Hamas.
Nor would I feel any grief for Israel if tomorrow it became the target of a devastating Pan-Arab invasion, or a Hizbullah campaign, because its own crimes against humanity and callous brutality have left it completely and utterly bereft of all moral legitimacy, legitimacy which is the very justification of the existence of any state. (In saying this I do not abandon my Realist persuasion that power is the basis of state existence- moral justification is independent of de facto bases of existence.)
But that is the way of the world. Fear spawns conflict, stupidity extends it, and power determines its outcome. And now all the world is polarised, in support of one of the two moral abominations in the Holy Land.
So many have become fanatically pro-Palestinian, pseudo-peaceniks who are blind to the fact of Hamas suicide bombers and dead Israeli infants; so many have become Nazified Zionists, seeing in Israel the righteous reincarnation of righteous Nazi Germany, with its righteous destiny of lebensraum in Palestine and the righteous genocide of the filthy Palestinians.
Wherefore be the rational ones who can see evil where it really is- everywhere? What few of us remain, and our numbers grow ever fewer, our voices ever softer, till we speak silence into a world of cacophonic death and madness.
