If the entire Gaza Strip was divided into parcels the size of a football field, picture “A” shows how many people would be crowded onto each field.

And this was BEFORE the current phase of a 75+ year COLONIZING and ETHNIC-CLEANSING project taking place throughout the former British Mandate of Palestine (the earlier Ottoman Palestine).

The end of the Arab-Israeli War in 1949 – precipitated by Israel’s unilateral declaration of a state on Palestinian Arab lands – saw the Gaza Strip fall under Arab control and the creation of a state called the All-Palestine Protectorate.

Until 1967, the Gaza Strip was effectively under either Egyptian or United Arab Republic control (pending the creation of a Palestinian state which had been promised by the UK during its time there between the end of WWI and 1948).

The population of Gaza swelled between 1948 and 1967, with many refugees arriving there after fleeing Israeli violence directed against Palestinians elsewhere.

Israel captured Gaza during its war with Egypt in 1967, and has continued to occupy and blockade it by land and sea since then, in clear breach of international law.

Hamas was formed in the 1980s, and modelled on the Islamist Pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt.  Islamist attitudes had seen an upsurge in the wake of the Six Days War in 1967, and began to move in a more militant direction as the illegal Israeli occupation of Arab lands continued.

It is worth noting, that much like the IRA in Ireland and Great Britain during the late 20th century, Hamas maintains separate political and military wings.

Beginning in the 1990s, various Islamist militant groups, including the military wing of Hamas, began to engage in suicide bombings against civilian targets in Israel.

Hamas ceased these immoral and indiscriminate actions in 2008.

While this type of violence should be strongly condemned, it must also be acknowledged that Zionist groups such as Irgun used the exact same tactics against Arabs and the British during the 1930s and 1940s.

Not every Zionist agreed with Irgun, and not every Palestinian agrees with Hamas.

Once the cycle of violence starts in any conflict, it escalates and attracts some of the most thuggish elements in society to it.

 

*****

 

Money and supplies were tacitly allowed to reach Hamas over the past two decades, as Israel hoped to “divide and rule” by favoring the Hamas leadership in Gaza over the PLO and Fatah leadership in the (also illegally occupied) West Bank.

Israel’s occupation and “buffer zones” since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack have reduced living space in Gaza itself by at least half, and possibly three-quarters.

Picture “B” is how Palestians are now expected to live.

It is an open air concentration camp.

No hyperbole, no false equivalence.

No supplies have entered Gaza for over 60 days.  No food.  No medicine.

It is collective punishment.

It is illegal.

It is depraved and morally abhorrent.

The silence of USA and UK politicians is deafening.

*****

Imagine if during the so-called “Troubles” in 1970s Northern Ireland, the entire might of the British Armed Forces had been brought to bear in an effort to “destroy the IRA”.  British Army.  Royal Navy.  Royal Marines.  Royal Air Force.

Imagine if the British Armed Forces accused IRA members living in houses and flats in places like Derry, West Belfast, or County Armagh of using their community as “human shields”.

Imagine if the British Armed Forces had issued an ultimatum demanding that IRA members come out into the open to fight.

And imagine if the IRA had refused to commit suicide in this way, and the British Armed Forces proceeded to systematically bomb into dust every single building in every single Irish Nationalist or Irish Republican city, town, or neighborhood.

Imagine the British Armed Forces targeting schools.

Imagine the British Armed Forces destroying hospitals.

Imagine the British Armed Forces targeting ambulances – and then tying the hands of paramedics before shooting them in the head and burying them with bulldozers.

Imagine the British Armed Forces torching Red Cross aid convoys.

Imagine the British Armed Forces shooting over 176 journalists – for being Irish journalists.

Imagine the British Armed Forces flattening dozens of media offices.

Imagine the British Armed Forces bombing and destroying Catholic churches.

Imagine the British Armed Forces intentionally destroying sewage pumping stations and wastewater treatment facilities.

Imagine the British Armed Forces had fired missiles into emergency shelters and refugee camps on open farmland, including many being run by UN aid agencies?

Imagine the British Armed Forces had murdered at least 18,000 CHILDREN in just 18 months.

That’s another dead child or baby every 30 or 40 minutes. Non-stop. 24/7. For a year and a half.

Imagine that a British Armed Forces blockade left 290,000 CHILDREN STARVING TO DEATH.

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The British Armed Forces did a lot of bad things in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s.

But they didn’t do any of the things which Israel is currently doing to the people of Gaza.

Why?

Because such actions would have constituted clear and shocking war crimes under international law.

THE ACTIONS IN GAZA TODAY CONSTITUTE ETHNIC-CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE, and it is being enabled and facilitated by the USA and UK governments.

And it is why pro-Palestinian voices are being grabbed off the streets in America.

We MUST speak when others are silenced.

 

 

Gaza: 141 sq mi (2,141,643 people)

N. Ireland: 5,231 sq mi (1,910,543 people)