vicious circle

No one expects Israel to stand by and do nothing whilst its people are attacked, and indeed the missiles launched at Israel by Hamas for the past 6 months are wholly reprehensible but then so to is Israel’s reaction, which will once again only escalate violence in the region. Too often those of us who question Israel’s actions are charged with either anti-Semitism or naivety as to the character and aims of political and military Palestinian groups such as Hamas. I certainly do not question the right of Israel to exist and am under no illusions about the potentially oppressive nature of the Hamas regime, but this does not excuse Israel’s actions over the last week. I, like many others, welcomed Barak Obama’s condemnation of the Hamas sponsored attacks upon Sderot recently, however, Israel’s reaction as it always is, was to create a humanitarian disaster. The Israeli military has seemingly made little attempt to target Hamas military bases and indeed the strikes at 11.30am on Saturday 27th December 2008 were implemented, as far as I can see, only to spread fear. The killing of 290 by Monday 29th and wounding of 700 appears to be a rather heavy-handed response to hundreds of rockets sent into Israel from Hamas militants which killed one Israeli in six months. The presumption that all Palestinians are naturally Hamas loving terrorists is of course a ridiculous notion, and yet it is consistently one, which the Israeli government follows to justify the killing of innocent civilians, adults and children. The Palestinians do of course have those reactionary militants who wholly oppose the state of Israel but so too are there reactionary Israelis who oppose a Palestinian one. The Two-State Solution is the internationally accepted answer to the Israel/Palestine problem and yet the Israeli government only ever half-heartedly endorses it. From the building of a wall that does not follow the internationally agreed upon boarder between the two states in the West Bank (an area they have been occupying illegally for 41 years) to the blockades, and trade embargos on Gaza and the targeting of those buildings which would have made the Palestinians there ready for state-hood over the last 6 days, Israel has hardly demonstrated itself to be a cooperative and compromising force. By attacking Gaza in this way they are not eliminating support for Hamas. Indeed they run the risk of heightening it (most Palestinians in the Gaza strip are not affiliated to any Palestinian political group). Hamas will appear to offer the Palestinians a strong front to Israel, which now appears to be entirely hostile to the Palestinian cause. A front that will seem hard to ignore given the often corrupt and incompetent alternative in Fatah that many see now as submitting to Israel at every opportunity. Thus the Israeli air-strikes on Gaza will only result in vengeful terrorist attacks upon innocent Israeli citizens, adults and children. Israel will conveniently forget, however, how it slaughtered hundreds of innocents in Gaza and refuse to work with the Palestinians, particularly Hamas. What Israel forgets is that whether or not one likes the powers-that-be with whom one is attempting to reach a peace, one has no choice but to work with them particularly if they have been elected. Only by showing full support for the two-state solution will Israel achieve the peace it has been looking for. This is not demonstrated through iron-fist policies, which alienate the people of Palestine and only continue the vicious circle in which the Middle-East crisis has been embroiled for 40 years.

...now there's a temporary solution

6 posts on one day after a massive gap between my first posts and today's - i'm a binge blogger :-S

The Devil's Whore

I just felt I had to note the fantastic drama, broadcast on Channel 4 that was The Devil’s Whore. A fresh take on dramas on the English Civil War it presented the story of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and her many adventures. Married three times, once to a close cousin, friend and aristocrat, then to a Leveller and then to a reformed mercenary soldier with a heart-of-gold. It all seems rather far-fetched but was highly successful, not only being acted well but also I feel for readdressing commonly held ideas about the Civil War and that arch-hypocrite Oliver Cromwell. Too often Oliver Cromwell is remembered as some sort of classic English liberator, an all too simplistic, if not wholly untrue, depiction of the man. Cromwell was a religious radical and fought for freedom of worship and the rights of Parliament only as far as they suited him. This is well demonstrated in the drama where Cromwell betrays all those who had supported him and became King in all but name making a mockery of all those who sacrificed themselves for freedom from suppression and tyranny. Don’t get me wrong I’m not about to portray Charles I as some sort of saint (although I believe he has been canonised by the Anglican Church for defending its marriage of catholic and reformed principles against rabid puritanical Protestantism – no I’m not convinced either) but at least he – as shown in The Devil’s Whore – is a man of his principles, no mater how repugnant they may have been, unlike Cromwell who sold his down the river at the first opportunity to exert full power and authoritarianism. It is of course folly to make moral judgements about the past, we can never wholly understand those people we study, but Oliver Cromwell’s popular reputation is undeservingly good for a man who was essentially the English Early Modern equivalent of Colonel Gaddafi or President Musharraf. For those of you who are turned off by such affected debates on dead white men, the drama had little of this and married love stories and great battle sequences well so I can recommend you 4OD it!

Bush - urgh -

Bush brushed off the recent shoe-pummelling he got saying "All I can report is it is a size 10” and hailing it as an expression of democracy in Iraq - moron.

I once laughed at 'Bushisms' in my rather Guardian-ista patronising way. I now bear a bitter resentment, finding them mildly insulting.

Father it has been three months since my last confession...

I love Christmas songs! There I’ve said it now and can finally embrace myself ;)
Everything from 'God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen' to 'All I want for Christmas is You' brings the biggest grin to my face and makes me incomprehensibly giddy! Perhaps it's my love of Christmas generally that makes it so, the cold weather only makes staying warm inside with a snowball all the more enjoyable and as a confirmed glutton I cannot get enough of Christmas dinner - with all the trimmings! However, I have a great love affair with Christmas songs of all types and genres. Whilst writing my final essay of 2008 (and listening to Radio 1 on the library computers) 'Fairytale of New York' came down my headphones - it was the beginning of Christmas for me (f**k the coke advert, the song's a classic!). Yes they're cheesy and often unbelievably contrived but they take me back to a time when Christmas was... wait for the clichéd description... magical. Only being 19 years old (although I’m very much on the verge of a quarter-life crisis) such a time was not all that far away but a Pan-esque fear of growing up - or is that of embracing responsibility #vomit# - makes me run to these songs at Yuletide to make me feel about 5 again. So shout your favourite Christmas songs loud and shout 'em proud!

SantoGOLD!

A recent questionnaire circulated at my university asked some students to vote for their favourite album of the year. Whilst the nominees certainly deserved (or at least I imagine they were, some of them, I must shamefully admit I hadn’t heard of) their place on the list, I felt that a major omission was Santogold’s debut album. This is without doubt my album of the year. Track after track demonstrates her lyrical dexterity wowed me to such an extent that I could complain the album wasn’t long enough. In some ways the album does appear to end too soon and the final (non-bonus) track didn’t leave me wholly satisfied with my musical fix but then that can surely only be a shrewd commercial move come the arrival of her next album. All the same the album delighted me at every turn, but the stand-out track for me was ‘You’ll Find a Way’. It achieved that musical feat of encapsulating the psychological ‘fight or flight’ complex. This might appear an odd comment to make about a track (panic attacks might not seem to characterise a good song) but I definitely mean it as a compliment. It’s the sense of urgency in the song that I love and which makes it my favourite on the album, it runs with the listener and raises their heart-rate, these all seem good aspects to me! This all seems to be turning a little pretentious in its language but the album is amazing and I would urge you, if you haven’t already, to buy and listen to it. I await her (difficult?) second album and hope it doesn’t disappoint.

Pull yourself together!

Two aspects of Saturday night's X-Factor Final were unforgivable. The first is that monstrosity that was created on Alexandra Burke's head; the woman looked like a cocker spaniel, her stylist deserves to be sacked (if not shot). The second was the wholly undignified display that Alexandra undertook (and undertook more and more as we progressed towards the final) that bordered on an emotional breakdown. What ever happened to the good old British stiff upper lip? It loathes me to take such a Daily Mail tone but Alexandra's reaction was completely over the top and cringe-makingly embarrassing. I know, I know, tears and tantrums are part of the course as far as reality TV shows go but she seemed to take it to a new level. Surely by her third and fourth performances she might have been able to master her emotions? As for actually falling on the floor when the result was announced, words escape me. She must have realised that she was within a strong chance of winning (not least as she was the bookies' favourite!). I'm not expecting her to show no emotion but the displays of tears which have become overly common-place on the X-Factor, particularly from our new winner, are just horrendous and have become so cliché that they now seem completely insincere! I can only hope that next year's competition is not such a tear-fest or I fear I shall be tuning out!