Across the pond

The death toll in the nineteen day invasion of Gaza, passed the one thousand mark today, which has been highlighted by nearly all the western media. Most of them leave it at that. Because figures are boring, to the readers and to a lot of journalists.

But the BBC website gives the detailed figures. Those killed include 300 children and 76 women. These figures came from the Gaza Ministry of Health, so maybe they have been inflated a bit for propaganda purposes. But the Beeb also gives the Israeli figures: 13 Israelis killed by all those Hamas rockets, 9 Israeli soldiers killed during the invasion of Gaza.  Divding by ten and translating this into a football score card, that is the equivilent of:

Manchester Uniited 101, Wolverhampton Wanderers 2.

In military terms the Israelis have scored an over-whelming victory. The figures provide the objective verification of the pictures on the television screens. This is not war. It is slaughter. And so it is not surprising that Israel is losing the propaganda war.

Except in Israel where polls report that the invasion has the backing of 80 per cent of the population, and that population is one of the best educated on the globe. Many of the older generation are victims of Nazi or Stalinist atrocities. And all of them are conscious that they are a small nation surrounded by rich and powerful Arab states, some of which are probably supplying Hamas with their old and not very effective missiles.

But the present reality is that Israel is very strong indeed. Their fears are unjustified and exaggerated. How to demonstrate this? I decided to look at the figures for our own ‘Irish troubles’.  (Yes, I know, there a lots of differences between the two situations.)

Northern Ireland was the corner of that country which the British had conquered in Cromwell’s time. In my lifetime all that remained was the north-east corner, with a Protestant dominated government, contrasting with the Catholic majority in Ireland. The conflict raged from 1969 to 2001. During that 32 years 3,253 were killed. 1,123 of those were from the British Army and local security forces, the rest were ‘civilians’. (Figures here are from the Wikipedia entry.)

But amongst the 1,855 civilians killed, 394 were Republican ‘freedom fighters’, trained by the IRA, or sister groups, and 151 were Loyalist, or Protestant, ‘freedom fighters’.

Of course, some of the Gaza citizens killed over the last 19 days, have been Hamas freedom fighters, not civilians. Just how many we will not know for some years, until the researchers have subjected this current conflict to the exhaustive analysis of Britain’s Irish troubles.

But the contrast between the two situations is crystal clear when you look at the scorecard for who did the killing. (Figures from Wikipedia article.) The IRA and its sisters killed 2,055. The Protestant equivilants killed 1,020. The British and other security forces only managed to kill 368. Whether this is because the British army is run by idiots who talk about Pakis and call Prince Charles’ Indian friends, ‘Sooty’, or whether it is to do with the fact the British public opinion did not allow them to bomb and shell the streets of Belfast, I leave you to judge.

But the Irish story has a happy ending. It led to the Good Friday agreement, so that now peace reigns in the Emerald Isle. And what people of my generation thought was an insoluble problem has been solved. And the man who did it was Tony Blair, who has just received a medal of honour and a hug from the same George W Bush, who has just vetoed the proposed UN action to bring peace to Gaza.

Blair, like George W, is now yesterday’s man. but despite all his many faults as Prime Minister, he showed that he had learnt the bitter lesson of Suez, which was that Britain was no longer an empire and that it could not behave as such without the support of the US. And Tony, always streetwise, realised that the hearts of many Americans – including many Presidents – were not with the ‘special relationship’ with the UK, they were with the Irish, who are as visible and active in US politics as they are in Camden Town.

Fast forward back to Gaza.

Israel has, in military terms, won the Gaza war. It is far more powerful than the Arab nations surrounding it. Even though the incoming US President is black, a so-called ‘lefty’ and has Muslim ancestors, he cannot and will not sanction any Arab agression against Israel.

But he will be open to a political solution. And that is what Israel should be fighting for.

The Good Friday agreement settled the centuries old bitter conflict between Roman Catholics and Prots in Ireland.

May 14th this year will be the 61st anniversary of the declaration of independence of Israel. It is also the 92nd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

Balfour, the Prime Minister of Britain when it was still fighting the First World War, wrote in his letter to Lord Rothchild:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

The language is pompous and dated. But the message is as relevant now as it was in 1917.

Israel needs to learn to live with, and respect, its non-Jewish population. And the rest of the world needs to respect the rights of Jews to live anywhere, and, implicitly to wipe out the stain of anti-semitism.