The Israel-Hamas war is not about whose side you're on. It's about killing kids
There are two lessons that humanity has yet to learn. First, you can't bomb all the terrorists. Bombing just make more terrorists. And second, no-one ever stops fighting for their home.
The Israeli government's decision to blitz the Gaza strip to eradicate Hamas makes about as much sense as, oh I don't know, sending troops out on Bloody Sunday to kill all the Provos, and imagining that every bystander and relative wouldn't immediately want revenge.
And Hamas' stated aim of eradicating Israel has as much likelihood of success as Isis' stated aim of bringing about the apocalypse, because the only response of everyone affected is going to be a very firm 'no'.
But then there are all the 'but then's. But then what is the right response to butchery and burnings, but then why do we support a state that has committed war crimes against civilians, but then have the progressive left ever wondered what it's like to be a woman or gay or trans under Hamas, or in Israel, and whose side are you on, again?
Nine-month-old Kfir Silberman-Babas (mistakenly given the name of Ariel, his older brother, in this poster) has been missing since the Hamas massacre at the Nir Oz kibbutz
An unnamed Palestinain child injured in Israeli attacks by warplanes and artillery fire, is taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for treatment on the 18th day of shelling (Anadolu via Getty Images)The only right answer to that question is "both". There is no other sane reaction. Imagine Birmingham-based terrorists had been at war with the rest of the country for 50 years, that Brummies had just raided the Home Counties and tortured, slaughtered and defiled 1,500 people, and taken another 200 grannies and children and soldiers hostage. Imagine that you lived in Birmingham, weren't a terrorist, but the bloke next door was and his house was targeted with a missile big enough to obliterate the whole street. NONE of that is reasonable, and if the words in your head now are "what about..." then you, Dear Reader, are the problem.
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It is people able to see only one side who decided that the sallow corpse of four-year-old Omar Bilal al-Banna was a doll. They seemed to feel that because his skin looked yellow, rather than brown, and his body appeared stiff, the little shape in the shroud wasn't human. They didn't compute that he'd been crushed by rubble from a falling building, and children have less blood in their bodies than adults. They get deader quicker, and it shows.
It was the same sort of people who decided that the four-year-old Omer Siman-Tov was not burned to death in his home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz just 14 miles from Omar's home in the north of Gaza. They decided that Omer was a paid actor, or was murdered by "the Israelis", or a faked piece of "Jewish propaganda".
There will be people quite capable of seeing both boys were murdered, both seen as sub-human, as collateral damage, as a future generation that needed to be wiped out. But they tend to keep their mouths shut, shake their heads and try to think of something not so utterly depressing.
But let's call this what it is - infanticide. Hamas shot Omer's parents and left him and his sisters to burn in the shell of their family home. The Israeli government unleashed powerful weapons on neighbourhoods filled with children like Omar. I'd like to think that if I were a terrorist/freedom fighter I'd hide somewhere without little kids around me, but I guess to a killer it does seem like the perfect spot.
And lest we forget, Hamas is still firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Picking a side, in this war, is the same as picking whose children to kill.
If you think Omar and other Palestinian civilians should not be collectively punished for the actions of an extremist terror group, then don't tell Jews like Omer's family that they bear collective responsibility for the actions of an extremist, cobbled-together coalition government that they protested against in their thousands when it was formed.
If you think Omer had a right to exist, and to be safe, then the same applies to Omar. Israel and Palestine, child and child, both of them slain by men who long ago forgot what 'home' actually means.
Mourners gather around the coffins of British-Israelis Lianne Sharabi and her two daughters, Noiya,16, and Yahel,13, during their funeral in Kfar Harif, Israel, Wednesday (AP)We wouldn't let our own terrorists get away with the murder of 1,500 people and kidnap of another 200. But we also wouldn't obliterate the city next door, and everyone in it. And if anyone questioned whether we should be a state, we'd probably point out that Britain's been here in various forms for millennia, and we've nowhere else to go.
The same is true of Israel. It was a Jewish kingdom, on and off, and a Muslim caliphate, and subject of empires and invasions. It's never been a Palestinian state, but it's always been a mess, and its people always victims. The modern state of Israel has nowhere else to be, and nor do the Arabs, the Muslims, and the Christians who have lived there for millennia. Without Israel, is the Middle East any better? Without Palestine, is Israel safer? No way, and no how.
A man carries the shrouded body of his child in the central Gaza strip as relatives gather outside the Al-Aqsa hospital morgue in Deir Balah (AFP via Getty Images)I've avoided writing about this hellscape since October 7, because it's too depressing and too blurred by the fog of hate. There is, though, starting to be some grounds for optimism, so let's try to end on that.
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The Israeli government vowed immediate revenge, and three weeks on has yet to invade. The extremist factions who gave Binyamin Netanyahu a final grab at power have had to be tempered by moderates brought into a war cabinet, which has yet to actually launch a war. Hostages have been released, with Hamas' trumpeting of that fact putting the lie to those idiots tearing down posters of kidnap victims saying there's no proof it ever happened.
Global powers - or the lizard Illuminati, depending - have restrained Israel, which stymies all the anti-Semitic claims that Jews run the world. Omer and Omar's deaths, while denied by useful idiots on social media, have been more thoroughly investigated and documented as a result. The truth always wins a marathon, if rarely a sprint.
Hamas' time is up. Its leaders in Qatar will, after this, be sanctioned out of existence. Their strategy of provoking an Israeli war with a brutal incursion has made them appear, to Muslim neighbours, un-Islamic. And Netanyahu's fragile government is probably going to fall soon. His hardline political allies force him to threaten invasion, perhaps even to launch one, but it will open up new fronts with Hezbollah and maybe Syria, and public support, which he never had much of until now, will ebb.
If Hamas is exiled and the hardliners fall from power, there will be space for someone to talk of peace. Perhaps, with enough bodybags, those still living will decide they'd rather share their home than a graveyard.
Peace is not a path, it's a state of mind. It requires perspective, and the quickest way of losing that is to kill a child. The fact that a war suits some people - suits their pockets, their power, their lunacy - is precisely why they killed Omar and Omer in the first place.
In Arabic, their name means long-lived. In Hebrew, it means gifted speaker. May their memories be the story we keep telling.
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