See also:  Rogue State? (oldandireland.blogspot.com) And:  Two Wrongs……. (oldandireland.blogspot.com) So we have reached the one year mark in Israel’s conflict in Gaza.   Time for a little reflection. 1)     After the original and totally horrific Hamas attack, questions were asked about how the Israeli security agency had apparently managed to completely miss all the preparations that must have been necessary for the attack.   I must point out here that I am making no excuses for the Hamas attack.   It was brutal, appalling, inhuman (continue to insert your own descriptives here, none of them will fully describe just how wrong the Hamas attack was).   Any questions raised about the Israeli security agency seem to somehow to have been lost in the brutality and genocide that have happened since the original attack. I was wondering about this though.   The agency that managed to miss a Hamas breakout of that size, does not sound ...

  West Bank settler expansion: a year on the frontline – Channel 4 News   Have a look at this Channel 4 report about a Palestinian farmer trying to live on land he owns on the West Bank.   It is scary, horrifying, and ridiculous all at the same time.   I said before in a previous piece about this damned conflict that Israel must take the moral high ground and live by the law.   If not, then how much better than the Hamas terrorists is it? The report looks at a Palestinian family who lost their land when Israel was originally set up in 1948, but who managed to buy a plot in what is now the West Bank, to the south of Hebron.   So then the 1967 war happened and the family once more found themselves at least nominally in the stare of Israel.   That would be fine if the state actually treated all their citizens equally. The report shows how numerous incursions by Israeli settlers are taking land by force from its existing owners, and how owners like...

 This has been bugging me ever since Hamas were stupid/ callous enough to raid Israel on the 7 th October. What did they expect would happen with the current right-wing government that is in power in Israel?  There is a lot of truth in what Israel are saying about Hamas using their own peoples lives for propaganda. However, and this is a very big however, there is, or at least there should be, a huge difference between the terrorist organisation Hamas and a legitimate state like Israel.   I’ll give you a couple of rough, home grown definitions that might hopefully illustrate the point.   We have a lot of experience in dealing with terrorists here in Northern Ireland.   What Israel is doing categorically will not work.   They will not get rid of Hamas, in fact heavy handed tactics like they are applying will only drive more volunteers into the ranks of Hamas. 1)       A terrorist organisation does not follow the rule of law,...