Israeli government must be called out for what it is doing

For myriad reasons this blog

has seldom commented on the current war in the Middle East. 

Watching the pictures on our screens every evening of children dying from starvation it is difficult to remain quiet.

Hearing wise, considerate, good people condemning the behaviour of Israel it’s clear that what Israel is now doing to the people of Gaza is wrong and is clearly a war crime.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has strongly criticised the current behaviour of the Israeli government.

I have been to Büchenwald, Oranianburg, Auschwitz, I am aware what it means to write about the banality of evil. The world must never and can never forget the evil that was perpetrated on the Jewish community by the Germans. Intentionally I never say the Nazis, I always say the Germans. By using the word Nazi one can easily consider them to be the monster people who did monstrous things. It was German people, with their subordinates in other countries who did monstrous acts. They came from all walks of German life, teachers, academics, lawyers, tradespeople journalists, train drivers, women and men. There were clergy too who supported and kowtowed to the then Hitler-led German government. 

It was evil and it must never be forgotten. 

But that does not mean that today we cannot criticise the behaviour of the current Israeli government for the brutality it is unleashing every day and night on the Palestinian people.

To try to say that by being opposed to such behaviour one is an anti semite is, indeed, preposterous.

The German theologian and Lutheran priest Martin Niemöller’s poem is prescient today. He was an opponent of the then German government for which he spent time in a concentration camp.

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.