AMID horrendous violence in the Middle East, several writers in The National have suggested the West is demonstrably abandoning its long-held, phoney posture as guardian of global law and order.
Two bitingly critical and eloquent letters on Friday furthered the point and remarked on the phenomenal gulf between what the people feel and think, and what is being prosecuted in their name.
It’s likely a huge majority of readers share the concerns of Leah Gunn Barrett and Alex Beckett. The always well-informed Leah reminded us of Israel’s assassination of its opponents in Damascus, Tehran and Beirut, and of its “killing hundreds and maiming thousands” of civilians in Beirut by detonating booby-trapped electronic pagers.
READ MORE: Pertinent questions must be answered a year on from Hamas attack
This last act of indiscriminate terrorism almost defies belief, as surely did that July telly news shot of Netanyahu’s July address to Congress. I recall my own wondering disbelief at the warmth of his welcome. “Fifty-eight standing ovations,” Leah authoritatively declared.
Alex was similarly affected by the behaviour of “Genocide Joe” in calling for restraint but “willingly offering up more weapons ... for terrorist attacks and invasions of neighbouring countries.” And the RAF now involved “to protect Israel”.
Alex asks: “Where the hell was the RAF when Israel was firing missiles into Gaza ... bombing hospitals, schools and refugee camps?”
There is clearly now no world order of superior, civilised, Western thinking across groups of “like-minded friends”. The inadequacy of the UN has been ruthlessly underlined, its Secretary General accused of prejudice. The coffin lid has firmly closed over that cosy, world-order notion, sealed by crude nails strategically placed by Genocide Joe and savagely hammered home by Nemesis Netanyahu.
READ MORE: It’s in Scotland's interests to prevent regional wars from spreading
The tragedy is that we need the power and dynamism of the US to play a converse role in world affairs. Let’s retain hope that with humanity on the brink, it will rediscover a better, humbler self, taking its place in a reconstituted and empowered UN striving for a new world order of equal voices, brithers a’, and of course including China and Russia.
Unlikely? Well, the EU is a democratic, secure union of equal, free states that since its inception has held a historically war-torn continent at peace and in prosperity.
Otherwise it may be all humankind into the hell-bound handcart with twin runners hubris and greed ready at the handles.
John Melrose
Peebles
GIVEN their ever-evident ignorance of the decades-long suffering of Palestinians, the fact that October 7 finally brought the issue to the awareness of Western commentators only served to allow them to frame the Hamas attack as the start of things.
There’s no exposition of the history of the area, the decades-long occupation, brutal oppression, and slow-burning genocide that’s been ongoing since 1947. There’s no exposition that Hamas was deliberately supported by the Zionist regime in order to split and undermine the PLO and Fatah, and divide the West Bank and Gaza.
READ MORE: Gaza death toll passes 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel
While the ordinary person can readily see that there will be no peace until the Zionists end their genocide, remove every last settler from the occupied territories and recognise a free Palestine, Western commentators dance on the head of a pin, terrified of using the word genocide for fear of being labelled anti-Semitic by the murderous Zionist ethno-nationalists.
There must be a full programme of BDS against Israel, or history will look back at us and spit on our graves.
G M
via thenational.scot
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