Friday 2 January 2009

Is Gaza the new Warsaw Ghetto?

Thank goodness that Ken Livingstone has had the balls to say out loud what a lot of people including myself have been thinking and directly compare the conditions inside Gaza with those inside the Warsaw Ghetto during the second world war.

Before anyone starts commenting, please note that what Ken has said is that the sanctions imposed by Israelis have meant living conditions have become so bad and has not said that Israel is acting like the Germans.

Will there is no way that Hamas actions can be defended, equally Israel's military attacks seem like disproporationate to the problem.

By all means, use Predator drones and special forces to take out the rocket teams, no one is going to complain about that. What seems so wrong, is the huge loss of life from the current air bombardement which seems to have had very little effect on the number of rockets being fired.

To put it starkly, so far 400 Palestinian lives and 4 Israeli lives have been lost, yet nothing seems to have moved forward and everything seems to be moving backwards

Perhaps the Israeli government would be wise to study the history of the second world war and in particular the air bombardments of England and Germany to understand that bombing civilian populations rarely drives people to surrender and instead the opposite effect.

Perhaps if they are thinking about a ground attack, they should read up on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and understand how people will fight when they have nothing else to lose