We see the claim of ‘genocide’ hurled with sickening regularity by anti-Israel soap-boxers, usually without checking any of the facts of the Gaza war. It’s become yet another false slogan, alongside apartheid, colonialism, etc.

I would therefore urge the numerous Israel supporters to look again at the direct letter I sent to Dr Callamard in the wake of the Amnesty International findings, and link and copy this article in response anytime they see the ‘genocide’ slur aimed at Israel.

Dear Dr Callamard,

I have read with interest the Amnesty International report of December, 2024, which culminates in a finding of ‘genocide’ against Israel in the current war against Hamas in Gaza. Having consulted with other leading journalists and legal experts with a strong knowledge of the Middle East on your report, we find the following flaws and inconsistencies:

1. A claim of ‘genocide’ becomes hard to substantiate when it is well-known and has been widely recorded that Israel’s military have gone to great lengths to move civilians from intended bombing and danger areas through extensive texting, leafleting and finally phone calls. This has involved dropping some 18 million leaflets, delivering 42 million pre-recorded cell-phone texts and making 230,000 direct phone calls warning civilians to move from danger-bombing areas.

This is a measure that no other fighting force has employed, for the simple reason that in turn it also alerts the opposition militants/terrorists. Indeed, it has been recorded that many Hamas terrorists made use of the ‘safe’ areas and corridors established to move its militant personnel. But still Israel put civilian safety foremost and persisted with this practice.

Through this, Israel’s military established a ‘collateral damage’ - civilians to militants - of between 1 and 1.2 to 1, whereas NATO, USA and UK forces average 3 to 3.4 to 1. So, if we are to arrive at a finding of ‘genocide’ against Israel in the current Gaza war, despite their measures to warn and move civilians from danger areas - are we then to revise our findings on all other military operations by NATO, USA and UK forces in the past 40 years, and accuse them of three-times worse genocides?

2. As part of the above, we also have the culpability of Hamas in not protecting its own civilians. While Israel’s military have gone to great lengths to warn and move civilians from danger areas, Hamas have done entirely the opposite, in many cases urging them to remain in those areas, sometimes under armed threat. In addition, it has been raised by journalists that in twenty years of power, Hamas has not built a single bomb shelter to protect its own civilians.

Indeed, in an interview with a Russian journalist who raised the same question, a Hamas spokesman said that it was UNRWA’s responsibility to build them. If so, then why has the UN not pressed its workers in all these years to have them built? Or your own Amnesty International, supposedly interested in the welfare and protection of people in wartimes, pressed the UN for the same. We know that Hamas has a level of control over UNRWA, but surely when civilians’ lives are at risk and need protection, the UN should have stepped in and insisted on the construction of bomb shelters. In neighbouring Sderot, dubbed the ‘bomb shelter capitol of the world’, they are on every street corner and in many homes and apartment buildings.

In addition, we have the factor that Hamas have built their terror tunnels under schools, hospitals, UN Centres and refugee camps - thereby making their civilian population far more vulnerable when attacks came.

Finally, we have the factor that a Hamas advocate made comparisons to WW2 actions, without realizing the many protective factors put in place then. Many bomb shelters built or Andersen shelters distributed, tube stations in London used as bomb shelters (whereas civilians have not been allowed protection in Hamas’s many terror tunnels), finally children shipped out to country areas away from bombing zones. The question then begs: why couldn’t neighbouring Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan at least have taken in the children of Gaza, following the UK example.

Ideally, both women and children could have been shipped out, which would have reduced civilian casualties by as much as 70-80%. Surely, we can’t have a situation of neighbouring Arab countries, the UN and UNRWA (and indeed Amnesty International) being complicit in keeping women and children in Gaza simply so that Hamas can use them as ‘human shields’ or use them in inflated death stats purely to demonize Israel. Or, indeed, try and support ‘genocide’ claims against Israel, when it becomes clear that by simply implementing a number of the above, the civilian death toll could have been greatly reduced. Are we then to arrive at an equal finding of ‘genocide’ against Hamas, the UN and UNRWA through neglect due to either not building any bomb shelters in 20 years, not moving civilians to safe neighbouring areas, and building of military terror-tunnels under vulnerable civilian areas.

3. It has been noted from the Amnesty International report that you were heavily reliant on local Gazan information sources such as local Government information centres, healthcare and aid workers and fieldworkers. However, it has become widely known that these organizations have rarely been reliable, and indeed in many cases have taken part in the active spreading of misinformation.

Gaza’s Health Ministry is but one example, where for much of the war they deliberately inflated death statistics of the number of women and children killed to create international outrage against Israel, effectively ‘demonizing’ them, while gaining sympathy for their own situation so that the war could be stopped early and Hamas could continue their Jihadist intent against Israel in the future.

Similarly, doctors and medics in major hospitals denied Hamas’s presence there at any time, despite militants being actively seen on hospital security cameras and terror tunnels discovered directly under some major hospitals – which have been filmed by Israeli soldiers and broadcast to the world.

And in the case of UNRWA, we not only find many cases of them covering up or defending Hamas’s actions, but they have actually been seen on camera taking an active part in the October 7^th assault and massacre in Southern Israel, with subsequently a number of UNRWA workers involved in hiding Israeli hostages in their homes.

In short, Hamas rigidly controls every bit of information coming out of Gaza, whether it be victim or witness accounts, or those of health, medics, aid workers or UNRWA staff. As a result, it would appear that very little of the information you have gained and based your findings upon could be deemed as ‘reliable’. What is even more alarming, given the volume of Press and TV reports that have exposed this bias and unreliability of not only central information Ministries in Gaza, but also of numerous medics, welfare, aid and UNRWA staff on the ground – that no mention of this is made in the Amnesty International report, nor adjustments made for this likely ‘misinformation’ factor.

4. Finally, we have the factor of the main researcher/investigator assigned to head up the Amnesty International report, who we note as Budour Hassan. Now, there are of course some with an Arabic-Muslim name who could be trusted to prepare an impartial, unbiased report. Yet, as we both know, this is a rarity. The Israel-Palestine conflict has become a major issue in the Islamic World, and even to this day we find practically all 57 Muslim nations vote en bloc against Israel in the UN with any resolutions raised.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that it is almost de rigueur within the Arab-Muslim world for someone of that background to find in favour of the Palestinians in any dispute or report. To do otherwise, they could find themselves shunned or outcast from their own society. In this case, we discover that Budour Hassan is in fact Palestinian and has a long history of defending Palestinian human rights and vehemently criticizing Israel and its policies. Hardly the ideal candidate for an objective, even-handed, unbiased report.

So, in effect, we have a ‘perfect storm’ situation. A researcher/investigator of Palestinian-Muslim background, already inherently biased towards Palestinians and against Israel due to her background, the situation then compounded by her interviewing various Information Ministries, Palestinian victims, health, aid and UNRWA workers, all heavily controlled and influenced by Hamas. And we are expected to believe that a report arising from such a situation would be accurate and unbiased.

The most worrying factor, given the above: ignoring or discarding the extreme measures Israel went to in guiding-warning civilians away from danger areas; ignoring the culpability of Hamas in making civilians more vulnerable by not building any bomb shelters and constructing their terror tunnels under schools, hospitals and refugee camps; the heavy reliance for information on Gazans on the ground – Information Ministries, victims, health and aid workers, all influenced or controlled by Hamas – and finally assigning to a main researcher-investigator, already with a long history of slanted, critical reports against Israel – it doesn’t look as if there was even any attempt to provide a fair, even-handed, unbiased report.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Many would argue that in fact the UK’s Green Party has been heading in that direction for a while. They were one of the first to recognize a Palestinian State, months before the Labour Party did so, and were also at the forefront of labelling the Gaza war as ‘genocide’.

Their canvassing heavily in areas such as Tower Hamlets, Bradford and predominant Muslim suburbs of Manchester and Leicester were in many ways a prelude to this. Garnering as much Islamic and fringe support as possible, amongst which communities being anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian is almost de rigueur. Could the pandering to an electorate to gain votes, ignoring all decent principles, be any more obvious?

There were other side signals that no doubt pointed the current Green Party in this direction. It was noted that their mainly young supporters, aside from supporting everything to do with ‘Green initiatives’ – cutting back on oil and carbon emissions, more wind-farms, etc – were also to the large extent heavily pro-Palestinian. A prime example of this crossover between ‘Greens’ and pro-Palestinian supporters was Greta Thunberg, today’s most high profile Green, leading aid flotillas to Gaza.

All of this in strong contrast to the left-wingers of the 1960s and 1970s, who were heavily in support of Israel, with many young students spending their summer breaks on kibbutzim. Since the main aim and intentions of Zionism are purely for Jews to forge their own nation state, it could be argued that the left-wing support they enjoyed in the 1960s and 1970s had it right, and today’s left-wingers have it terribly, terribly wrong. And this vote now to classify ‘Zionism’ as ‘racism’ appears as the final nail in that ‘terribly wrong’ coffin.

Another non-sequitur is the fact that the leader of today’s UK Green Party, Zack Polanski, is Jewish. Possibly he’s trying to highlight that not all Jews are in support of Israel, but he neglects the hard fact that 96-97% of Jews worldwide are. So, if popular votes are meant to be representative, he’s certainly starting on an un-democratic note, so perhaps he sees no harm in continuing in that vein.

But what is being said with this particular proclamation? That numerous other races are allowed their own homeland, but Jews aren’t? That in itself would seem to spotlight an ardent and very selective ‘racism’.

I’ve always been a strong believer in ‘equal justice and rights for all’, so to underline whether the Green’s current move has any ‘rightful’ substance, we should perhaps look at how it would look if applied to other nations.

By a similar yardstick used with Israel and ‘Zionism’, we could claim that the USA was racist, or certainly anyone proclaiming to be a proud USA ‘patriot’, based on their past subjugation and killing of its native Indian population, or from the fact that until the late 1960s there was still colour segregation, with black people either having separate buses or being forced to sit at the back of a bus.

Or Saudi Arabia due to their not allowing any non-Muslims into Mecca’s main holy sites, or not allowing the building of a single Christian church in their country.

Indeed, throughout Islam, there is a general ‘looking down upon’ and treating all non-Muslims as inferior. In Iran, this takes the form of any children who decide to move from Islam to another religion being forcibly disinherited. And religions such as the Baha’i’s are openly persecuted.

Kurds too have been systematically sidelined and persecuted in many Muslim nations, simply because their particular brand of Islam is not seen as ‘pure’.

But, of course, the most ardent sidelining and racism among Muslim nations is saved for Jews. For hundreds of years they were only ‘suffered’ in Muslim nations by paying a regular tax, a ‘Jizyah’, and when the formation of Israel came about in 1947-1948, that ‘sufferance’ boiled over. Over a million Jews were expelled from Muslim nations between 1948-1950, without any compensation for the land and property held or taken. Whereas the far lesser number of Arab Palestinians who left or were expelled in 1948 were fully compensated by a land fund set up in 1950.

And when we get to the Palestinian territories of Gaza and West Bank-Judea-Samaria, that racism and hatred of Jews is particularly stark. Jews-Israelis endure up to 350 terrorist attacks a month from Palestinians. Schools and public buildings are named after terrorists responsible for killing scores of Jews, selling land to Jews carries the death penalty, and there’s an open ‘pay for slay’ policy rewarding and compensating terrorists for killing Jews.

If all of that wasn’t evidence enough that the Palestinian territories were possibly the most ‘racist’ on earth, the 390,000 Israeli settlers there are constantly railed against - both nationally and internationally – and head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has openly declared that the final border lines ‘Won’t be drawn until every Jew is the other side of it.’

In contrast, within Israel, there are 2.1 million Arabs, mostly Muslim, who live perfectly well and peacefully, without threat. Yet if an Israeli Jew should absently wander into a Palestinian-Arab village, they risk being attacked and killed. There are numerous examples of stoning’s, car-ramming’s and knifing’s, then too the lynching in Ramallah of two off-duty Israeli reservists, who were torn apart limb by limb by a mob. And finally, of course, the murder of 1,200 Israelis on October 7^th – the single largest terrorist attacks since 9/11 – which ignited the recent Gaza War.

Indeed, with Israel’s 2.1 million Arab population of Israel standing at 21% of its population, three times that of the highest Muslim population in Europe, which is France at 7% - are we then to assert that France and every other European nation is ‘racist’ for not allowing anything like the same number of Arab-Muslims among its population?

In fact, by that score, along with Israel’s acceptance of broad swathes of other nationalities – Ethiopians, Sudanese, Indians, Eritreans and Russians – you could easily argue that Israel is one of the least ‘racist’ nations on the planet.

Over the years, we’ve seen various strange moves and actions by politicians to gain extra votes, but this surely must stand as one of the most deplorable and outrageous. In the end says far more about the inherent ‘racism’ of the Green party and the fringe electorate they’re aiming for than anything else.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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- That Palestinians should be able to live in peace alongside Israel without any barriers, divides or military security? Or that all Jews and Israelis should be removed from the entire area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. For the various carrying the banner headline, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be Free,’ it appears to be the latter.

- That Jews should never be able to settle or reside in Judea-Samaria-West Bank, despite much of it being their ancestral homeland and indeed was re-settled by Jews between 1920 and 1948. And further that all Jews, the 390,000 currently there, should be removed. As head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has proclaimed: ‘The final borders shall not be drawn until every Jew is the other side of it.’ A Judenrein view not pushed since Nazi Germany. And despite the fact that 2.1 million Arabs, mostly Muslim, live perfectly peacefully and safely with all rights within Israel.

- That the shout of ‘Free Palestine’ should be freely made to concert audiences to further that ‘cause’, despite the macabre irony that 350 young concert-goers have been massacred in the name of that same ‘cause’ – the Nova Festival being the largest single massacre of concert goers ever. The highest terrorist death-toll before that was Bataclan in Paris with 90 deaths.

- That in the name of this same Palestinian ‘cause’, more terrorist attacks have been perpetrated than with ISIS and Al-Qaeda combined. Israel alone has suffered as many as 350 terrorist attacks a month, blowing apart men, women and children on buses and in cafes and shopping malls. And in the 1960s-1980s, Palestinian terrorists ran rampage in Europe and beyond with numerous plane hi-jackings and bombings, including the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes at Munich in 1972.

- Aside from four major wars that have cost tens of thousands of Israeli lives, the first three against combined Arab armies, Palestinians in exile have also caused massive disruption. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were a large factor in the sparking of the Lebanese civil war, which cost 150,000 lives and led Lebanon to become a Muslim-majority nation when previously it had a Christian majority. In Jordan, they attempted to overthrow King Hussein and sparked a Civil War. And in Kuwait, Palestinian refugees there sided with Sadam Hussein and were resultantly expelled.

- The call has come regularly of ‘genocide’ against Israel, despite the IDF sending millions of leaflets and text messages warning civilians to move to safe areas, so that in the end half of the 73,000 killed in over two years of war have been Hamas terrorists or those involved in fighting. In contrast, Iran’s forces killed an estimated 34,000 people in just two days, nearly all of whom were innocent civilians protesting for reform and more freedom. Why no calls of genocide over that?

- Given the above, it becomes clear that the call for ‘Free Palestine’ becomes little more than thinly veiled terrorist support. Would they launch the same street demonstrations in support of ISIS or Al-Qaeda? While a number might argue that Palestinians are simply victims of their terrorist leaders, consider that Hamas – an arch-Jihadist group – was voted into power by a larger majority of Palestinians than Germans voted Hitler and the Nazis into power in 1932.

- Alongside the shout of ‘Free Palestine’ also often comes the cries of ‘apartheid’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’. Yet it is Palestinian leaders who regularly call for the West Bank-Judea-Samaria to be ‘Jew free’, and Israelis are often attacked if they should mistakenly drift into Arab towns and villages. Whereas, as said, 2.1 million Arabs, mostly Muslim, live perfectly well and peacefully within Israel.

- That all Jewish-Israeli goods from Judea-Samaria-West Bank should be sanctioned and banned by Western governments, completely ignoring the fact that 60% of that workforce is Palestinian, and at wages 60-90% above the local Palestinian rates. And further that 60-70% of the labour employed in building Jewish settlements is in fact Palestinian, again at rates 60-90% above local Palestinian rates. Known as BDS, this has uncomfortable reminders of Jews being banned from certain practices and trades in Nazi Germany.

- Palestinian leaders have been offered more peace deals than probably any other intended fledgling nation on earth, but have boldly refused every one of them – the last at Taba in which they were offered 97% of their land back up to the Green Line, and the remaining 3% compensated with other Israeli land or financially. Yet again they refused. In many ways affirming that they have little interest in peace, their main intention is the destruction of Israel and the removal of all Jews in the area – the ‘River to Sea Free’ siren call – however unrealistic that aim might be and in total disregard to the lives lost on each side in the process.

In summary, as the old saying goes, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ Or in the case of supporting a group or ‘cause’, make sure you know the full facts and history of that ‘cause’ before waving banners and making bold proclamations.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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The term ‘Free Palestine’ is regularly in the news. Most recently, it ignited a controversy over Ed Sheeran’s continuing concert tour in the USA when one of his support acts, Macklemore, shouted ‘Free Palestine’ to an audience on the opening leg of Sheeran’s US tour, followed by a pro-Palestinian protest song, Hind’s Hall.

Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium, one of the next scheduled venues, took exception and rallied other stadium owners and the tour promoter to block future venues if Macklemore remained as a supporting act. Sheeran was left with no other choice but to drop Macklemore.

But then a number of other supporting acts then also came out in solidarity with Macklemore and pulled out, leaving Sheeran’s continuing US tour in shambles. Following this, Robert Kraft donated $2 million to a Gaza relief fund and Macklemore $1 million. Kraft’s donation backed up his message that while he can have sympathy for any war-torn population, music concerts should be just about music and entertainment and shouldn’t be used to deliver political messages.

Kraft has a point. Concert goers are there to be entertained and be united by a common theme of music, whereas political messages are invariably divisive. In any audience, there will be people who are pro-Palestinian and those who are pro-Israeli.

In contrast, Macklemore made it clear that one of his prime aims in joining Sheeran’s tour was to shout his ‘Free Palestine’ proclamation to as many people as possible. He therefore put his political aims before his music and entertainment, with little thought to the divisiveness caused by that. Also, what did his donation of half of Kraft’s donation say? ‘Okay. I support the Palestinian people, but let’s not get carried away. There’s a limit.’

As for various other Sheeran backing acts also pulling out in solidarity with Macklemore, I think Sheeran had the misfortune of having a large number of Irish acts in his entourage. And the views of the Irish, as one of the most pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel nations this past decade, have been made quite clear.

All of this could give you the impression that a large contingent of musicians were in fact also pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel. But this would be far from the truth, as shown by the backlash last year to Roger Waters’ continuing anti-Israel, BDS drive, urging fellow musicians to boycott appearing in Israel.

While Waters did manage to get 1,100 BDS supporters, among them a handful of famous names, including musicians, the Israel-support backlash from the artistic community organized by CCFP – Creative Community For Peace – gained a startling 47,300 signatories, including hundreds of famous musicians and other celebrities: Paul McCartney, Elton John, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pink, Paul Simon, Jennifer Lopez, Boy George, Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Alicia Keys, Robbie Williams, Ziggy Marley, Clean Bandit, Lee Child, Steven Spielberg, Howard Jacobson, Bernard Henri-Levy … the list of famous names is endless.

So, on the musicians, celebrities and authors front as to whether they support Israel or Palestine, it isn’t even a close contest. Although from this snapshot of the fallout over Ed Sheeran’s concert tour, you might gain the opposite impression.

But why such polarized views? The root of the problem stems from the fact that ‘Free Palestine’ is such a loose expression. It could mean freeing the Palestinian people from any Israeli intervention, influence or occupation by security forces, so that they can then finally live separately and in peace alongside Israel. But to hardliners, including Hamas and even the supposedly more moderate Fatah, it means Palestinians taking over the entire area and all Jews and Israelis being expelled or killed. Which indeed is mirrored by many of their supporters in the West waving banners proclaiming. ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.’

This siren call of ‘Free Palestine’, mainly because it’s so ambiguous, carries with it a marked risk and danger - but moreso to the Palestinian people. From numerous street demonstrations in the West, many carrying those ‘river to sea’ banners, Palestinians might gain the impression that their cause is righteous and just, and so continues. Cue more rock-throwing, knife attacks, rockets, car ramming’s and suicide bombings, and of course Israeli security and reprisals also in turn increase, and the cycle continues. Unwittingly, pro-Palestinian support and protests in the West lead to far more Palestinian lives lost than if they took a less divisive mid-line or indeed encouraged peace between the two.

Given the strength of Macklemore’s views, we could assume that he took more a hardline ‘river to sea’ view but, as said, at best it’s ambiguous. So easy to see why most Jews and Israel supporters would take exception and see his comments as divisive, which was exactly the point Robert Kraft made.

Yes, we can all have sympathy for the innocent Palestinian civilians caught in the tragic Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. But to ignore Hamas’s role in this would demonstrate extreme negligence and ignorance. Hamas could have stopped the war at any point by releasing the hostages early, at the point where the death toll was only in the low thousands. But they dug their heels in and saw holding onto the hostages and seeing the release of their fellow terrorists as far more important than the plight of the Gazan people.

Hamas further ensured that as many civilians as possible were killed by not building a single bomb shelter in Gaza in their 21 years of power and putting their terrorist tunnels to store weapons and key personnel under schools, hospitals and UN Centres. And when the number of civilian women and children killed wasn’t enough, they simply massaged and increased the figures to suit, claiming throughout that ‘mainly women and children’ had been killed. Whereas the final stats show that 26,500 women and children were killed of a 73,500 total, set against a 37,080, 51%, total of terrorists or those involved in fighting. But it appears that Macklemore and his fellow arch-left-wing Palestinian supporters have latched onto this Hamas-fed propaganda line of ‘mainly women and children killed’ and haven’t bothered to look into the underlying hard facts of the conflict.

This 49% civilian/51% combatant ratio is quite remarkable, almost 1 to 1, given that NATO and the USA have notched up ratios averaging 3 civilians to every combatant killed in past similar guerilla-style wars. Israel achieved this ratio by dropping 14 million leaflets and sending 2.3 million text messages to warn civilians to move to ‘safe’ areas.

But despite all of these efforts and achieving such a low civilian-hit rate, Israel got accused of ‘genocide’. If that had been their aim, they could have simply carpet-bombed Gaza in successive waves and indeed saved the lives of some 970 Israeli soldiers lives lost in launching a more concise ground campaign.

Although in latching onto this ‘genocide’ claim, a few startling stats that perhaps Macklemore and his ilk should take into account. Hamas killed 1,200 Jews/Israeli in just six hours. Times that by 2.5 to give a full 15-hour killing day and times again by 720 days – the length of the Gaza War – gives a total of 2,160,000. Now that would have been genocide – if Israel had adopted the same all-out, full-throttle killing tactics as Hamas. And Hamas have made it clear that they would have continued and indeed would repeat October 7^th if given the chance. Also, that Israel-Jew death toll from Hamas was 80%-82% civilians, because, unlike the IDF and Israel, they made no effort whatsoever to discriminate.

Indeed, a further startling stat with that 1,200 is that Hamas killed three times as many Jews in that 6 hours than the Nazis killed in any similar period at Auschwitz. That figure arrived at because the maximum number that gas chamber ‘showers’ held at Auschwitz was 200, then there would be a 3-hour gap for clearing the bodies and sanitizing before the next ‘shower’ contingent. So, the maximum number that could have been killed in six hours was 400.

Also, and this is grossly ironic given the concert audience Macklemore was soap-boxing to, that 1,200 killed on October 7^th, included 350 young concert-goers at the Nova Festival – indeed mostly ‘peaceniks’ in support of harmony between Israel and the Palestinians. It comes to something when a musician will soap-box a ‘cause’ at a concert, completely ignoring the fact that 350 fellow concert-goers have been killed by Hamas in the name of that same ‘cause’. And that death-toll also achieves something of a grim record, as it’s the highest number of concert-goers that have ever been massacred. The record before that was the Paris ‘Bataclan’ massacre by ISIS, which claimed 90 lives, almost a quarter of the Nova-Festival number.

How any musician in their right mind or with an even-handed conscience could possibly ignore or side-step that fact when soap-boxing to a concert audience is beyond me. When David Baddiel first titled his book ‘Jews Don’t Count’, I don’t think he fully appreciated how macabrely ironic it might be.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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For many years the clarion call of many European governments, including the UK, has been that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. I must admit that this call was repeated so consistently in the media that I originally accepted this as a given fact. But when I saw that the Israeli government constantly challenged this, naming the area Judea and Samaria rather than ‘West Bank’, and asserting that land claims there were ‘disputed’ rather than ‘illegal’, I decided to look further into this disparity.

The label ‘West Bank’ was in fact attached by Jordan after the 1948 war, when it occupied the area up until 1967, when it was then taken back by Israel. Before 1948, it was referred to by Jews as Judea and Samaria and a number of Jews resided there until cleared out by Jordan. Indeed, towns such as Bethlehem were in ancient Judea – the birthplace of Jesus, who was of course born a Jew to a Jewish family. Many of the Jews/Israelis returning to those areas were those originally expelled by Jordan and Arab forces, though those numbers have since been added to significantly. But little is said about that Jewish expulsion in historical reports, possibly due to their number being far less than the number of Palestinians cleared from the newly formed Israel in that same period.

However, if we were to then say that no Jewish people should reside in those areas, then this would completely undermine the ‘right of return’ which Palestinian Arabs voice strongly at every opportunity. They can’t have it both ways. This Jewish ‘return’ is seen particularly starkly in Hebron, where a hard core of only 1,100 Jews live amongst a far larger Palestinian population of 210,000, with the security barriers needed to protect that minority population splitting parts of the city.

But historically, prior to a massacre by Arabs in Hebron is 1929, which cost 67 Jewish lives, there was always a Jewish population in Hebron. The remaining 650 Jewish population then fled the city in fear, and a Jewish return is seen as warranted not only because of those Jewish historic roots, but also because Hebron is the site of the Tomb of Machpela, where Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried, and the second holiest place for Jews worldwide.

However, while both the current Israeli government and most of its people support the right of Israeli Jews to re-settle in Judea and Samaria, a growing number of Israelis are against it, mainly on the basis of the dangers and loss of soldiers and security personnel in guarding West Bank barriers and divides amongst a Palestinian population. This is more or less the same rationale – too much trouble and danger – behind Israel pulling all its settlers out of Gaza in 2004. And look how that ended? Short-term risk and danger cut, but leading to far greater long-term risk and danger, allowing Hamas to build up strongly in the face of zero Israeli security presence. Supporters of maintaining Israeli presence in the West Bank/ Judea/Samaria point to the same: could zero presence there in fact lead to the emboldening of radical Islamic groups there and far greater future problems?

But where did this drive to have zero Jewish-Israeli presence in Palestinian lands come from? And what on earth is the British government (and possibly other nations) thinking of in supporting it? After all, this stance to effectively remove all Jews from an area hasn’t been seen since Nazi Germany. And when we look at the situation the other side in Israel, we have a 21% Arab (mostly Muslim) population, totalling 2.1 million people. So why should a sixth of that, 350,000 Jews, living among a Palestinian population of 5.5 million, only 6.35%, cause a problem?

Much of this stems from Arafat’s proclamation in the 1980s: ‘We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.’ The key phrase ‘We will make life unbearable for Jews…’ has become a standard bearer for 45 years of terrorist actions since. But, of course, instead of just retreating and crumbling, Israel built up a formidable army and security force, and through a series of barriers and check-points, managed to largely deflect this almost non-stop terrorist onslaught. All of which, in turn, was pointed to by the Palestinians as being further instruments of their suffering. Almost as if these barriers and check-points were there purely to make Palestinian lives miserable rather than protect Jewish lives. You couldn’t make it up.

Still to this day, there is an average of 348 terrorist attacks a month against Israelis by Palestinians, many of these taking place in the West Bank/Judea/Samaria. In contrast, the number of attacks the other way from Israeli settlers to Palestinians is a fifth of that – but these latter attacks are invariably at the forefront of the news, with attacks against Israeli Jews hardly getting a mention. Is this because terrorist attacks against Jews are so frequent that they’re hardly newsworthy anymore, or some other reason?

It does appear that at some stage, when Palestinian leaders were asked why they didn’t wish for any Jews to be present in any Palestinian territories, simply claiming, ‘Because they’re Jews,’ wasn’t sufficient. Worse yet, that would be viewed as racist and supporting ethnic cleansing. So, they latched onto the claim, ‘Because they’re troublesome and violent,’ and have since been pumping out every possible news story to support that, which Western and mainstream media have happily swallowed and repeated without question.

Deep breath. Yes, there are some settlers who are troublesome, and the last few years, some of their actions have become increasingly and worryingly violent – almost as if they’re trying to play ‘catch-up’ on terrorist violence against them. But these ‘violent settlers’ number no more than 150-200 out of 350,000 settlers. And their violent actions, some of it indeed retaliatory, as said is a fifth of that taking place from Palestinian terrorists against settlers and other Israelis. The most serious Palestinian terrorist action against settlers was in fact the Itmar massacre, in which an entire family of five were wiped out, including an 11-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 3-month-old baby. Yet this was glossed over in a later BBC report from Louis Theroux, when he portrayed the issue of a settler wearing a gun as being mostly for intimidation and threat to local Palestinians than necessary protection.

But what is being done each side to curb these actions – on one side violent settlers, on the other, Palestinian terrorists. While being condemned by the international community for not doing enough to curb settler violence, and certainly more could be done – Israeli has increased its security presence and made a number of arrests, plus has opened reform schools for underage violent settlers. Whereas, on the other side, we see little or nothing done at all; indeed, the Palestinian Authority still has an open ‘pay-for-slay’ policy, which rewards terrorists and their families for killing Jews. How would it be if Israel had a similar open reward system for attacking and killing Palestinians? It would be front-page news worldwide. Given this, why on earth didn’t the UK and various other European nations, in their rush to recognize a Palestinian State, at the same time make it conditional on them dropping their ‘pay for slay’ of Jews policy. Relinquishing murder sentences for selling land to Jews or ‘collaborating’ with Israelis would have also been wise pre-conditions.

Which brings us full circle to why Israel currently doesn’t feel a Palestinian state is viable. What possible sane nation would entertain a State the other side which has an open policy of rewarding terrorists to kill its neighbouring citizens. Such a situation is completely unworkable.

So, we’ve covered the 100-200 Israeli settlers and 2,000 Palestinian terrorists the other side who grab all the news. Or rather, the 100-200 grab most of the news and the 2,000 terrorist actions get minimal coverage. But what of the remaining 349,800 Israeli settlers and 5,499,000 Palestinians. The fact that they merge and mesh together quite well rarely features in the news, the agitators and terrorists grab all the headlines.

Yet Ed Miliband’s action to restrict goods from West Bank companies might see far more complaints from Palestinians in those regions than he suspects. Of course, Palestinian leaders say little, because they’ve shown long ago they have little interest in the welfare of their own people. But for Palestinians in the street, West Bank companies and West Bank housing have a marked impact on their lives.

Reason being, 60% of the labour force in those West Bank companies are Palestinian, a number of them also in management – all at wages 80%-200% above the pay scale of Palestinian companies. And the construction of West-Bank settlements also employs 80% Palestinian labour, again at pay rates 80%-200% above that gained in the purely Palestinian territories.

This apart from the fact that local Palestinians welcome the increased spending power in local shops that the Israeli settlers bring. All of this boosts their economy tremendously, but this voice of local Palestinians on the ground – who for the most part integrate well with Israeli settlers and benefit from their presence – is rarely heard. Partly, because if they openly proclaim this, they risk being arrested as ‘collaborators’ by the Palestinian Authority, plus the media/press direction appears to have already been set in stone. So, the only line followed is that of settler aggravation and violence.

Paradoxically, Miliband has come out with the statement that the settlements and settler violence equals ‘ethnic cleansing’ against the Palestinians. Without appreciating that the reverse is in fact true: that portraying settlers as troublesome and violent is part of a Palestinian ploy to rid the area of all Jews. As, obviously, the impetus to get rid of them simply because they’re Jewish wouldn’t be sufficient.

But Miliband appears to be missing a crucial point. If being troublesome and violent was seen as sufficient reason to rid an area of a population, then given the history of Palestinian terrorism to date – with Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews amounting to 5x the number of settler attacks – would he equally see that as a reason to rid the area of Palestinians? I don’t think so. The double-standards applied here are quite staggering.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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For these calculations, we have taken the initial statistics from the ‘Good Shepherd Collective’, a Palestinian led project, so these stats, totalling 73,586, would normally be at the higher end of estimates. Lower estimates range more between 43,000 – 54,000. The initial list from ‘Good Shepherd’ is unadjusted, then the second, final list, is calculated using UN and war monitor guidelines from the 2014 Gaza war.

‘Good Shepherd’ Stats:

Total killed: 73,586

Children: 20,179

Women: 12,500

Men: 40,738

Even from these Palestinian-led statistics, we see that the claim that ‘mainly women and children’ have been killed is put the lie to. But when we see the UN and war monitor adjusted figure, we see an even starker picture. From the 2014 stats, it was determined that the children (under 18) figure was heavily affected by the number of male child Hamas fighters, mostly in the 13-17 range, but some as young as 12. The adjusted figure was reduced by 27.5%.

Similarly, to get an accurate guide to the number of civilian men killed, UN guidelines determined that the number of women killed should be taken as an initial guide – as women would not normally be involved in fighting, less a 25% margin to allow for those men normally out fighting, as women would generally be more at home taking care of the children. Therefore:

UN and war-monitor adjusted figures:

Total killed: 73,586

Children, adjusted -27.5% 14,630

Women: 12,500

Male civilians: women number less 25%: 9,375

Sub-total (non-involved in fighting): 36,505

Total involved in fighting: 37,081

I have left out the minor stats of medics and journalists claimed as killed, since reports of militants and terrorists posing as medics and journalists range anything from 40%-70%. Again, we see attempts to raise these figures as much as possible, along with the number of women and children killed, in order to garner Western sympathy and demonize Israel as much as possible.

In effect, we see a final figure of 47.49% civilian casualties vs 52.51% terrorists/ or involved in fighting. Almost unheard of in guerilla-style wars, where stats usually range between 2-3 civilians for each combatant killed. This alone puts the lie to claims of ‘genocide’, otherwise we’d have to label every past war or conflict as ‘genocide’, or indeed a 2-3 times worse genocide than Israel has committed in Gaza.

But how has Israel achieved such a low civilian to combatant ratio compared to other wars, including those of NATO and the USA? Highly targeted munitions has been one factor, but in addition Israel dropped 14 million leaflets in Gaza and sent 2.3 million text messages warning people of impending strikes and urging them to move to ‘safer’ areas.

At every stage, though, Hamas have tried to impede these efforts by warning people not to move, otherwise they would be considered ‘traitors’ and ‘collaborators’, along with finally shooting some civilians attempting to flee, which of course they blamed on Israel.

Efforts to increase the civilian rate killed as much as possible have been seen through Hamas not building a single bomb shelter in Gaza in all of 20 years – in contrast to the nearest Israeli town of Sderot, which has more bomb shelters per capita than anywhere else worldwide – then in addition building its terror tunnels and ammunition stores under schools, hospitals and UN Centres.

This ludicrous claim of ‘genocide’ has been repeated so much in the Arab-Jihadist world that now it has become accepted as a ‘given’. This was highlighted just this week by Turkey’s Justice Minister raising with Interpol a ‘red notice’ for ‘genocide’ against Netanyahu. Shame at the same time they didn’t ‘hand themselves in’ for the 300,000 Kurds and 4 million Armenians Turkey killed since 1918.

The current level of extreme hyperbole is further shown by Turkey claiming ‘genocide’ over Israel intercepting the ‘Sumud flotilla’ in May, 2026, which carried 430 activists, despite the fact that not a single person was harmed or killed – indeed most were handed water and sandwiches and then peacefully put on flights back to their home countries. Stark contrast to the Hamas incursion of 7^th October which claimed 1,200 mostly civilian Israeli lives.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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It has been well-known that media bias against myself and my Republican administration both at home and abroad has been rampant for some while. Hardly surprising for media organizations jam-packed with left-wing, Democrat-leaning journalists who have little love for a Republican Party.

However, there is meant to be in journalism an ethos to adhere to and report the truth, which has presented those same journalists with a terrible dichotomy. Sadly, they have chosen to skew the truth wherever possible or only present selected facts to underpin their own inbred left-wing aims and beliefs. This has led in some cases to engendering an absolute hatred for the stance of Republican and Maga followers, with the tip of that extreme hatred being witnessed last year with the murder of Charlie Kirk. The message clear: Right-wing Maga beliefs have been painted as so abhorrent by the mainstream (hard-left leaning) media, that the only solution is to kill those purporting them. I, too, suffered a close-call assassination attempt last year as a result of this.

This purposeful skewing of the truth could be seen also in the BBC report on January 6^th, which totally misrepresented my stance on that day by falsely editing crucial comments. On which I now have a planned $10 billion lawsuit claim against the BBC.

But in times of war, in particular against a regime like Iran which openly threatens the USA and West and restricts the freedom of its own people with extreme repression, those previous journalistic norms usually shift to a more nation-patriotic stance. This could be seen in WW2, whereby Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s doctrines were heavily supported by the Western media and those from Nazi Germany heavily suppressed. Indeed, Lord Haw-Haw, who ran radio shows from inside Germany promoting Nazi aims and agendas, was hanged at the end of WW2 for ‘treason and supporting an enemy cause.’

Of course, we have moved too far from that in terms of the freedom of modern journalism to punish left-wing leaning (unwitting or purposeful) tacit support of the Iranian regime to take any such action today. But still some semblance of an ‘even playing field’ should be a reasonable requirement. There is much talk now in response to my threat of bombing energy plants and bridges that this constitutes a ‘war crime’ threat, without any mention that Iran’s bombing of civilian infrastructures in neighbouring Gulf States has already breached that ‘war crime’ threshold. Not to mention that their blocking of the civilian passage of oil and essential goods in the Strait of Hormuz, similarly – if applying the same even-handed yardstick – would constitute a ‘war crime’.

So, we are left with a situation that Iran, according to media reporting, is fully allowed to regularly commit ‘war crimes’, but as soon as their adversaries do battle with them, there are cries of foul play and their hands are media-tied against any retaliatory ‘war-crimes’. With one vital factor also overlooked. In times of war, energy plants and bridges become part of that war structure rather than purely civilian use. Energy right now is vital for the manufacture of missiles and drones, and bridges vital for their transportation.

This could be seen clearly in WW2, in particular with the classic ‘Dambusters’ raid. This essentially cut off all hydro-electric power to the Ruhr Valley, which along with starving power to all the war-machine manufacturing factories in that region, also cut off all power to the civilian population of the area. But were there any cries of ‘war crimes’ for that action? No. The journalists of that era were intelligent and balanced enough to see that the main aim of those strikes was to curtail the Nazis war-equipment manufacturing capabilities. So too these planned strikes now against Iran’s energy hubs.

Sadly, however, as we saw previously with Iran’s proxy Hamas in Gaza, we are seeing an Iranian regime more intent on its own survival than the welfare of Iran and its own people. In Gaza, if Hamas had been more focused on the welfare of Gaza and its own people, then they would have handed over the hostages and ended the war when the death toll had reached 4,000-5,000 and they saw the opening destructive bombing salvos. Instead, Hamas hid like rats in tunnels embedded within and underneath civilian infra-structures so that civilian damage was maximized – which they then used to demonize Israel rather than, correctly, blame their own war tactics of using the Gazan population as human shields.

Similarly, we see the same tactic being used by the current Iranian regime. Despite our aiming with pin-point accuracy at missile launchers, manufacturing depots and regime structures – civilian casualties are amplified or mis-reported. Along with our targets of war-equipment supplying energy sites reported as war crimes, when Iran’s retaliation has been against similar sites in their Gulf neighbours, with no possible claims of them supporting war manufacturing, since those Gulf neighbours are not involved in any attacks against Iran, purely defence. Similarly, restriction of the passage of ships in the Strait of Hormuz does not constitute curtailment of war equipment manufacturing, since it is aimed at global oil restriction – so clearly a war crime, although rarely reported as such.

Alongside these ‘war crime’ claims from some media outlets, as if almost they were unwittingly in the pay of Iran’s regime – although I suspect an anti-Maga-Republican stance is more at the root of this biased reporting – there have been reports that the Iranian public are unsettled about these planned strikes.

So, I want to assure the Iranian public – in particular those who would like to shake off the yolk of this current oppressive Jihadist regime – that this is all part of the aim of weakening this regime, so that hopefully they finally crumble. Along with further assurance that if the current regime does crumble and is replaced by a more open, freedom-welcoming regime that isn’t constantly attacking the West or its neighbours either directly or through proxies, we would be happy to step in and help rebuild that damaged infrastructure – in the same way that we did post WW2 in Germany. Plus the fact that with an open and free regime in place in Iran, much foreign investment would flood in to help rebuild and make Iran prosper.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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When I first embarked on this war with our partners, Israel, our first intention was to rid Iran of any future possible nuclear capabilities or ambitions, seriously degrade its missile and military structure and remove its current leaders. All of which has been achieved. Its leadership, Air-force and Navy are in tatters and its missile capability 80-90% degraded. US and Israeli planes may fly over Iran air-space at will and bomb unimpeded.

As part of this, it was also seen as desirable if on the back of this degrading and weakening of the current regime, the Iranian people rose up and pushed for a new regime. However, having seen Iran’s retaliation of hitting out at neighbouring Gulf States and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, that desire moves to an absolute necessity. A regime that holds the rest of the world to ransom over shipping and oil trade cannot remain in place.

If the regime cannot be removed or replaced in total, then two options remain. Kharg Island, a main transit point for much of Iran’s oil and gas exports, will be taken over. In addition, a coastline stretch 80 miles each side of the apex point of the Strait of Hormuz and going 30 miles inland will be taken over by US, Israeli and international forces and permanently annexed – so that the Strait of Hormuz is once again returned to a protected international waterway, as it should be.

On the aforementioned attack by Iran on Gulf neighbours, while this was a shock to those neighbours – many of whom in fact acted as honest brokers in trying to reach a peace accord and avoid conflict – I should offer my thanks to the Iranian regime. Their actions have shown clearly to these Gulf nations that Iran poses by far the largest threat to them and, in so doing, has pushed them further into accord with the USA and Israel. Through this, Iran has done more to help further the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab nations than I have achieved in the past decade of negotiations. Thank you.

Belligerent responses by Iran to the current 15-point peace offer on the table that they either reject those offers, find them too ‘excessive’ or that the war will only be ended on ‘Iran’s terms and at a time of their choosing’, are not helpful. This simply immediately removes from the table any offer of a cease fire while negotiations are taking place. Because, of course, we are not going to hold fire against an enemy who show no intentions or desire to make peace.

And as for claims of ‘who is winning’, while we have removed much of your prime leadership, Air-force, Navy and missile capability, while in turn you have made hardly a dent in ours or that of Israel – there remains little doubt. All you have done is aim at softer civilian targets in Israel and surrounding Gulf nations with limited success; the latter, as said, merely alienating those Gulf nations against you and pushing them further and stronger into the ‘Abraham Accords’ embrace. And as for your curtailing shipping passage in the Strait of Hormuz, as said, this is only a temporary measure and will cease as soon as we take over Kharg Island and annexe a ‘protection zone’ around the Strait of Hormuz. Your missile and drone capability will also be further eroded as the war continues, until it is negligible or virtually nil.

It appears you are putting your regime survival before the welfare of your own people, which will simply further alienate much of the Iranian populous against you. As it is, estimates of internal support for your regime are only 20%, at best 40%, so trying to maintain control of a population which is anything from 60-80% against you is by no means a long-term solution. If they do not rise up against you in the immediate wake of this war, then they likely will in the months that follow. You would be hard-pushed to last a year. And trying to stem that flow against you by brutal oppression and mass killing will just harden that wave of opposition and uprising against you, with the only option then a complete overthrow of your regime.

But, mindful of the fact that you still have support in the nation for a religious-led doctrine, as said, at best 40%, but more likely only 20% - even though they might be particularly visible and vocal on the streets, thereby misleading margins – this then raises concerns in my mind that a complete transition to a fresh government might entail heavy civil unrest, verging on a war, in the process.

To avoid this, along with war-forced moves by us to annexe and control key regions of Iran, I am going to make the offer, in addition to my 15-point plan, that the current regime enter into a coalition partnership with the son of the past Shah, Reza Pahlavi. Through this, all parties will be represented: those wishing to retain a theology-led regime and those wishing to lean towards freedom and a more Westernized-style government. With, of course, a number of more flexible and reasonable laws to reflect this transition. This then avoids ‘heavy-swing’ politics where one side feel they are not represented at all; indeed, both sides will be equally represented.

I know that in response to my current 15-point peace plan, there have been calls from Iran for ‘war reparations’. Given a maintaining of the current regime situation, we would oppose this request. But if there was a move towards my aforesaid ‘coalition government’ suggestion, we would be open to it, in the same way that the USA was open to helping re-build West Germany under the ‘Marshall Plan’ after WW2. Because at that stage we would view Iran more as a friend of the West and therefore open to trade and investment back and forth. I also feel this arrangement would do much to repair the damage caused by you bombing your Gulf neighbours and would hopefully allay their future fears. As well as helping rebuild the future finances and prospects of Iran to benefit its people.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Five months from the war in Gaza ending – if we take the point of the last Israeli hostages being released as ‘the end’ – it was discovered that aid and food to Gaza through UNRWA was being skimmed by Hamas by as much as 30-40%. As a result, a new aid organization was formed titled the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Fund’, GHF, with the aim of getting food directly to Palestinian families without skimming by Hamas – which was, of course, being used to further support their arms and war effort.

Hamas saw this as an immediate threat to their income, so started spreading false stories about Israelis killing Palestinians trying to get aid. These stories were in turn picked up by Palestinian news ‘stringers’ in the pay of Hamas and repeated without question or checking by news outlets worldwide. For almost two months hardly a day went by without a fresh horror story about Israelis killing poor Palestinians while simply trying to collect food.

This reached such a level that finally a strong message was shot across the bows of news outlets by no less than Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel, with the following statement:

‘Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press have reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These reports were FALSE. Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.

It is Hamas that continues to terrorize and intimidate those who seek food aid. The only source for these misleading, exaggerated, and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of antisemitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States. Media sources who willingly parrot these libelous allegations should recant their fake news stories, apologize, and pledge to practice actual reporting of fact instead of engaging in dangerous propaganda that assists the terror group Hamas as they continue to hold innocent hostages for over 600 days after butchering over 1,200 people on October 7th.

The efforts of GHF have resulted in over 5 million meals to civilians without incident. For the New York Times, AP, and CNN to be part of a Hamas-fed false narrative is reprehensible. It represents more than mere sloppy journalism. It’s feeding and inciting violence against innocent people in the United States.

We are demanding an immediate retraction of the lies and are appealing to all media sources to act with objective professionalism to cover actual events instead of being a partner of terrorism by blindly following Hamas news releases.’

However, despite this strong message, these stories spread by major news outlets continued with abandon with reports of Israeli fire killing Gazans as they desperately try and get aid, yet when examined deeper – particularly when sourcing GHF worker accounts, who are directly on the spot distributing the aid – there have been no such incidents of the IDF killing Gazans. The only verifiable action has been of the IDF firing in the air to warn off a pressing crowd, who it appeared were trying to loot aid.

But these numerous false stories and images of Palestinians in Gaza struggling to get food and aid obviously had a strong impact. So much so that Greta Thunberg, undoubtedly the world’s champion ‘green’, set out with a small ‘aid flotilla’ to Gaza. Little more than a publicity stunt, since the amount of aid in the flotilla was only 3% of one truckload, at a time when GHF were bringing in 100 trucks a day of food and aid to Gaza. Greta and her little band of supporting ‘Greens’ were apprehended by Israeli forces off the coast of Gaza, and there were lame attempts to try and claim Israeli ‘mishandling and brutality’ – but the truth of the matter was they were all given sandwiches and water by the Israeli troops and were put on flights back to their home countries, all paid for by the Israeli government. A stark contrast to the starvation, brutality and rape of Israeli hostages by Hamas.

Also missed by Greta and her band of Greens is the fact that for two years leading up to October 7^th, Hamas fired a succession of incendiary balloons over southern Israel to burn and scorch hundreds of thousands of acres of pastureland and farmland. Hardly something that a ‘Green party’ should be supporting.

But it seems that Greta’s little flotilla ‘stunt campaign’ struck a chord with the ‘Greens’, because suddenly they became ardent supporters of Gaza and Hamas. To the extent that in the recent campaign in UK’s Gorton and Denton – seen as pivotal because it’s one of the first by elections since Labour and Kier Starmer took control – little mention was made of the ecology or success of wind farms. The usual staples of ‘Greens’. Instead, the Gaza drum was beaten strongly – no doubt to appeal to the area’s 30% Pakistani-Muslim population. And the bid succeeded. The ‘Greens’ won their first by-election ever, with ‘Reform’ coming second and Labour pushed into a weak third. When for 30 years, Gorton and Denton has been a Labour stronghold.

The only positive to take away from the whole debacle is ‘Reform’ coming 2nd ahead of Labour, which when rolled out into a nationwide electorate where the Muslim vote is no more than 5%, bodes well for them. It seems unlikely that the ‘Greens’ would perform as well on a ‘Gaza ticket’ in areas with a negligible Muslim vote. In fact, the ‘Greens’ could ensure ‘Reform’ win the next UK general election by robbing Labour of the Muslim vote in key areas.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Israel’s reluctance to see the formation of a Palestinian State is based on the fear that it would simply become a launch pad for future attacks on Israel. And there are good, solid grounds for this reasoning. Look what happened with Gaza: Hamas took control and spent twenty years stockpiling rockets and mortars and, after regularly firing these at Israel, built up to the October, 7^th massacre – the largest single terrorist massacre since 9/11, which led to a brutal, tragic two-year war.

The track record of Fatah in the West Bank-Judea-Samaria is hardly better. Years ago, not long before the Oslo accords, Yasser Arafat pronounced, ‘We will make life insufferable for the Jews. They will have no choice but to leave.’ Added to this, while Fatah announce their aim is to end ‘annexation’ and ‘occupation’, observing foreign nations mistakenly thought they’re just talking about the ‘contested’ areas of the West Bank-Judea-Samaria. Whereas, Fatah, along with all Palestinian Jihadist groups, mean the entire area. They don’t recognize Jews and Israelis in any part of the territory, thus the protest chants, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free.’

While there have been no terrorist attacks from Fatah on the scale of October 7^th, thirty-five years of post-Oslo small-scale terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens ensued, sometimes over 300 a month. Israel has every right to resist the formation of a Palestinian State. Given the track record of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad, doing so would simply be solidifying and giving recognition to what would essentially be a terrorist State.

Which is why the recent rush of some nations to recognize a Palestinian State – Spain, Ireland, Norway, France, Canada, UK and Portugal – makes little sense. Following in the wake of October 7^th and the ensuing war with Israel, it appears as if terrorism is being rewarded. Tellingly, this is also the view from Hamas, who have already proclaimed October 7^th to be a glorious victory. ‘Look what it has gained us? Recognition of a Palestinian State from major world players, which has appeared elusive for so many years.’ Even Abbas of Fatah, usually at loggerheads with Hamas, has proclaimed October 7^th to be a ‘glorious and important action’.

Following the dust settling on President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, some nations have added the caveat that their final approval of a Palestinian State is ‘conditional’ – in other words, their recognition of a Palestinian State is aspirational rather than actual. And would now depend on that 20-point Gaza peace plan being followed. But this now appears very much as if ‘small print’, and needs to be announced in prime, bold letters.

The first major sticking point of Trump’s plan is whether or not Hamas will lay down their arms and relinquish power, as originally agreed. Hamas are now shifting the goalposts and saying that they will only lay down their arms at the point that a Palestinian State is finally formed.

Now I, along with a number of other writers and political journalists, have long argued that the only way to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel is to follow in the footsteps of what took place in Germany post WW2. A complete de-Nazification, although in the case of Gaza and the West Bank, this would entail a complete de-Jihadism.

The first element of this would be to set strict rules that discussions on the formation of a Palestinian State cannot take place until there has been a cessation of terrorist attacks for three years. This then presents Hamas with a total ‘Fosbury flop’ situation, turning their intent for a Palestinian State back on itself and thereby presenting them with no choice but to give up their weapons and renounce terrorism if they wish to see that State come to fruition.

Coinciding with that, the following conditions: Gaza and WB schools to cease preaching of Jew hatred and glorification of terrorism and martyrdom; ‘Pay for Slay’ and similar terrorism incentives to cease; weapons stockpiles of all Palestinian terrorist groups to be handed over; schools, hospitals and streets not to be named after past terrorists and those already done so to be renamed; laws with punishments for working with Jews/Israelis (‘Normalization’ and ‘Collaboration’) as well as those for selling land to Jews, to be relinquished. Indeed, working in harmony with Jews/Israelis would be future bywords for successful peace and cooperation with such a close neighbour.

Of course, a number of staunch Israel supporters will claim this will never work. That the Jihadis will never relinquish Jihadism; it’s stamped too deeply on their souls. My answer to that would be ‘fine’. Discussions about a Palestinian State are then postponed beyond the three years, that can kicked even further down the road. In short, the Jihadis are simply proving the point that Israel has been right all along: the formation of a Palestinian State would be little more than a terrorist State right next door to them.

As a further safeguard, if by some miracle Palestinian jihadist factions were able to stay their terrorist hands for those three years, the final formation of a Palestinian State would carry the condition that a cessation of terrorism would remain in place for a further 5 or 7 years. A sort of ‘probation’ period, if you will.

At the same time as laying down these strict ‘de-Jihadism’ dictates with the Palestinians, perhaps it would also be a good idea to tie the hands of their sponsors and financiers over the years, as follows: financing and supporting of terrorist groups to carry massive fines in the billions, along with trade restrictions; harbouring of terrorists (such as in the case of Qatar and Turkey) to carry similar fines and trade restrictions; promotion and support of terrorists to carry the same sanctions (‘Promotion’ would have an impact on organizations like ‘Al-Jazeera’, who constantly take a pro-Palestinian and Hamas line. It could even affect media groups like CNN and the BBC when they take an overtly biased line seeming to favour terrorist groups); banks and finance institutes who hold or transfer terrorist funds to also face fines and sanctions in the billions.

Given such extreme sanctions and clamp downs on terrorist funding, arms supply and support or promotion, this would effectively starve off the oxygen that allows terrorism to breathe. This would not only have an effect on Palestinian groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, but also groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis and indeed al-Qaeda and ISIS. It would have a strongly sobering and curtailing effect on terrorism in general.

Various Arab nations now jostling to take part in Trump’s Gaza renewal and peace plans – Saudi, UAE, Egypt and Jordan – would hopefully all eagerly support this initiative, having suffered from internal terrorism themselves.

Nations like Qatar and Turkey, who try to play both sides, would have little choice but to say to Hamas: ‘You may as well lay down your arms, as we cannot continue to support you or harbour your leaders. The penalties are too severe.’ Even Iran, an arch supporter, would have to seriously take stock in the face of it being fined and strangled economically.

In terms of ensuring those sanctions, threats and fines have ‘teeth’, Qatar has enormous property and financial holdings in the USA and UK. A freezing of those would certainly be a wake-up call. Iran too has a number of assets and financial holdings, though to a lesser extent. And Turkey now is heavily reliant on foreign tourism; a freezing of international flights and tourism restrictions would have dire consequences for Turkey.

There are various ways and means of ensuring these sanctions and fines lead to a severe curtailment in terrorist activity, if the will and resolve is there. If this all came as a result of the October 7^th attack, this would also be a great about-turn to Hamas’s claim of it leading to a Palestinian State. They will in fact have been instrumental in putting it further out of reach; or at least would have determined that it could only be formed as a ‘peaceful State’ without their involvement. As well as, hopefully, seeing a serious curtailment in global Islamic terrorism.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - mostly on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, as well as some on writing and books - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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I originally put this comment in notes, but as quite a long comment, I feel it warranted its own space…

Alex Churchill’s recent substack article about David Lean and his epic film ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ starts as follows:

David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia, was born in 1908, in Croydon. How did a man who grew up with a vista of what now rates as one the grimmest places in Britain, end up producing one of the most stunning motion pictures ever made?

»» Now, I might have just made my comment at the end of the article, but unfortunately it was one of those substack entries that disallows comments unless you are a paid subscriber. And why on earth should I subscribe to a thread that has got some basic facts clearly wrong.

I know quite a bit about Croydon, because I was born there and lived there much of my life. And it wasn’t only David Lean that was born there, but also Brian Clemens, one of the UK’s leading TV writers and producers, creating series like The Avengers, Danger Man and The Professionals.

I myself have had quite a succesful writing career (though nothing in David Lean’s or Brian Clemens’ league), writing 22 books which have notched up 1.7 million in sales. ‘Past Imperfect’, one of my biggest successes, in fact was listed in a top-ten all-time best crime-thrillers list in ‘The Times’ alongside John Grisham and Harper Lee.

But David Lean in fact was raised in South Croydon, only a mile from my main family home, which is a very leafy suburb with a mix of middle-class and more wealthy homes. My own family home was just across from a golf course, backed onto a forest which was the Queen’s land and housed a public school, and we had a swimming pool in the garden. Far removed from the ‘grimmest’ image portrayed by the writer.

In fact, half a mile away from us was a private road which had some of the most exclusive homes in the UK… home to the likes of Adam Faith, Jonny Halliday (a major singer in the 60s) and footballer Ian Wright.

Indeed, in the 1930s, nearby was the UK’s first airport in Croydon (on the nearby Purley Way), with a glorious swimming pool in art deco style 50 yards away from the main terminal and airport hotel. So, Croydon then was a very select place to live.

Still now, South Croydon remains more select and leafy, as well as neighbouring Shirley, still a haven of millionaire homes. But in West Croydon, the deterioration can be seen. A collection of more tightly packed terraced houses, an influx of immigrants in that area (partly because the Home Office is centred there for processing newly arrived immigrants), there has been a terrible increase in gang and knife crime… so that is where the ‘grim’ label comes from. But sit in the luxury homes in the Shirley Hills and South Croydon’s Croham Valley and you could easily be in the Beverly Hills (less a few palm tress, of course!).

Besides which, even if David Lean, Brian Clemens or myself had been brought up the ‘other side of the railway tracks’ in West Croydon, that wouldn’t equal a stifling of creative juices. Just look at the Beatles, all raised in middle or working class homes in one of the roughest towns in the UK, Liverpool, but their creativity shone through. Possibly in part as a way of escaping from that dire background.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - mainly on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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I was sent this link with one of John Oliver’s trademark diatribes and had the question posed by a contact and friend on Facebook, but since this same old turkey keeps arising among today’s left (or are they now the ‘extreme, anarchaic left’?) I thought it worth putting to bed once and for all.

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There is a ‘blame Israel for everything’ habit among today’s left-wing, which unfortunately John Oliver has bought into without examining the facts. It wasn’t just Bibi that supported Hamas initially, but most of the Israeli Knesset. Now, of course, Israel isn’t going to be stupid enough to support a group that would aim for its destruction, so what was going on?

At the time this happened, the PLO was very agressive and was purely land-gain aimed like any regular army. There was NO religious connection at all. Back then, Hamas, which was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, was quite a peaceful/social/religious-linked organization, didn’t have a military wing. Pre the Islamic revolution in Iran and pre Bin Laden, this was quite normal. So, Israel thought that Hamas would be a good point of social/religious cohesion to act as a counterfoil to the PLO.

Both Egypt and Saudi got caught out by the same situation with the Muslim Brotherhood. They gave internal religious teaching almost totally over to the Muslim Brotherhood in their own nations... then later in the day realized the MB had political aims and were aiming to poison and turn the people against their own government and leaders. Now, today, the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in both Saudi and Egypt. In fact, in Saudi, the Muslim Brotherhood led to the creation of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

So, this backing of Hamas came at a time when they were no more than a religious/social org... but then later they developed political and armed wings and, with stronger Iranian backing, became the monster they are today. So, this explains why Israel why have initially supported them, but then later certainly would not have.

But John Oliver could also have unearthed this, if he’d been bothered, rather than simply jump on the ‘blame Israel for everything’ bandwagon increasingly popular with the left-wing. The facts are there and quite obvious with what happened with the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi and Egypt.

Certainly, apart from the initial support many moons ago, Israel ceased funding or having any influence over Hamas more than thirty years ago. That support and funding has come entirely from Iran and Qatar. If Israel had continued funding and had any type of influence over Hamas this past thirty years or more, they’d have been able to say, ‘Our funding is purely to build up your social network and support the people of Gaza, not build tunnels or fire rockets to attack us.’

There has obviously been a dramatic sea change at some point, which today’s left can’t be bothered to investigate or unearth. ‘Blaming Israel for everything is the most popular game in town, so let’s just stick with that and not bother with scratching beneath the surface.’

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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The above video, while a lampoon, was based on fact, but the full extent and details of those facts are enlightening. Indeed, while the early clashes between Arabs and Jews are strongly focused-on, along with the later displacement of Palestinian-Arabs, the Nakba, little attention is paid to the numerous strong contributions made by the early Jewish settlers.

In 1919, Dr. Manson-Bahr, a future director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, described Palestine as one of the most highly malarious countries in the world. In the final months of WW1, whilst an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the British Army in Palestine, he witnessed a force of 40,500 men lose 20,427 men in 9 weeks due to malaria. Indeed, as much as 35% of the local Arab population lost their lives to malaria, with infant mortality hitting a staggering 92%.

Into this drastic situation in 1920 arrived Dr. Kligler, a devoted Zionist and brilliant public health scientist. Subsequently, in 1921/22, under Kligler’s direction, Palestine became the first place worldwide to embark on a successful national malaria elimination campaign. Kligler’s method relied primarily on the removal of mosquito breeding sites, and was conducted without reliance on drugs or insecticidal sprays (DDT had not been discovered).

The methods used by Kligler and his team involved draining swamps, clearing overgrown canals, diverting springs and wadis and an emphasis on education to maintain the initial malaria control work. Through this, Kligler’s team all-but eradicated malaria in the area, and infant mortality was reduced to the rate of 6%.

Having fought alongside them against the Ottoman Turks, the Arabs probably had no greater friend than T.E. Lawrence. And having viewed the early efforts with the eradication of malaria along with notable farming initiatives, Lawrence was strongly in favour of Jewish immigration to the area, believing that advanced farming expertise they brought from Europe would greatly benefit the local Arab population. ‘Speaking entirely as a non-Jew,’ he commented to a Jewish newspaper, ‘I am decidedly in favour of Zionism; indeed, I look on the Jew as the natural importers of western leaven so necessary for countries of the Near East.’

And Lawrence’s predictive comments were proven right. Due to the Jewish influx in the early 1900s, local Arabs benefited greatly from new and advanced farming practices, irrigating and making fertile large tracts of previously barren and fallow land. While the main beneficiaries were the newly arrived Jews, much of this spilled over to the Arab population, and the area went from one barely able to sustain itself agriculturally to one with a healthy export trade, particularly with citrus fruits.

In a ‘The Round Table’ article, Lawrence elaborated that Jewish settlers had brought ‘samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe’ to Palestine, ‘Inevitably raising the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves… a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power.’

A glimpse perhaps of what might have been if accord between the many local Arabs happy to work alongside (and benefit from) the new influx of Jews had grown, rather than Jihadist factions that took root – who put the destruction and removal of Jews before any benefits to their own advancement and welfare. Factions which, combined the Arab League, led to the wars of 1947 and 1967 and still exist today. Although, finally, with the first signatories of the Abraham Accords, a realization that might have come full circle: that far more can be gained from working with the Jews of Israel than trying to remove or destroy them.

Understandably, these early endeavours led to a great influx of ‘economic migrants’ from neighbouring Arab nations, eager to take advantage of this new Zionist-led boom economy. Pay for Arab workers in Palestine-Israel was generally 60%-100% higher than in neighbouring Egypt, Jordan or Syria. Winston Churchill in fact commented that it was a paradox that certain Arab-Palestinian factions were complaining about the harm wrought by the incoming Jewish population, while at the same time neighbouring Arabs in great numbers were rushing in to take advantage of this new ‘Land of milk and honey’ situation.

Joan Peters, in her book, ‘From Time Immemorial’, wrote about this mass Arab immigration in great detail, but because it did not fit in with an already established ‘Palestinian cause’ narrative, it was roundly attacked. Norman Finkelstein, as usual, went OTT, describing Peters’ book as ‘among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict.’ I think Finklestein is doing himself out of a Guiness Book of Records notation here, as surely some of his own works must claim that prize. In the end, stats supported Peters’ claims more than they did Finklestein’s. The Arab population of Palestine increased far more in the 1920-1948 period than in neighbouring Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

What should also be noted is that, prior to the UN-voted separation in 1947, all of this tremendous advancement and progress to benefit Jews, in turn equally benefited local Arabs. One of the most formidable achievements was bringing electricity to the region with the construction of 14 hydroelectric power stations along the Jordan River by Pinhas Rutenberg and his team. The plant was constructed between 1926 and 1933 and involved 3,000 workers, a combination of both Jewish and Arab labour, and provided electricity from – as many of today’s Palestinian-supporter banners proclaim – the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.

One claim regularly made by Palestinians and their supporters is that the incoming Jews ‘stole the land’, but this is an inversion of the truth. Jews in fact paid heavily for the land, often paying up to double the going rate. Also, much of this was bought from previous Ottoman-Turk, Lebanese and Greek owners. Private local Arab-Palestinian ownership stood at only 11.3%. Indeed, to this day one of the largest landowners in Jerusalem is the Eastern Orthodox Church, with today’s Israel Parliamentary Knesset building in fact leased from them. The vast majority of land transfer at the time of the UN-partition vote was in fact public state-owned land: parks, green spaces, roads, schools, hospitals and desert.

But, still, mindful of the fact that some of the Arab-Palestinians fleeing or exiled in 1948 might have lost land-ownership rights, an Israeli fund was set up in 1950 to compensate them at ‘going rate plus 20%’. No equivalent fund was set up in any Arab or North African nations from which 1 million Jews were exiled/fled in that same period. In the end, any ‘land-property robbery’ was entirely the other way, from Arab/Muslim nations expropriating Jews.

Strangely, the benefit to Palestinians from Jews in the area is felt even today. 70% of the labour employed in building Israeli settlements in Judea-Samaria-West Bank is Palestinian-Arab, and at rates 60-70% above that paid in PA territories. And while the BDS movement tries to ban Israeli or foreign companies operating in the West-Bank, Palestinians employed by those companies welcome it; again, because their wage rates are 60-70% higher within those companies. And, indeed, many local Palestinians welcome the presence of these companies and settlers because they greatly boost the local WB economy.

However, they keep quiet about that, because to voice the benefits of Israeli settlers and Israeli companies in the WB could be seen as ‘collaboration’, which carries anything from a heavy prison sentence to a death penalty. The overriding Palestinian narrative to be strictly adhered to is that Israeli settlers are disruptive and violent, and therefore unwelcome.

But, again, the stats stand against this. There are three times as many attacks from Palestinians against Israeli settlers than the reverse; so, it becomes clear that these are mainly defensive or retaliatory. Throughout, the Palestinians are depicted as calm, placid, non-violent victims, despite them notching up a staggering 380 terrorist attacks a month against Israelis – from stone throwing’s to car ramming’s, knifings, shootings and bombings – putting them high up on the global terrorism chart.

The ‘Settlers are violent’ claim no doubt stems from the Judenrein pronouncement from Mahmoud Abbas a decade ago that the final border between Israel and the new Palestine ‘would not be drawn until every Jew was the other side of it.’ Then, quickly realizing the overtly racist overtone of that, he set in place a narrative that the desire to oust the settlers was not because they were Jewish, but because they were violent. A more pathetically contrived and transparent excuse would be hard to find.

Of course, this ‘Judenrein’ policy was acted out in full in Gaza – although in that case Israel cleared its own in the face of increasing hostility against Jewish settlers – and look how that ended up? 20 years of Hamas rule culminating in October 7^th and a devastating 2-year war.

Now, at the end of that war and possible peace in sight, again Palestinian Arabs find themselves at a crossroads. Will they finally learn the lessons of history and take advantage of the many benefits that working in accord with their Jewish neighbours will bring? Or will they once again turn to attacking and trying to destroy their Israeli-Jewish neighbours – despite the insufferable toll and far heavier losses it brings to their own society?

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Since the onset of the Gaza war, this past two years has seen one of the worst rises in anti-semitism since the dark days of Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, culminating in the mass walk-out at the UN just the other week (the final rubber-stamping that they are, in essence, an anti-Israel/anti-Semitic organization), and then mass pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demos in the UK only hours after the deplorable Manchester synagogue attack.

But the signs of this could be seen over a year ago with Jewish authors finding themselves sidelined in what is normally a bastion of free speech and expression - the publishing industry. An early article, but one which I felt was worthy of repeating now, especially when we see the same prejudice even entering the film industry which, paradoxically, was mainly founded by Jews.

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Among Sigmund Freud’s many notable quotes, in 1933 when Hitler came into power, he commented wistfully, 'What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.' It was the first year of the Nazi regime in Germany, and of course there was far worse to come. And as Freud woke up to the fact that once again there was an intent to burn him and his family alongside many of the Jews of Europe, he made desperate efforts to save himself and his family.

Freud was able to get safe passage for himself, his wife and daughter to England – aided by the intervention and pleas from many notables, including H.G. Wells and Salvador Dali – but was unable to save his four elder sisters, all of whom perished in Nazi death camps. He also had to leave all his property and wealth behind in Vienna.

But the start point of the Nazi’s purge against Jews was through restricting them from various professions along with book burning. Area restrictions finally leading to ghettos and death camps followed. The horrors of that period of history are so well known that alongside the Jewish heartfelt lament and rigid promise of ‘Never again’, those in Europe and the West have understandably been echoing that sentiment. Until recently, that is.

Of course, it seems unthinkable that those dark days of Jewish boycotting and restrictions would return to the streets of Europe and the West in today’s more enlightened and liberal age. But perhaps it’s seeped in so gradually, in such slow-drip stages, that many haven’t even noticed. And, of course, they’ve avoided the actual practice of book-burning, which would have inflamed world-wide headlines, instead opting for banning or sidelining Jewish, Israeli and Zionist-linked authors – which amounts to the same thing. Welcome to today’s modern-day equivalent of book burning: ‘Cancel culture.’

The first alarm of this happening came with a Daily Telegraph article in late 2024 about many Jewish or Zionist-linked authors finding themselves dropped or sidelined by literary agents and publishers. As Telegraph journalist Eleanor Steafel wrote ‘… Authors, agents, scouts and publishers spoke of the growing sense of discomfort and ostracization they have experienced in their industry since the October 7^th attacks. Many say a quiet but pervasive anti-Semitism – a sense of “Jews don’t count”, as one author put it – has begun to creep in.’ In another interview, an agent was told that their client’s book was ‘a bit too Jewish’ to get published.

There have been various grades to this boycotting: an Israeli author would stand little chance of getting published in the current climate, a Zionist-linked or supporting author hardly better, and Jewish authors would get published purely according to subject matter: a book about the Israel-Palestine conflict would be a complete no-no – unless it supported the Palestinian viewpoint – but even books (as above) that were seen as ‘too Jewish’ would likely get a thumbs-down. With the only notable exception, books about the holocaust. As Dara Horn once commented, ‘People love dead Jews. Live Jews, not so much.’

But this didn’t all happen in a vacuum and there has in fact been a build up to it for some while, mainly through BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Founded in 2005, the initial aim of BDS was to boycott or prevent Israeli or Western companies from operating in the Palestinian West Bank. One of the most notable companies to bend to BDS pressure was ice-cream manufacturers Ben & Jerry’s. But their decision not to sell in the West Bank was later overturned by parent company Unilever, who then continued to sell Ben & Jerry’s there through an independent distributor.

One area BDS obviously haven’t bothered to check is with local Palestinians working for Israeli and international companies in the West Bank, who generally are in favour of these companies operating there – mainly because anything from 40-60% of the labour employed are local Palestinians, including many in management, and generally at wages 50-60% above what they would earn in Palestinian Authority territory. But they generally keep that quiet in case they get accused of ‘normalization’, so polls of Palestinians outside of this employment sphere might give a different picture.

BDS has for many years been unpopular with Jews both in Israel and outside because it uncomfortably reflects the early days of Nazi Germany, whereby Jews were restricted from certain trades, practices and areas – with ghettoization and death camps following shortly after.

There have been a number of academic boycotts successfully achieved through BDS activity over the years, and since October 7^th a growing number of authors have jumped on that bandwagon by refusing to have their books published in Israel, one proclaiming bluntly, ‘While the genocide in Gaza is continuing.’

But the most notable case came in 2021 when Irish author, Sally Rooney, refused to have her third book published in Israel. Rooney also seems to be joining yet another bandwagon here by echoing the growing Irish antipathy to Israel this past few decades – although that hasn’t always been the case. Today’s Irish anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance stems from the fact that they see in that conflict a reflection of their own struggle against British rule. But the struggles of early Jews/Zionists were also against the British to finally form Israel, which is why at that stage the Irish were fully supportive of Israel. Their struggle stood on all fours with the Israeli struggle.

Even after the 1948 war and the formation of Israel, Irish support remained strong. In their view, British Imperialism/Colonialism had merely been replaced with pan-Arab Colonialism, with a small, beleaguered nation, Israel, formed from a rag-tag bunch of refugees, surrounded by much larger, powerful nations – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon – all vying for its destruction. It wasn’t until years after the 1967 war when the Palestinians were seen as more isolated in their struggle that the Irish reaction to Israel started to change. The reason I’m particularly au-fait with this is that my mother was Irish and very much part of that ‘old-school’ of Irish support for Israel. But this might be a tad too much history for Sally Rooney to bother to check on before joining the Irish bandwagon with her knee-jerk response.

Rooney was also part of a wave of over a thousand academic and industry figures who called for a cultural boycott of Israel last October, with the Gaza war of this last year merely adding impetus to BDS campaigning that has been active for many years. Championing the cause for various artists, writers and musicians, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has by far been the most virulent BDS activist, vocally lambasting a number of fellow musicians for concert appearances in Israel.

But this final action of an official calling for a cultural boycott of Israel last October – and no doubt part of the undercurrent of anti-Israel sentiment that has seen Jewish and Zionist-linked authors sidelined and boycotted this past year – has in the end sparked a serious backlash from the artistic community.

Scrolling down the list of 1,100 BDS supporters, you’ll see a handful of famous names. But the backlash from the artistic community organized by CCFP – Creative Community For Peace – has already gained 47,300 signatories and counting, with the list including hundreds of famous names: Lee Child, Rihanna, Paul McCartney, Howard Jacobson, Bernard Henri-Levy, Jennifer Lopez, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Douglas Murray, Steven Spielberg, Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Alicia Keys, Clean Bandit, Boy George, Robbie Williams, Ziggy Marley… the list of famous names is endless.

Author Lee Child commented, ‘Targeting novelists, authors, and publishing houses based on their nationality is misguided. At a time when dialogue is paramount and when compromise can lead to peace, castigation and blanket boycotts are counterproductive.’ With Booker Prize-winning author, Howard Jacobson, adding: ‘Art is the antithesis to a political party. It is a meeting place not an echo chamber. Art explores, discovers, differs, questions and surprises. Precisely where a door should be forever open, the boycotters slam it closed.’

An avalanche of supportive comments from other writers, artists and musicians has followed, which is encouraging – but will it be enough to stem the tide of this current boycott-wave against Jewish and Zionist-linked authors? If we follow the example of Freud in 1933, while letters of support from prominent writers were enough to save him and his immediate family from the death-camps, it did little to save other writers or indeed his four elder sisters. Sadly, the same might be found now: that the roots of this current purge go deeper than many realize, with BDS alone being active for almost twenty years - so unless this backlash builds to momentous proportions, only the tip of the iceberg might be saved from the affect of this boycott.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Recognition of a Palestinian State is nothing new. That in fact took place initially in 1947, at the same time that partition was approved by the UN and the adjoining State of Israel formed. But the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab nations rejected that formation and instead deemed it more important to destroy the nascent Jewish State. And that has more or less remained the situation since – with more focus put on destroying Israel by Palestinians (and some neighbours) than their own formation, growth and welfare. Three major wars ensued, followed by forty years of almost constant terrorist attacks, culminating in a major massacre on October 7^th, 2023, which led to the current Gaza war.

While Palestinian Statehood had been initially rubber-stamped by the UN, there were many even then in 1947 who doubted it would be viable, mainly based on their lack of visible tax income to provide for essential services such as hospitals, schools, roads and utilities. To survive, at best it would be a State heavily reliant on aid and support from neighbours – who unfortunately decided that aid was best poured into an extensive war effort rather than benefiting the Palestinian people and building a functioning State.

But if there was ever a time in the past 77 years that a Palestinian State had been less viable it would be now: Gaza in tatters and in need of almost total rebuilding; Hamas still holding hostages and clinging to vestiges of power in Gaza; the alternative administration – Fatah and the Palestinian Authority – still unpopular with Palestinians after years of corruption and Fatah only clinging to power through withholding fresh elections. The situation could hardly be more dismal and unworkable for Palestinians.

Indeed, there was an acute acid test almost a decade ago when a group of Arabs in an area bordering Jerusalem known as ‘The Triangle’ were earmarked to come under Palestinian Authority rather than Israeli control. A vote was taken. 84% of the Arab population polled elected to remain part of Israel rather than the PA. It makes one wonder if a similar poll result would be found if Arab-Palestinians were asked about the impending/threatened Israeli sovereignty of Judea-Samaria-West Bank areas. But of course no such poll would ever take place. The fate of Palestinians is being decided by a combination of world leaders remote from the area and a corrupt administration that has sidestepped elections for eighteen years.

But the laying down of conditions before recognition of a Palestinian State would seem a prime requisite for many. Anyone who has ever had young teenage children would know that it’s essential to lay down strict guidelines and conditions before they go on nights out – time to return home, not drinking too much (or not at all in the USA) or taking drugs. The only tame condition offered by Macron is that Hamas should release the hostages, and the UK has stated that a future Palestinian State should not involve Hamas leadership. But they have made the cardinal mistake of recognizing a Palestinian State before these conditions have been met. Thereby losing the main leverage to get Hamas to release the hostages and end the war.

As Israel have rightly pronounced, recognizing a Palestinian State before any of the aforementioned conditions have been met appears to reward terrorism. Indeed, Hamas have already claimed October 7^th to be a glorious victory. ‘Look what it has gained us? Recognition of a Palestinian State from major world players, which has appeared illusive for so many years.’ With such a grand prize already gained, what incentive remains for Hamas to return the hostages still held?

It’s almost as if another Palestinian proclamation is now coming to fruition. For decades they’ve claimed that the Jews only gained Israel due to the holocaust, and Europe and the USA resultantly feeling sorry for them. And now following a twenty-year masterclass in playing the victim card, grossly inflating death stats, particularly of women and children, combined with carefully chosen demonizing slurs – occupation, colonization, apartheid, now finally ‘genocide’ – Palestinians have achieved the same. European and other major nations feel sorry for them, pity them, so have granted them the ultimate prize. Their own State.

Except that few if any of the claims hold substance, particularly the last of ‘genocide.’ As I’ve written elsewhere, Israel went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, dropping 18 million leaflets and sending 42 million text messages warning Gazan civilians away from danger areas. Something no other fighting force has done. Through this they achieved a CD (collateral damage) rate of 1.2 to 1, almost unheard of in modern guerilla-style warfare. NATO, USA and UK forces have only achieved CD ratios of 3.4 to 1. So, to have an even playing field, every war of the past 50 years would have to carry the ‘genocide’ label; indeed, on a purely statistical level, 3 x worse genocides.

Also overlooked is the fact that while Israel has gone to such great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas has aimed to increase them as much as possible through the following: not building any bomb shelters in 20 years of power; building a network of terror tunnels under schools, hospitals and UN centres; only allowing its fighters and munitions in those terror tunnels, all civilians to be above ground and vulnerable; stopping its civilian population from moving from danger areas, often under armed threat. In essence, using its civilian population as human shields, and when there have been insufficient women and children casualties, Hamas have provided false, grossly inflated stats to suit.

There was a survey done years ago in which the public were asked, ‘If a few schoolteachers led a classroom of young 3 to 5 year-old children onto a busy motorway, without going in advance of them or warning or flagging any motorists – who would you blame more for the children that were run over and killed? The schoolteachers or the car and truck drivers?’ The answer came back in a poll that 76% blamed the schoolteachers more.

The same applies here to Hamas. They knew that after October 7^th there would be a severe reprisal, and went to every length to make their civilians more vulnerable in the wake of that reprisal. If Hamas fighters had stayed above ground in full combat gear and bravely fought it out with the IDF while their civilians, in particular women and children, were protected below ground in tunnels, you might reach a different conclusion. But the opposite has been the case. In not pinpointing this Hamas culpability, is the media blind or stupid, or both?

And we see that same blind stupidity at play now with leading Western nations moving to recognize a Palestinian State. In doing so, they’ve also missed a golden opportunity to apply the sort of strict conditions that might have given some hope of a future Palestinian State being viable. Comparisons have been made between the current State of Gaza and the general Palestinian ethos that led to October 7^th to the situation in Nazi Germany at the end of WW2. In that instance, an intense de-Nazification process took place before the first free democratic elections took place in Western Germany four years later.

The same now needs to take place in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, but in this case complete de-Jihadism. Hamas releasing the hostages, laying down arms and relinquishing power is just the start. Fatah’s agenda is almost as abhorrent, so those conditions should include the following: cessation of ‘pay for slay’ and reward for terrorists by Fatah; teaching and indoctrination of children to hate and kill Jews to cease; glorification of terrorism and martyrdom for killing Jews to cease; ending of death penalties for gays, those who ‘collaborate’ or ‘normalize’ with Israelis or sell land to Jews; banning of all terrorist groups; political parties with terrorist or ‘attack and kill Israelis’ aims to be completely barred from future ballots, only those with democratic ‘building Palestinian welfare’ aims to be allowed.

A ’transitional administration’ has already been proposed for Gaza, an amalgam of Arab and Western nations; but to implement the preceding, they should also control the West-Bank in the interim. Anything less would simply be setting up a future Palestinian State for continued conflict with Israel, and thus continued failure.

Netanyahu at the UN has slammed the recognition of a Palestinian State after October 7^th as being akin to granting Al-Qaeda a State a mile from the UN’s New York HQ after 9/11. A somewhat dramatic comparison, but he has a point. Since France and the UK are two of the main players involved in current recognition, perhaps a more pertinent comparison would be that it’s like a terrorist group taking over the Channel Islands and regularly firing rockets and launching terrorist attacks into France and England; then in the wake of a heavy war to stem those attacks, Israel moved to recognize that terrorist Channel Islands State. France and the UK would feel rightly outraged at such a move.

Simply put, foreign nations are in a position to recognize a State right next door to them, with all the implications that might entail, but not one over two thousand miles away. Presented in such a forthright and honest light, most outsiders would agree that’s an odd stance to take, while paradoxically Israelis would simply shrug and give a knowing, resigned nod. After almost 80 years of the same, they are used to outsiders trying to shape and decide what is right for their nation.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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I should take an initial step back and state that it wasn’t only the killing of Charlie Kirk, although that in itself was horrific enough – a young man in his prime, only 31, leaving a wife and two young children – but the reaction to his death from many on the left that I feel has destroyed that last shred of credibility.

A ‘Queers for Palestine’ supporter commented, ‘I hear Charlie Kirk just died. LMAO’. Then the numerous other twitter-X and Tik-Tok comments: ‘Oooooh that was fun! Do Ben Shapiro next; ‘Like I’m glad the guy died but they’re going really hard on the ohhh, this is a dark day for America; ‘Lmaooo. Best birthday present ever!! I’m laughing so hard, that’s what you get bitch’; ‘So glad his bitch ass got packed up. Ben Shapiro next please!’; JK Rowling next!’

In general, paradoxically, coming across as the sort of extreme, brain-dead, ‘baying for violence’ mob they often accuse the far-right of. With the Anders Breivik mass killing years ago, I don’t recall anyone on the right-wing making excuses for it, let alone applauding it or asking that others should face the same fate. Same too with the murders of Stephen Lawrence in the UK and George Floyd in the USA. There were absolutely no calls from the right that either victim deserved it or that others ‘of colour’ should be killed. The most that could be seen in the case of George Floyd were some on the right pointing to his past criminal background. But that’s a country mile from excusing his killing, let alone urging that others should be similarly killed.

Yet that is what has happened in the case of Charlie Kirk. And while the left-wing and mainstream media have understandably held back on the deplorable stance of calling for others to be the similarly killed, a number of them have made excuses for Charlie Kirk’s killing or indeed have inferred that he ‘asked for it’ due to his extreme pro-Trump and pro-Israel views.

The list of those who the far left have openly proclaimed they’d like to see face the same fate as Charlie Kirk is both sobering and frightening: President Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, J.K. Rowling, Matt Walsh, Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro, Chaya Raichik and Andy Ngo. And those wishing for this are in no small numbers, so not just a radical fringe. 46% of Democrat voters polled said they’d be in favour of Elon Musk being assassinated and 54% gave the same thumbs-up on Donald Trump. A frightening statistic in a democratic society where suddenly open debate and electoral results are cast to the wind; they would prefer their opponents were silenced by bullets. Another paradox, since historically it has been the left-wing that has championed gun control in the USA and a pulling back from violence.

The saddest thing about Charlie Kirk’s killing is that he was one of the strongest advocates of open debate and non-violence. Holding firm to the principal that we should be able to openly debate with those who hold opposing views without the need to turn to violence; that in fact one should preclude the other. ‘Why the need to pick up a gun when you can talk things through?’ Indeed, it was while taking part in one such ‘open debate’ at a Utah University campus that he was shot.

This general mob-rule ‘baying for blood’ could also be seen from some in the Utah University crowd cheering or punching the air when he was shot. Similarly, many at a ‘Coldplay’ concert booed when lead-singer Chris Martin asked his audience to send their prayers and best wishes to Charlie Kirk’s family. Not too different to the cheers of support at Glastonbury when Bob Vylan chanted ‘Death to the IDF’.

What the left-wing in the USA have not yet woken up to is the fact that they not only lost the last election, but did so by a landslide; something like 60% of Americans voted for Trump. So, while they are banging the anti-MAGA drum with such ardour and venom, are they seriously suggesting that 60% of the American public are either extremist or racist, or both? To cling to such a ludicrous belief in itself hints at extremist, unbalanced views.

J.K. Rowling, the subject of numerous verbal assaults the past decade due to her stance on transgenders, has boldly stepped up to the plate in response to Charlie Kirk’s death and the resultant ‘calling for the blood of others’, including herself, from the far-left: ‘If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you’re illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you’re a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you’re a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.’

The last comment carrying the label of ‘terrorist’ is particularly telling because for many years now the left-wing (and its supporting media) have openly taken the side of terrorist groups like Hamas against Israel. Of course, they proclaim they are ‘just supporting the Palestinians’ rather than Hamas. But when a far larger proportion of Palestinians voted Hamas into power than Germans voted for Hitler and the Nazis in 1933, it becomes hard to separate the two. Particularly when so many Palestinians in fact openly applauded the October 7^th attack, and indeed even (supposedly neutral) groups like aid organization UNRWA had over a hundred of its staff cross the border fence with Hamas and take part in October 7^th.

All of this would indicate that at the very least the left should veer on the side of caution when it comes to defending Palestinians-Hamas. But we see that’s far from the case. Information and propaganda direct from Hamas or Hamas-fed sources are repeated with aplomb by the mainstream media, without any form of filter or questioning, yet Israel’s actions are constantly questioned and challenged.

Akin to, in WW2, media in the West questioning and criticizing the retaliatory British bombing raids over Germany or repeating information straight from Nazi propaganda sources and Lord Haw-Haw that ‘mostly innocent German women and children were being killed in British bombing raids’ and that Churchill was a monster and ‘gangster’.

More recently, did we see calls that the military actions in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in response to 9/11 or against ISIS in Iraq should cease? Or a call that both military actions equalled ‘genocide’? No, that condemnation has solely been reserved for Israel, despite Israel going to extraordinary lengths to minimize civilian casualties by dropping 18 million leaflets and sending 42 million text messages warning civilians away from danger areas. Lengths no other fighting force has gone to, which indeed has resulted in a CD (Collateral Damage) rate of only 1.2 to 1, whereas NATO and the USA usually notch up 3.4 to 1. And the overall casualty rate in Gaza has been a fraction of Afghanistan or Iraq. Or indeed Syria, where 620,000 lost their lives, but still no cries of genocide.

Sadly, with the latest call of ‘genocide’ coming from the UN, we see yet further proof of extreme UN bias against Israel – whereby 47 Muslim nations who are members of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) vote en bloc. Hopefully, that factor will be taken into account, but with the left’s stance against Israel already set in stone, I’m not holding my breath.

This current harsh stance against Israel and Donald Trump – or in fact anything or anyone perceived to be on the ‘right-wing’ – has been brewing for some while. As I’ve voiced in past articles, the current stance of the left with Israel wasn’t always the case; indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, most left-wingers, including students, were firmly in support of Israel. And while Israel politically has veered more to the right in the interim years, much of that has been in response to repeated terrorist attacks and the need to take a firmer line. But Israel still has a very bold and strong left-wing, and indeed is far more supportive of women’s, gays’ and LGBTQ rights than any of its Arab neighbours, including the likes of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – who take a particularly draconian stance on those, imposing the death penalty for gays. So, in many ways, the support of the left for Palestine/Hamas/Fatah creates an extreme dichotomy with their core beliefs. Yet still they wave banners pronouncing ‘Queers for Palestine’ with a straight face.

This dichotomy comes even more to the fore with BLM advocates showing support for Hamas over October 7^th, with many BLM supporters showing hang-glider with AK-47 emblems on their twitter-X pages. Yet in doing so completely ignore the long-standing alliance between Jews and African-Americans.

The KKK didn't just target blacks, but Jews too. When three civil rights workers from New York, two Jewish and one African American - Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman - went to Mississippi to promote voting registration among African Americans, they were killed by the KKK for their activity. The incident caused a wave of national outrage which became the main kick-start for the civil rights protests of the mid-1960s and led shortly after to the 'Civil Rights Act' of 1964.

Martin Luther King was very conscious of this Jewish support, many of whom had marched alongside him in civil rights protests, and in turn was a big supporter of Jews and Israel, commenting that 'Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is incontestable.' And 'The whole world must see that Israel must exist, has the right to exist and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.' Then later, in response to a student attacking Zionism, King responded, 'When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism.'

MLK would be turning in his grave at seeing today's BLM reaction to Israel. Also forgotten in this mindless stampede by BLM to support Hamas, even in the light of extreme massacres, is Sirhan-Sirhan's assassination of Bobby Kennedy. In an earlier article about Charlie Kirk’s killing, William Tuesday commented that the only previous time he’d been so deeply affected had been with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

At the time Senator Bobby Kennedy was campaigning to be the next US President. Central to his campaign was carrying the hopes and aspirations of millions of African Americans to champion their cause, with his death probably setting back the black civil rights movement by ten years. But that mattered little to Palestinian Sirhan-Sirhan, who had never troubled to find out what Bobby Kennedy did for black people and the underprivileged in the USA. He'd made a pro-Israel speech, and that was enough to get him targeted.

The irony that BLM today was championing a cause that had set their own civil rights cause back nearly a decade - while at the same time denigrating those who had marched alongside MLK and helped their cause - is no doubt lost on most BLM supporters. But it does appear as if inconsistencies and dichotomies against their own core interests have sadly become trademarks of today’s left.

With this latest inconsistency and dichotomy – with Charlie Kirk’s death and their baying for the blood of others to follow him – that they’ve come to epitomize the arch-extremism and unbending, mindless violence they’ve always accused the far-right of. An extreme paradox in itself.

******

John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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Joseph Heller’s excellent satirical novel Catch-22 was first published in 1961, central to which was a situation where one action would then immediately corner or trap you with a conflicting action. The phrase has since entered the English language to depict ‘a paradoxical predicament where an individual is trapped by contradictory rules or conditions, making it impossible to escape.’ Here are the many Catch-22s and contradictory/paradoxical situations or false claims that Israel faces.

- When Israel builds fences and barriers to prevent their civilians being slaughtered in waves of terrorist attacks, they get accused of being ‘divisive’. These are then labelled ‘apartheid’ barriers rather than their obvious security aims and intentions.

- Israelis are regularly labelled ‘Nazis’ by Palestinians, yet it is Palestinians who term Jews ‘sons of dogs and monkeys’ and have an open and admitted agenda of killing Jews. Martyrdom while killing Jews is sanctified, with the Palestinian Authority having an open reward programme – ‘Pay for Slay’ – for terrorists who kill Jews and their families.

- Israelis are often labelled ‘apartheid’, yet they have 1.8 million Arab/Palestinians within Israel, 20% of their population, living freely and without hindrance or prejudice. Conversely, there are 530,000 Israeli citizens living within the West Bank-Judea-Samaria who face extreme prejudice, are labelled ‘settlers’ and require constant protection from terrorist attacks, with Abbas of Fatah proclaiming that the final divide between Israel and a future Palestinian State will ‘not be drawn until every Jew is the other side of it.’ A kindergarten child could work out which party is in fact guilty of ‘apartheid’.

- In the current Gaza War, Israel has dropped 18 million leaflets and sent 42 million text messages warning civilians away from danger areas – lengths that no other fighting force in the last fifty years has gone to in order to avoid civilian casualties – yet still they are falsely accused of ‘genocide’.

- While Israel has gone to great lengths to reduce civilian casualties in the current Gaza War, Hamas have made every effort to maximize those casualties through: a: Not building any bomb shelters in the 20 years of its regime; in contrast, neighbouring Sderot, the closest Israeli town to the Gaza border, has more bomb shelters than any other region on earth. b: Constructing their terrorist tunnels under vulnerable civilian areas such as schools, hospitals, UN Centres and refugee camps. c: By not allowing any civilians to shield in their terror tunnels, these are exclusively for Hamas terrorists and weapons/munitions. In contrast, in the WW2 Blitz, London’s underground stations became one of the main points of refuge from bombing raids. In addition, in digging and building the terrorist tunnels, hundreds of Gazan children have lost their lives, some as young as 8 years old. If ‘genocide’ is at all to be considered a factor, then why have there been no accusations of Hamas causing/enacting genocide against their own people?

- Israel is regularly accused by Hamas of killing ‘mainly women and children’, but final statistics show that 68-72% of those killed have been 15+ males, 87% of them involved in combat and hostilities. It has further been revealed in the Arab Press (Saudi newspaper) that Hamas have recruited child soldiers as young as 12 years old.

- Israel has been accused of killing more journalists than in any war of the past 30 years. A crucial detail left out of this statistic is that 80% of those killed have in fact been Hamas militants and terrorists posing as journalists. The main news-grabbing headline should therefore read: ‘More militants and terrorists have been found posing as journalists in the Gaza War than in any other war of the past 30 years.’ A similar headline could indeed be carried for medics.

- A number of Israel’s critics propound that much of the current situation and Gaza war has come about through Israel not allowing Palestinians their own State. Yet when Israel came closest to that with completely vacating Gaza in 2005 and leaving Palestinians to their own devices, within no time Hamas had taken complete control and turned it into a terrorist enclave, constructing hundreds of miles of terrorist tunnels to store weapons and rockets and constantly firing rockets at Israel - finally culminating in the massacre of October 7^th.

- In turn, many of Israel’s critics claim that the current situation has derived from Israel’s ‘occupation’ of Palestinian territory. But in the case of Gaza, there was no ‘occupation’, not a single Israeli soldier was stationed on Gazan soil after 2005. Yet it led to a far more hostile and belligerent situation than the West Bank-Judea-Samaria, where there is a regular presence of Israeli soldiers and security. It could therefore be argued that a ‘lack of occupation’ led to the situation in Gaza, as clearly if Israel had maintained an armed soldier and security presence, Hamas would have been unable to rise up and take control, let alone build an extensive network of terror tunnels and stockpile of rockets.

- When Israel built security fences and divides with Gaza, they were suddenly accused of creating an ‘open prison’. However, this worked both ways. Israeli citizens were similarly hemmed in and unable to visit Gaza markets or buy fish direct from Gazan fisherman – as they used to prior to 2005. If they did venture across, they would be summarily kidnapped or killed. Conversely, up to 40,000 Gazans regularly crossed into Israel for work, or to shop in Israel, without any threat or hindrance.

- In talking about borders and barriers, the focus is always on Israel. Yet Gaza also has an extensive border with Egypt, whose security barrier is indeed far higher and more robust. If Gaza is indeed an ‘open prison’, then it seems a paradox that no blame is ever levied at Egypt for this situation.

- Due to Hamas skimming anything from 30-40% of the aid and food entering Gaza to fund its own terrorist operations, Israel in league with the USA set up an independent operation – GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Fund) - in order to get food and aid direct to the people of Gaza. However, because of the threat this posed to Hamas’s skimming and terrorist funding operation, they quickly flooded the media with false stories of Israel firing at and killing numerous Gazans trying to get aid and food, followed up by false images of starving infants in their mother’s arms – when in fact the children depicted all had serious underlying medical conditions totally unrelated to lack of food. In contrast, their mothers in the pictures were perfectly healthy and well-fed, some even rotund and noticeably fat. To date, the GHF have provided almost 8 million food packages directly to Gazan civilians. This is probably one of the first times in history that a nation making a concerted effort to get food and aid directly to a population has been accused of ‘starving them’.

- Israel is often accused of ‘stealing’ Palestinian land. However, from as early as 1860, returning Jews/Zionists started rebuying land in the Levant/Palestine, often paying double or triple the price from local Arabs. The only land transferred without payment were ‘public land’ areas previously owned by the British and Ottomans: parks, roads, public buildings, desert areas. Notwithstanding, a ‘land compensation board’ was established in 1950 to recompense any private Palestinian landowners who had lost their land, at a rate of ‘current going value + 20%’. This is therefore one of the first times in history where a people who have paid on average double the price for land have been accused of ‘stealing it’.

- Much is made of the ‘Nakba’ in which in 1948, 650,000 local Arabs/Palestinians became displaced in the wake of the 1947-48 war and became refugees. However, little mention is made of the 1 million Jewish refugees who between 1948-1950 became displaced or were expelled from Arab lands in Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and Sudan. Main reason being that the Jews expelled/fleeing Arab lands were immediately absorbed within Israel, so were no longer refugees. In contrast, the 650,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled, the surrounding Arab nations to the large extent refused to absorb them, keeping them as stateless refugees. The paradox of this refusal is that those Arab lands have a combined area of over 5 million square miles in which to absorb Palestinian refugees compared to Israel’s 8,630 square miles into which to absorb Jewish refugees. Also, in contrast to the Israel board set up to financially compensate Palestinian private landowners, no similar board was set up in Arab lands to compensate the 1 million Jews fleeing/expelled.

- While the Western media portrays itself as open and fair-handed, in many cases they have accepted information from Hamas – a brutal, autocratic terrorist regime with no free press and with a long history of providing false information – or from Hamas-fed sources and journalists, without question, often repeating it verbatim. However, they have in turn often discounted, questioned or ignored information from Israeli sources – a nation with an open democracy and a free press. The paradox is extreme.

******

John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

******

Islamophobia…

With 9,200 Islamic terrorist attacks in the West the past 50 years, costing thousands of lives…

Hundreds of under-age girls groomed and raped…

Is it indeed a ‘Phobia’, an irrational fear, or in fact a very real concern and fear?

Even if it wasn’t, fears and concerns are part of our human psyche and nature.

Fear of heights, flying, darkness, enclosed or wide-open spaces - what might seem irrational to some is also a very real fear and concern to others.

What we DO NOT do is prosecute and imprison people for voicing what, to them, is a very real fear and concern.

Islamophobia is the ONLY fear and concern we prosecute people for openly expressing or voicing.

****

Greta Thunberg Litmus test…

Unwittingly, with her Gaza flotilla visit a few months ago, Greta Thunberg provided the litmus test of the main difference between Israel and Hamas.

That flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces, Greta Thunberg and the rest of the protestors given drinks and sandwiches, then put on flights back to their destinations of choice.

If Thundberg and her fellow protestors had made a similar pro-Israel ‘Release the Hostages’ protest within Hamas-held Gaza, they’d have all been arrested and held as further hostages or even killed.

Therein lies the stark difference for any arch-left pro-Pal numpties willing to recognize it.

****

The thorny subject of fake journalists arising yet again. Posters initial comment, then my response:

.>>

See CJ Werleman The Hidden Reality of Israel’s Depravity in Gaza More journalists killed in Gaza than both world wars, Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan put together

>>

Your comment might have substance if it wasn’t for the fact that 80% of the so called journalists killed have in fact been Hamas operatives. Numerous reports of journalists going over the fence on October 7th to film the massacre. They wouldn’t have been able to do that unless they were either part of Hamas or closely allied with them.

Perhaps I should also add as a footnote and part homage to the original sensationalist line taken: There have been more terrorists found posing as journalists in Gaza than both World Wars, Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan put together.

https://medium.com/@ihx/the-200-dead-journalists-myth-how-propaganda-hijacked-a-real-tragedy-ec1a17b1171d

****

To BBC, CNN and New York Times…

A quick hint…

When you want to cherry-pick pictures and videos of infants with serious underlying medical conditions to support a false narrative of famine in Gaza…

Try and make sure the mothers by their side are not overweight!

In the five pics and videos clips I saw, two mothers were normal, healthy weight. But one was on the plump side and the remaining two were notably fat. One weighing probably 14-15 stone and the other 16-17 stone.

When you show mothers like this, three possible reactions arise;

There cannot possibly be a famine in Gaza with women in the 14-17 stone range. That weight simply cannot be maintained with even the slightest lack of food.

What sort of mother would let their child starve by their side while stuffing themselves to such an extent.

Or, if you really were sucked in by the Gaza famine myth. ‘No wonder… look at those two fatties! They’ve eaten all the food!’

But these representations are not one-offs. In any Gaza street-scene, it can clearly be seen that 20-30% of the population are overweight, the rest normal weight. But most tellingly, not ONE SINGLE example of a frail or undernourished person in sight.

****

Is it just me?

Or does every major news outlet lack 20/20 vision when it comes to claims of famine in Gaza?

Now we have the UN-backed ‘food security’ boldy proclaim it IS a famine. Well, the term ‘UN-backed’ marks it as a 100% lie from the outset - given that 100 UNRWA staff members took active part in October 7th and UNRWA is now actively denying aid to Nothern Gaza so as to pull apart GHF’s operations and keep Hamas’s aid skimming operation afloat. Also, 99% of the new coming out from Gaza is from Palestinian news ‘stringers’ and journalists fully allied to Hamas.

But this can be seen as a lie from the newscasts themselves. Time and time again we see sick, frail children with a perfectly healthy, well-fed mother in a burkha by their side complaining ‘this is the result of famine on my child.’ In a couple of instances, the women are decidedly rotund and fat, weighing 15 or 16 stone.

Which begs the question: what sort of mother would keep stuffing falafel and lamb pies into her own mouth while letting her child at her side starve? Maintaining that 15-16 stone weight takes some doing. And random pics from Gaza itself see people perfectly healthy and well-fed, with 20-30% of them again in the rotund to fat range.

As the old saying goes, ‘There were NO fat people in Belsen and Dachau.’ The BBC seems to have a stock phrase for anything coming from the GHF or Israeli authorities, ‘Unfortunately, we are unable to verify that report.’ Yet they NEVER use that term for anything coming from the highly suspect ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ or from Palestinian journalists strongly allied to Hamas. Even the simple questioning of why there was a fat mother right next to their supposedly starving infant should ring alarm bells, and get them to comment, ‘Unfortunately we cannot verify that report.’

****

It wasn’t just ONE journalist that was linked to Hamas, Anas al-Sharif, it was ALL SIX. Excerpt from enlightening article on the subject:

For Anas al-Sharif, they presented Hamas military training records and salary payments from the military wing. For Alaa Salama, photographs with weapons and documentation of participation in Hamas operations. Hossam Shabat’s military communications role was proven through seized encrypted devices. Ashraf Saraj was documented as a drone unit operator and technical specialist for Hamas. Ismail Abu Omar’s service with PIJ’s Northern Brigade included weapons training certificates. Talal Aruki’s Hamas naval force membership came complete with combat diving training records.

This wasn’t hearsay or speculation. These were personnel files, payment records, training certificates, photographs, and seized equipment. Yet Al Jazeera’s response was a blanket denial without addressing a single piece of specific evidence. The international media largely reported it as “Israel makes unverified claims about journalists,” as if the documented evidence was somehow less credible than Hamas’s word.

Even more tellingly, several of these “journalists” had posted selfies from October 7 showing themselves with captured Israeli equipment. Others livestreamed themselves entering Israeli territory. Some posted coordinates and tactical information during the attacks. Many explicitly called for more violence in what they called their “reporting.”

Here’s a link to the full article. Worth a read!

https://medium.com/@ihx/the-200-dead-journalists-myth-how-propaganda-hijacked-a-real-tragedy-ec1a17b1171d

****

John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

******

The first signs of this in the current Gaza war were with accounts of Israel’s actions at Al-Shifa hospital. Israel showed on camera to the world the terror tunnels running under the hospital, a basement room which had been used for Hamas command activities, and numerous clips on hospital security cams of armed Hamas terrorists coming in and out of the hospital.

However, when interviewed by the BBC, Dr Nick Maynard, a British consultant regularly visiting Al-Shifa, stated that he saw no tunnels nor witnessed any Hamas militants in the hospital, and refuted claims of a basement room being used by them. He spoke as if it was all an Israeli invention. In contrast, a French medical intern stated that he regularly saw Hamas militants in and out of the hospital, and was warned about keeping clear of a basement room used for ‘military and security purposes’. When he asked what would happen if he went in that room, he was warned that he risked being shot.

So, why such stark differences between these two accounts? It turns out that Dr Maynard is a regularly visiting consultant to Gaza (he’s in fact adopted a young Palestinian girl), and if he said the wrong thing and didn’t toe the ‘Hamas information’ line, he wouldn’t be allowed to return. Whereas the French intern was on a one-off visit with no intention of returning. He was therefore free to tell the truth.

Yet, despite Dr Maynard obviously being discredited in this initial interview, the BBC had him return for his opinion on other Gaza topics. Young Gazan teens being found with head and neck wounds was the first topic, as if Israel was deliberately shooting young Palestinians for no reason – but with no mention of Hamas’s use of child soldiers, which is the real underlying reason (a young masked combatant in a sniper situation, his head or neck would be the most vulnerable to return fire). He later voiced an obviously tainted opinion on the Gaza famine – another Hamas media-fed invention – unequivocally proven as false from testimony by GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Fund) workers.

It is well-known in journalistic circles that Hamas holds the passports of foreign journalists entering Gaza, and if anything untoward is reported against them, that passport is stamped with a banning order on future entry, not only of the journalist concerned, but their entire news network. Through this – which follows the lines the Palestinian Authority took with the Italian RAI network over broadcasting the Ramallah lynching – Hamas take complete control of all news in and out of Gaza.

Main guidelines for the media are: never question statistics produced by the Gaza Ministries, however unrealistic it might be that ‘mainly women and children’ have been killed; never disclose or admit that Hamas often dress in civilian clothes and shield among the general population; never disclose or admit that Hamas operate in hospitals, schools or UN Centres; never disclose or admit that Hamas often pose as medics and journalists. Indeed, of the 15 medics killed a few months ago, 9 were found to be Hamas terrorists, and 80% of the journalists killed have been either Hamas members or affiliated with them.

Of course, this factor of either shielding as civilians, medics or journalists should be obvious to any journalist worth their salt. Hamas are never seen in combat fatigues outside of the carefully photo-op managed hostage handovers. If they did appear openly in combat gear, they’d immediately be picked off by IDF snipers. So, the only options are to appear as civilians, medics or journalists – the latter two giving them more latitude near hospitals or combat zones.

But individual cases provide a damning insight: Hassuna Salim, listed as a freelance photojournalist, but was photographed during October 7 calling for the death of Israelis and Jews; Mohammed Washah, listed as a cameraman, yet the IDF presented his military ID and documents showing him as a Hamas anti-tank unit commander; Duaa Sharaf, listed as a reporter – yet her sole contribution has been publishing antisemitic posts and texts calling for violence against Jews.

Of the 192 journalist fatalities initially cited in the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) list, only 26 were found to been the subject of direct targeting – even though Al-Jazeera and other media had inflated the stats to 260 – the rest simply collateral damage in a tragic and messy war. Researcher David Collier uncovered that 79% had ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad through social media or had publicly expressed support for the October 7 attacks or terrorism generally.

With the highly publicized fatalities of six Al-Jazeera journalists – Anas al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Omar and Talal Aruki – all six, a staggering 100%, were in fact Hamas members or affiliates, with Hamas military records provided for all of them. A number of these journalists had also posted ‘selfies’ of them taking part in October 7^th.

The more recent conflict at Nasser Hospital followed a similar pattern. Six months ago, the IDF arrested 100 terrorists inside Nasser Hospital, including combatants who had posed as doctors and nurses or were directly involved in the 7^th October massacre. A released Israeli hostage reported that up to 35 Israeli hostages were at one point held in the Nasser hospital complex. No wonder that the IDF fired at two cameras mounted outside the hospital used to monitor their troop movements, with six Hamas terrorists confirmed among the fatalities.

Aside from Al-Jazeera – which is little more than a propaganda news network for the Muslim Brotherhood, closely allied to Hamas – the other permanent news networks within Gaza are all Hamas controlled: Al-Aqsa TV, Al-Quds Today and Shehab News Agency, with a number of smaller websites and channels also strictly controlled by Hamas. Anyone who steps outside of an approved narrative not only risks losing their job, but also their lives.

Most international crews – apart from a select number of IDF escorted crews – are based in Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv and reliant on ‘news stringers’ from within Gaza. As a result, 96% of Gaza journalists and these ‘stringers’ are local Palestinians, with the remaining Al-Jazeera journalists from neighbouring Arab nations sympathetic to the ‘Palestinian Cause’. So, hardly objective or unbiased journalistic coverage.

But even a superficial examination of this situation by responsible news organizations would reveal a system heavily biased against Israel. If nothing else, they should surely recognize a propensity towards bias. But regarding Hamas statistics or claims, we never hear from the BBC or CNN, ‘Unfortunately, we are not able to independently verify that claim.’ Yet numerous times we will hear that statement made after a claim or statistic from Israel.

Which stands in total contrast to the alliance UK’s security services have with Israel. Over the past three decades, Israel’s Mossad and Security services have passed on numerous counter-terrorist warnings to MI5 and MI6 that have resulted in foiling terrorist plots, saving hundreds of lives. If MI6 had adopted the same policy as the BBC of doubting information from Israel, those lives would have been lost. Something of a contradictory folly that security information regarding UK terrorist threats is trusted, but is doubted when it involves terrorists on Israel’s own doorstep.

Indeed, while Kier Starmer is threatening to recognize a Palestinian State next month – something which would decidedly put Israel’s security at risk – in contrast, the UK is involved in a major defence partnership with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, as well as recently proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Quite a bold move and further demonstrating the gulf between the government and its main broadcasting service, when the BBC can’t even bring itself to recognize Hamas as a terrorist group, always using the roundabout term, ‘Proscribed by the UK Government as a terrorist organization.’

The other regular proclamation from the BBC is that Israel won’t allow foreign journalists into Gaza, almost as if trying to excuse their own one-way reporting. ‘We have little choice but to repeat the accounts provided us by our Palestinian stringers, because you won’t allow us to see any different.’

That isn’t entirely true. The IDF have escorted a limited number of foreign journalists into Gaza, about 35 in total in different groups, but doesn’t make it an open, regular policy otherwise it would spend half its time tour-guiding/escorting journalists around Gaza. Unescorted, it views the region as too dangerous. Countless unexploded munitions, plus every other building is booby-trapped – something to consider when viewing the building devastation in Gaza. When the IDF bomb a building, it often also sets off the booby-trapped buildings within thirty yards each side. In addition, any Western journalists viewed as sympathetic to Israel might be targets of further kidnapping/hostage-holding. The likes of Andrew Fox, Douglas Murray or anyone from Fox News would no doubt be seen as a grand prize for Hamas to kidnap and hold to ransom.

But the bottom line is that today there’s hardly any difference between a news story from the BBC, CNN or New York Times and an announcement direct from Hamas. To give some clarity to this ludicrous situation, how would it be if after the Ariana Grande bombing, 7/7 or 9/11, news services in Israel sympathized with or made excuses for the terrorists and their supporters rather than the UK or USA governments and their people?

One of the strongest statements regarding this slough of false news reporting came from US Ambassador Mike Huckabee over the claims of Gazans being shot while collecting aid: ‘‘Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press have reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These reports were FALSE. Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.’

But rather than retract and desist from similar future stories, mainstream media orgs then doubled down by featuring various frail infants with underlying medical conditions in their mother’s arms to further support the false narrative of famine in Gaza. No thought given to the fact that all the mothers were perfectly healthy and well-fed – as were the surrounding hospital staff and reporters – with in a couple of cases the mothers appearing decidedly rotund and fat.

Of course, if presented with this dichotomy of accepting Israeli anti-terrorist reports when they might save British or American lives, yet ignoring them when it might involve purely Israel-Gaza concerns, journalists might argue that their Gaza reports don’t impact on the security of British or American citizens. Except that they do: in the last 22 months, threats and attacks against Jews and Israelis in the UK, USA and Europe have increased a staggering 280%. Unless we’ve returned full circle to David Baddiel’s claim, ‘Jews Don’t Count.’

But the main impact of simply parroting news stories originating from Hamas might be to the news organizations themselves. Numerous times since October 7^th I have seen readers proclaim that they have lost all faith in the mainstream media and the accuracy and veracity of their reporting. At a time of declining subscriptions and viewing figures, probably the last thing the mainstream media can afford.

******

John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

*** SPECIAL OFFER***

I will be continue offering a FREE book to all new subscribers: Past Imperfect, an intense groundbreaking crime thriller set between England, France and the USA, exploring the link between two young boys thirty years apart. This will be in Word for Windows form, which you can either read on your computer or transfer to your Kindle. For all those who have already subscribed to me, I make the same offer of this free book if you add Notes from the Edge to your ‘Recommend’ list.

But for those choosing a paid option to compensate me for my regular weekly articles, I will be offering THREE extra FREE books: ‘Letters from a Murderer’, a classic murder mystery exploring whether Jack the Ripper has found fresh killing ground in 1890s New York; ‘The Crescent Wars’, focusing on the Lebanese Civil War and a British journalist investigating a large scale banking plot behind the war; and ‘The Vienna Writers Circle’, following two Jewish cousins, part of Sigmund Freud’s circle of writers and intellectuals, as they strive in 1938 Vienna to save themselves and their families from Nazi death camps.

******

John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

******

The past two months have seen a number of European leaders and some ex-UK-Commonwealth nations jostling to recognize a Palestinian State. First it was Ireland and Spain – no great surprise there, both have arch-left, anti-Israel governments – but then came France, Norway and the UK, with more recently Canada, Australia and New Zealand joining the fray.

But even a three-year-old could tell them this is totally the wrong time – if indeed there ever is a right time – to be thinking of a Palestinian State. Hamas have not been completely defeated and post-Gaza plans are in disarray and far from decided. Indeed, coming on the heels of the massacre of October 7^th with Hamas still holding a number of hostages, recognizing a Palestinian State simply feels like a reward for terrorism.

‘Massacre 1,200, kidnap 250 and refuse to hand them back in a protracted war, and we’ll grant you your own State.’ It’s as foolish and nonsensical as saying to ISIS straight after the Bataclan massacre, ‘We made a mistake bombing you. We’re going to grant you your own ‘Islamic State’ within Iraq with your Capital in Mosul.’

Even if Hamas are totally defeated and relinquish all future power, handing the reins to their rivals Fatah is hardly better. Despite launching no October 7^th massacre, Fatah have for the past decades maintained a ‘pay for slay’ policy, rewarding terrorists for killing Jews/Israelis. Many schools are named after terrorist leaders and school-children are indoctrinated to hate Jews and martyrdom through killing them is revered as the ultimate reward.

Then too we have how the Palestinians themselves feel about Hamas and Fatah. Palestinian voters turned their backs on Fatah in the last elections 19 years ago because they considered Fatah corrupt and felt they’d get a better deal with Hamas. Hamas’s ‘Destroy Israel and kill-all-Jews’ policies were all but ignored – in fact for a number of Palestinians that was probably a plus, feeling Fatah wasn’t forceful enough on that front – they voted Hamas into power in higher numbers than Germans voted for Hitler in 1933.

There was initially talk of a coalition government between Hamas and Fatah in order to preserve Oslo-Road-Map-to-Peace plans (Fatah had been given an endorsement on that front, Hamas hadn’t), but these fell apart when a year later a civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah. As a result, 1,000 Fatah members were killed in Gaza, the rest fleeing, and Hamas took complete control in Gaza, with Fatah then announcing retaining control in the West Bank-Judea-Samaria.

In light of that background, it’s almost as if the international community are saying, ‘Now that Hamas has self-eliminated itself from any future electoral process due to the Gaza War, it’s time to hand the grand prize to Fatah.’ But being overlooked is that with Fatah’s equal-dedication to terrorism with its ‘Pay for Slay’ policy, it’s simply a lukewarm version of Hamas. A bit like saying ‘Now Vlad the Impaler is out of the running, let’s hand everything to Genghis Khan.’

Also being ignored is the fickle nature of the Palestinian public, and having voted in Hamas in 2006 on a ‘non-corruption’ ticket – in the process ignoring its die-hard ‘destroy Israel’ agenda which has led to the current Gaza war – they could easily do the same again. One measure of how much the Palestinian public often lean towards voting for extreme leaders and factions has been their reaction to Marwan Barghouti. While in sample polls he gets double the number of votes than Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah or Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – thereby offering the chance of Fatah-led unity – political pundits feel that if Barghouti then took a more moderate line with Israel, his popularity would slump. His popularity in fact mostly based on his past arch-terrorist actions against Israel, for which he is still imprisoned.

Indeed, one of the main reasons that Abbas has avoided fresh elections this past 19 years – they should take place every 4 years – is the fear that Hamas would win and he would then have to relinquish control also of the West-Bank-Judea-Samaria. It is only now that Hamas might have self-excluded themselves from any future electoral process that the International Community perhaps feels the time is ripe to hand Fatah the grand prize of a Palestinian State.

But this overlooks a few crucial factors: everything would then be handed to a non-contested government – so hardly a democratic move – and Hamas, even though not in power, would from the wings claim that it was only their October 7^th initiative which had in the end brought to fruition a Palestinian State. They would claim all the credit.

Certainly, Israel is against a future Palestinian State being run by Fatah, with good reason. Not just the fact that, as mentioned, they’re simply a watered-down version of Hamas with their continuing ‘pay for slay’ policy, but also the fact that Fatah could easily be overthrown by a future more extreme party, as happened with Hamas.

Then too we have the rebuilding and running of Gaza. Israel favours the ‘Trump-style’ Riviera plan, with much of the Gazan population being relocated. Egypt and some other Arab partners are pushing for only a temporary relocation of a portion of Gazans. Both Israel and the USA have strong reservations about the ‘Egypt and partners’ plan, and in turn Saudi and the UAE are nervous about any investment in rebuilding Gaza without some accompanying investment and security from the USA.

It becomes obvious that each side will not agree totally with the other’s plan, so perhaps an amalgamation of the two plans would be a midway alternative. A working committee of seven parties: Egypt, Saudi, USA, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian and EU, all with similar combined interests of the rebuilding of Gaza and its future stability. Therefore, seen as a form of ‘transition government’ to Palestinian Statehood. Finding outside parties dedicated to peace and stability will not be difficult, so a heavy focus would be on the Palestinian contingent. Perhaps the ‘National Coalition for Justice and Democracy’ combined with Marwan Barghouti – thereby forging the party most dedicated to peace and democracy with a popular Palestinian leader.

This seven-part committee would also replace Fatah in running the current PA, so that the two areas were linked administratively, possibly with a land strip joining the two dedicated to joint Palestinian-Israel-Saudi light trade and technology initiatives. A sort of Levant-Silicon Valley, along the lines of an earlier proposed Trump trade-park plan bordering the Egyptian Sinai desert.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that a committee has ruled on the issue of Palestinian Statehood. The initial UNSCOP Committee in 1947 had serious misgivings about the viability of a Palestinian State, based mainly on the lack of visible taxes to support even the basic State functions of schools, hospitals, roads, services and lighting. The same is true now. The Palestinian territories are heavily reliant on foreign aid and subsidies, without which it couldn’t function. And now there’s the added dilemma of heavily embedded terrorist factions.

Indeed, many political experts have pronounced that a successful future Palestinian State won’t be possible without its renouncement of terrorism and Jihadism, along the lines that Germany was de-Nazified post WW2. This process in West Germany took four years, with not a single Nazi-aligned party in sight for the first free elections in 1949. In contrast, of the seven political parties taking part in the 2006 Palestinian elections, five of them had partial or complete ‘Israel-removal or eradication’ agendas. So, that would be the main aim of this new 7-part committee, with the following stipulations:

No political parties allowed on the ballot that had terrorist or ‘attack Israel and its citizens’ agendas; no hate Israelis/Jews or martyrdom taught in schools or mosques; all terrorist groups outlawed and to be disarmed; working in partnership with Israelis to be encouraged, rather than the current situation of ‘punishment for normalization’; conflicts between Israeli settlers and Palestinians to be carefully monitored to reduce friction between the two.

At the point these criteria had been satisfied, only then could the Palestinians move towards free elections. The target would be four years, but if the process took longer, so be it. That would all depend on how quickly the Palestinians could renounce terrorism and dedicate themselves to peace and future stability. The other advantage of this 7-nation committee would be their combined ‘peace force’ to replace the current PA/Israeli forces. This in many ways would take away the ‘them and us’ blame game attached to purely Israeli security, plus would also in part mirror the Abraham Accords, which would hopefully by then have also included Saudi.

Of course, there is a tremendous gap to bridge. At present, partly due to October 7^th, a number of Israelis have proclaimed there are ‘no innocents’ in Gaza.’ This is supported by the 100 UNRWA staff actually taking part in October 7^th; some hostages claiming to have been held in UNRWA homes; the number of terrorists and radical supporters who have proclaimed October 7^th to be a ‘glorious operation’, which they’d happily repeat; the many medics and journalists found to be members of or affiliated with Hamas; the fact that even with a $1 million reward offered for information on Israeli hostages, not a single person came forward, even on an anonymous basis.

While ‘no innocents’ might be too extreme a claim, it is certainly a deeply poisoned society, and again highlights how ludicrous it would be to attempt moving currently towards a Palestinian State. Given the numerous obstacles to be surmounted before that can even be considered, this 7-part committee – or indeed any other appointed ‘Palestinian transition government’ – will have their work cut out.

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John Matthews - Notes from the Edge. If you like my articles and wish to receive them regularly - 2-3 a week on Israel, Middle East and World Affairs, plus now a comedy spoof and two thrillers in serial form - then I look forward to getting your subscription.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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