I need to start this post by explaining that I don't condone the killing of anyone, anywhere, anytime. I'm against wars and for peace. Likewise, I don't support the death penalty and wouldn't even for someone like Harold Shipman.
I'm horrified by what is happening now in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinian people, including 6,500 or so children, are dead. Many more have been injured and maimed. Hospitals have been bombed and destroyed. In addition, Palestinians are being killed and displaced from their land in the West Bank. I utterly condemn this genocide, and with many others have been calling for a ceasefire for weeks.
The seventh of October will go down in history, but the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians started decades before. This has been going on for seventy-five years since the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948 when seven hundred thousand were expelled from Palestine.
It's important to understand that Palestinians under occupation, and subjected to ethnic cleansing, and genocide by the Israeli government have a right to resist under international law, and that includes armed resistance. As Al Jazeera reports:
"In accordance with international humanitarian law, wars of national liberation have been expressly embraced, through the adoption of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (pdf), as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere."
Don't expect the media to tell you this. You won't hear about it.
It's time there was peace in Palestine and the international community brokered a one-state solution where Jews and Arabs can live in peace together. With western support for the war on Palestinians, don't expect this to happen any time soon.
In the meantime, we all need to work to #FreePalestine.
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