Writing in today's Guardian Seumas Milne says pointedly that 'During the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel's hands this year alone. The issue is of course not just the vast disparity in weapons and power, but that one side is the occupier, the other the occupied.' Dead Palestinian children and such disproportionate continuing aggression do not make Israel safer. Time and again in such situations of deadlock, history cautions otherwise.
Many bloggers have already responded to the current crisis in Gaza and I have nothing to add save for three images. I took them in Derry several years ago on my first trip to Ireland, pre the Good Friday Agreement. They show the peace sculpture in Carlisle Square. They speak for themselves of the truth which underpins the ongoing process of peace. Ultimately this is the only truth that transforms conflict.
"Dead Palestinian children and such disproportionate continuing aggression do not make Israel safer" ... if only the perpatrators could see and understand this.
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