I have grieved this week for the babies and children, both Israeli and Palestinian, caught up in the horrors which have engulfed the Middle East.
Israel is a land I’ve visited at least a dozen times and whose people always extended me an extraordinary warmth when I arrived as an outsider not sharing their faith. It’s no exaggeration to say that a trip I took to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, for my step-son Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah some years back, was one of the most interesting and enjoyable experiences of my life.
Neither will I ever forget my first visit, with Liverpool in 1978. I took Shabbat one Friday night at the home of lawyer and politician Ruvi Rivlin, his wife, son and daughter, in Tel Aviv. Ruvi, who went on to become president of Israel, ended up giving me a tour of Jerusalem, which became a personal lesson for me in the history of the Holy Land. I was too young to appreciate it. I wish we could do it all again now.
I thought of Ruvi last weekend, and also of the family of my old Liverpool team-mate Avi Cohen, a wonderfully gifted player who we signed in 1979. I know that so many people I have met out there will be suffering now.
The atrocities are a stain on humanity. Random killing perpetrated by the agents of a terrorist organisation who – make no mistake - should be called ‘terrorists’, though some media outlets, for reasons beyond me, choose not to do that. We are not talking about flag-waving demonstrators. The victims include babies and children, for goodness’ sake. There is no greater abomination.
It also shames me, as a proud Briton, to see that British Jewish parents feel it is now unsafe to send their kids to school. And that British Jewish schoolchildren are taught what to do if a gunman turns up at their school. Let’s just pray that nightmare scenario never plays out in a classroom within these shores. But how dare anyone put children and parents in fear like that?
My link to Israel began at the time Avi was being proposed as a possible signing for Liverpool. We started heading out there to play exhibition games and unwind. We found Israel wasn’t worried about a group of professional footballers who were a touch over-exuberant and drinking slightly too much Maccabee beer. Good times, a million miles away from the devastation we’re seeing now.
Israel was so proud of Avi. I’ll never forget the day he first turned up at Melwood, in 1979, when we were having a full-sized game on what they called the ‘A pitch’. You could see straight away that he had qualities, though perhaps not quite the aggression needed for English football. He was a centre back capable of playing in central midfield and at left back and I later signed him to Rangers. A class act, who died far too young in a motorcycle crash, 13 years ago.
My attachment to the country makes me feel very strongly that we should strive to find a formula enabling Israelis and Palestinians to live side-by-side, for the sake of everyone, going forward. I wasn’t too concerned about the FA’s decision not to light the Wembley arch with the colours of the Israel flag for Friday night's game with Australia. But we must stand behind a nation whose people have also contributed enormously to the British way of life.
The challenge, of course, is how to bring an end to this tragedy. And to do so quickly, with so many lives being lost. It’s a tragedy on both sides. Both parties to this conflict will have to bend and yield to some extent. There will need to be concessions in the pursuit of what has been unachievable – a road to peace for people in the Middle East.
It is a colossal challenge for those who carry the responsibility to broker such a peace. In the meantime, all the rest of us can do this weekend is pray for the innocents on both sides - and hope that there might be a resolution to a disaster unfolding before our eyes.
Bashir♡TK
498
FREE PALASTINE🇯🇴🇯🇴🇯🇴
zakariasuleiman
343
free palastine🎙
4777Amin
316
We should open our mouths and speak the truth, not just beat about the bush. The world knows it and refuses to acknowledge... However, when Russia went into Ukraine we all rallied and demanded their land be returned to them. However, Palestinians defending their land is terrorism. Until we stop 🚏 the double standards lifestyle. This atrocities will only be a vicious cycle. We cannot be humane until we speak the truth with no expectation of quid pro quo!
ishti
250
Dr Gabor Maté(a renowned speaker and author) had said the following two years back when Israel was bombing Gaza on a flimsy excuse:- "I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Aushwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Aushwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population. There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent - that’s what’s called the 'Nakba' in Arabic; the 'disaster' or the 'catastrophe'. There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel. I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then. It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit! So then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an 'outdoor prison', which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worse thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians. And 'anybody who criticises Israel is an anti-Semite' is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true."