FIRST POST in a long time………..2025
I am not filled with hatred of Jewish people, I am not supporting war from any country be they Russian, Iranian, Israeli, Pakistani, India, Ukrainian. None of any such groups or Countries.
I feel compelled to write out my thoughts on the situation and to sift through my own feelings and see where my thoughts or opinions come from. I must question myself about whether I have a thirst to see blood or have some war monger type tendencies. How are the ideas of war and civil unrest around the world affecting me in my own life? Perhaps I will touch on some of your own “stuff” or we do not see eye to eye at all. Who really knows?
I must of course look at whether or not I am biased in any way, have I reason to be appalled at the actions of the Israeli government and how the people of Palestine have been treated? Have the Palestinian people been treated fairly as according to all the rules of international law and the rules and writings of multiple treaties and conventions of the world. Then again this is an opinion post on my blog page and is there a need to deep dive in to international conventions, treaties and rules of international law? I do not think so, that make things extremely political and not where I wish to go with my blog page. How and ever, I do write to uncover inside of myself what it is that brings me to such disappointment and feelings of helplessness in the situation and I am not anywhere near the countries that I am speaking about and cannot offer to provide food or aid to the people of Palestine and I am not beside the Iranian regime leaders to offer them advice.
My own bias stems from some number of years living I the United States where I had many clients who were Jewish, Muslim, Christian and of other faiths. Did we discuss business based on our religious beliefs? No not at all, we got on with things and that is the way the world works, the United States at least, religious beliefs did not enter the equation, the most important factor was dollars and cents and we did business together.
Aside from business life though, there was also my “home life” where my immediate neighbour was Jewish and my local corner store was owned by Palestinian people. No big issues there, keeping in mind I am Irish and we tend to be accepting of all walks of life and we do not look through or any deeper to question religious beliefs of nationalities as we see all people of the world similarly and we like to be friendly and cordial at the best of times. I did however become quite good friends with many Palestinian people and they were of the Muslim religion and of Christian religion, though they were both Palestinian. Not only did I become friends with Palestinian people, the people treated me like their family. I was welcomed to their church events and I was helped out on many occasions by the Palestinian families within my friendship network, just as they would help out their own son or nephew or cousin. In my experience in my own little life, the Palestinian people who I became friends with treated me so well, I could never write it all out here in words. Therefore I am biased perhaps?
I can safely say that being treated like family by people you only grew to know and met along some stage of your life is weird isn’t it? Not people of my own country, Irish and not people of Europe and not people of the same religious background or upbringing as me. The people who welcomed me in to their homes and their lives as a guy, a man, an Irish guy, just one of the “lads”. So yes I became integrated with Palestinian people on a business level, a friendship level, a family level. One might even say a level of love, love of humanity, a respect from one human to another. I have had many friends of different ethnic groups and religions and from all over the world. The Palestinian people became like brothers to me and their uncles I respected like my own uncles, their grandmothers became respected by me like they were my own grandmothers.
I can recall quite dearly how one of the grandmothers was with dementia and an older lady, when I would visit their home where they were taking care of their grandmother, she would link my arm from almost the time of my arriving and continue to speak Arabic with me, of course I did not know what she was saying and many of the family members might laugh a little and I would wonder what is she saying? Through the laughs and giggles, the grandchildren would tell me how she is saying I am the man who has come to drive her home to her own house. She might repeat over and over again that I was the man that had come to take her home. The grandmother of the family would not let me out of her sight any time I would visit and would always say I was her driver and she will be going home soon. We were in a neighbourhood in California but that woman believed that outside of the front door was Palestine and she was only visiting her son’s house for the afternoon. Dementia can be laughable and sad all at the same time, a part of life really. I mention this to give you an idea of how close we were and how welcome I was in my Palestinian friend’s homes. Again if I were to list all of the encounters and niceness of my time with my Palestinian friends I could write five or six or ten books on my experiences and how friendly and welcoming the Palestinian people were to me and how they made me part of their family.
Things that were never any issue, Money, Religion, Food, Conversation, Friendship, Support. I returned to Ireland in 2005 to bury my father, which of course was indeed a sad time in my own family’s life and a major milestone in my own personal life. I received phone calls from California from my Palestinian friends to offer their condolences. I did have many Irish friends, British friends, Portuguese friends, Brazilian friends, Mexican friends, Guatemalan friends, Italian friends, Armenian friends, Philipino friends, French friends, Russian friends, Iranian friends; the list goes on and on. That is America for you though, the melting pot, people from all over the world getting along in harmony and working towards keeping their own families fed and safe and cared for. The Palestinian people though, went above and beyond friendships and showed me a truly genuine affection and love like a brother and family. So I might be biased could be fair to say.
You will note I mention a mixture of friendships I had developed with people from many different nations of the world; never did their religion become an issue or a boundary to our friendships. I had several friendships with Jewish people too, though the Jewish people were from multiple different countries of the world too, never just Israeli people. To be quite honest I never understood the whole thing about a religion wishing to have a culture recognised as being a state or country thing and the rights of Jewish people to any lands and that Israel is a God given right or something, I did not understand that element ever. I came from Ireland where we were mostly educated humbly and with a strong independent culture and background which had nothing to do with religion. Though Irish culture has been heavily influenced by the Catholic and or Christian religious beliefs, I have always understood that any religious beliefs and my culture as an Irish man were separate. So I did not understand the idea of Jewish people from other countries who claimed Israel as their country also. I may have had some great conversations and debates about the topic that a religion is not a culture, a religion cannot be a country and my position usually ended by saying they were mad in the head and lacking true identity. When somebody may have said to me, I am Polish though I am Jewish so I recognise Israel as my country or I am Russian though I am Israeli because I am Jewish. I found that quite strange over the years.
Without going in to World War era and the history of the beginning of Israel post WW11 and the diminishing of the state of Palestine ever since. Let’s fast forward to today.
The Israeli defence forces and Zionists are starving and killing Palestinian people. Genocide is occurring and what or how must me or any person feel about that? I am not a follower of any religion and I see that religious teachings across all platforms to be a weakness of mankind. This topic best left for another day as that topic of religion becomes a serious deeper dive. Although while we are here now at the topic, I must share what comes to mind when I hear things like “God Willing”, “The Bible says so”, “It is written in the Torah”, “The Quran says so”. My view is that the weakness is how any person can follow a book that has been written by men at some point in history and believe so heartedly in the words of those men from more than 1 thousand years ago that any human can kill another human because of a book about God and religion. Is it not the fundamentals of religion to be kind and loving to fellow human beings? Yet how much killing is done in the name of religion?
I hear today as many of you do too, the snippets around the internet of Zionist settlers in Israel or as the Iranians now put it, the “occupied Palestine state” that they are a superior race and the Palestinian people are less than them. That the people of Israel are blocking food to a nation of people, that Israeli people are sitting in front of aid trucks to block them from entering Gaza to feed people in a country that has been blasted to oblivion by an Israeli army. An army that has had the support of massive and powerful countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States and Germany. I am sickened by such atrocities as those being carried out by the Israeli defence forces.
Let us pause for a moment. I have an issue with that, the wording is so precise and calculated, an Israeli Defence force. The military of Israel has been an offensive force for a very long time. The excuse is always they are defending themselves. I have never known any person needing to defend themselves unless they were doing something incorrect or wrong. Ah yes, when a crime is being committed a victim may have to defend themselves. This is true, so Israel has had Palestinian people locked up within their own country, enclosed by fences and walls and barriers between the two countries. What defending is needed from a country that is being heavily guarded? Soooooooooooooo!
Where is the defence? The Israeli settlers have been taking Palestinian land and homes since post WW11. The Palestinian people do not like this treatment yet they have gotten on with their lives, the Israeli settlers have not been satisfied with some land and some homes, they want it all and so they have destroyed it in a response to a hostage situation that occurred on October 7th 2023. Here lies a further issue that I am confused about. How did the Palestinian “terrorists” of Hamas run rampant through Israel undetected for as long as they did on October 7th when there are multitudes of cameras and defence systems and borders between Israel and Palestine, yet the Hamas terrorists were able to successfully cause mayhem in Israel. This does not make sense that a “country or territory” called Israel who is established on a defensive position and narrative end up having such an attack happen so easily? Look, however it did happen, it has happen and caused a whole bunch of a mess ever since.
I am not excusing the taking of hostages nor am I saying it is okay especially based off of what or how I see the proper workings of humanity. Though the mass destruction that has occurred since and carried out by Israeli defence forces definitely shows an offensive military and not a defensive one. And to top it all of the Israeli forces then decided to keep on bombing places like Lebanon and now so foolishly, Iran.
Iran is not Palestine though, Iran has a military and real weapons and real big world powers that support them as a country and rightfully so an independent country who is within their own rights to defend themselves and to retaliate against an aggressor. Just yesterday I saw a post on the internet of a politician from the United States, Ted Cruz speaking about “the Bible says to support Israel”. The political arm of the United States of America will be driven by a religious book and its teachings? The Torah says the Jews are superior and entitled, the Quran says death to the infidels and so on. Please tell me how the policy and political actions of the world are to be based on religious texts written more than one thousand years ago? Did the Bible know that people would be fighting with missiles that can travel 1500 kilometers in under 7 minutes, I do not think so? These books were written in times when people may have had to ride on a horse or a camel and fight with a sword and wars went on for months or even years with much less casualties. If you wish to base your support of inhumane acts of violence and genocide in the teachings of a religious book or text from more than one thousand years ago, then in my honest opinion you are a weak and feeble human.
One who wishes to fight over, my book says this and my book says that, then one must begin to respect that if I take a position so strongly in my own religious beliefs then so might my opposition and then and therefore they might also be willing to fight to their death and the war will never end.
What can be done about the situation though? Iran will not back down from an aggressor who continues to show that they wish to have an unstable middle-east region, those being Israel. Oh yeah, what about the defence forces? Would the Israeli military ever have been allowed to operate by the international community if it were called the Israeli Offence forces? Probably not.
Is the world community going to continue to allow the Zionist leaders to kill and starve the people of Palestine or are the governments of the world ready to stand up and be counted and bring about an end to this. As an outsider looking in, it is the Israeli people who are without home or country of any proper footing. Israel is made up of Jewish people from all over the world; this is not a country and must definitely not have any entitlement because some book from more than a thousand years says so. Go ahead and have your own religious beliefs and do whatever keeps you sane and an active part of a global community. Though when it crosses the line in to killing another race of people, yes a race, that is the word I have been searching for in my brain, the Palestinian people are a race of people, just like I am Irish, we are not a race of people because we are predominantly Catholic and therefore the Jewish people are not a race of people. Jewish people are followers of a religion; this is not a race or culture of any people. These are a people following an age old book about Gods and fairies if you ask me. As make believe as the book of Peter Pan. A story that was written by humans, this idea of the divine word of God is made up by humans, do you religion followers fail to see this?
Any person that is not willing to provide food and aid to the Palestinian people is not any kind of superior race or culture of people.
Any person that is not willing to bring an end to Zionist settlers.
Any person that believes war in the name of religion is justified.
Any person complicit in genocide.
Any person who will take arms against a defenceless nation.
Any person, who votes for, supports or encourages war in the name of religion
Yup all of them all of you people who fall in to one of these categories are weak feeble humans and deserve nothing less than misery and punishment for your weaknesses and mere inhumane nature.
I have highlighted the possibilities of my own bias opinion and love for Palestinian people, this is true. Does it blur my vision of knowing what is the difference between right and wrong? No, absolutely not, I am clear in my thoughts as I question myself all of the time, I look for why I might feel any particular way on any given day and I look for the depths of myself to understand why or what is how or why I feel how I do. I have not touched on occupied countries and how the Irish have generational traumas over the occupation of Ireland over hundreds of years, I am simply viewing and reviewing the situation in myself right now.
Ought Iran defend itself? Yes of course, they have their rights under international laws. Ought Israel continue to slaughter Palestinian people? No, it is illegal under international law. Ought the western world support Israel in their offensive attacks around the Middle East? No, it is internationally illegal to invade or attack another country. Ought the world do everything in their power to bring about peace and harmony through out the entire world, right now and forever in to the foreseeable future? Yes, of course that is what part of being humane and part of the human race requires. Ought the United Kingdom and the Untied States support Israel in their acts of war? No they should not as they have no business supporting Zionists and war criminals, any support shows complicity and this must be factored in to the world court of international justice.
The United States made big strides many years ago in the Middle East and toppled Sadam Hussein, remember that? The liberation of the Iraqi people. Yes well the same thing needs to happen with that guy Benjamin Malivosky or whatever his real name is, yeah the guy who goes by netneyahoooooooo! He and his supporters and cabinet must be toppled and removed.
Any support of him is a support of genocide.
There are fifteen hundred rabbit holes to venture down and another 1500 conspiracy theories about the whole debacle in the Middle East none of which can truthfully argue or support the ridiculous atrocities that are occurring right now in Gaza.
Be human, be kind and feed the people of Palestine.
A.McNallyauthor.com 