Every time I watch the news I get annoyed. Whenever the radio’s on I get violent tendencies. I won’t open the newspaper until delicate objects have been removed from my vicinity. Including any family members. And it all stems from, basically, one word. A word so simple, so basic, so important and yet so tragically misunderstood by apparently everyone except me, that I alternate between wishing to vomit when I hear it, to wishing to inflict pain and suffering on the utterer. That word is ‘ceasefire’. Which is the new battle cry of the ignorant.

Of course, its not the word itself, words carry very little baggage, but the context, the assumptions and the implications. The word itself means a ‘mutual truce’. An agreement between two (or more) warring parties to… errrr… to cease firing on each other.

So the cries go up. Along with ‘Free Palestine!’, though from whom no-one mentions because it all gets a bit messy and ‘from the river to the sea’, which is even messier, the shout is now ‘CEASEFIRE!’, as if the IDF are going to hear and heed immediately the cries of people who really have no understanding of what is going on. Or if they do understand, they choose not to demonstrate that. Even Kier Starmer gets it. Or says he does so he can continue to tread a really fine line between siding with ‘the murderers’ and demanding ‘peace’.

There was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on October 6th. It didn’t last a day. 5,000 rockets, 1400 brutal murders, 240 hostages taken. Which was not only in breach of the ‘ceasefire’ and any and every ‘international’ fucking ‘law’ you can imagine, but was done with a totally cynical disregard for the people of Palestine who were always going to bear the brunt of any retaliation. Hamas knew that. Yet went ahead.

I know, its unfashionable to even mention October 7th now, or the hostages, you’re only allowed to talk about ceasefire. Those murders and kidnappings have somehow been retrospectively justified by the might of Israel’s response. And yet what Israel is doing is not only clearing out Hamas but showing up their abuse of the Palestinians they’re supposed to represent, by putting their most vulnerable out there as human shields. And yet, the BBC are so quick to point out, correctly, that ‘the videos of Hamas taking hostages INTO the hospital, in full view of all the staff, are ‘not validated”. Yet every statement from Gaza, all the figures, incident reports and tales of bombings come from Hamas. No caveats. A terrorist organisation with not a scruple nor moral consideration between the lot of them. Yet BBC, ITV and Sky all treat the news with equivalence.

I don’t like Benyamin Netanyahu one little bit. But he represents a democratically elected government and is their spokesperson, not their dictator. Hamas are ISIS. Same plot, same methodology, same ideology. A death cult. Who, as even Kier Starmer has pointed out, have stated many times that they would take any opportunity to ‘repeat’ the events of October 7. Which a ceasefire would give them. Which would make the stance of both the United Nations and the Scottish Parliament decidedly questionable, if they had any credibility on the world platform, which fortunately neither do.

People watch the reports and they are horrible. The bombings, the deaths, the parents crying for children. And so they cry ‘ceasefire’. Meaning ‘stop Israel from bombing’. And I get that, I really do. I also get that it will not stop Hamas from doing anything, other than getting stronger, re-grouping and trying again.

The only way to ‘free Palestine’ and get a ‘ceasefire’ is for Hamas to be gone. Totally. And the hostages returned safely. Only then can the innocent civilians of Gaza be free of their barbaric overlords who care not one little jot about how many of them die in their cause, or at their swords.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx