Israel

First, let's get one thing out of the way: I make a clear distinction between Israel And the Jewish religion. So you can stick your "anti-semite" responses up your arse. I don't care if a person is Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Mounted Bombay Methodist. Everything and everyone should be treated on their merits, good or bad.

Now, let's move on to the right wing saddo who posts on You Tube under the name "Ex British Army Paz49". Today, he is posting some anti BBC tripe on the topic of why the BBC refuses to call Hamas "terrorists". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHvWNr9-StY&ab_channel=ExBritishArmyPaz49

Personally, I gave up watching BBC news programmes some time ago because of obvious bias in their reporting in Ukraine and John Simpson was never one of my favourite reporters. This Paz49  is obviously one of the people posting on You Tube clearly taking the side of the Netanyahu government and attacking Hamas. That's OK; freedom of speech and all that. (Make the most of it while you still can). I suspect this bloke is an awful lot younger than me, so I feel it right that I should try to educate him. I don't know for sure but I suspect my time in the British Army had finished before he was born.

First, let's examine past events regarding the State of Israel and its foundation. A long time ago, even before my time, Jews around the world had been crying for a state of their own. A state based solely on your religion? Whatever, their wish was granted and the Soviet Union came to their aid, creating the Jewish Autonomous Oblast via a decree in 1928. That still exists to this day as an autonomous oblast (the only one) and is still effectively a federal component of modern Russia. It is located on the border between Russia and China in the Russian far east. Regardless of the geography, it is still an autonomous state.

Post WW2, Zionists determined that Palestine would do nicely for their new homeland, thank you very much and began infiltrating into the British Mandate of Palestine. The British government didn't really want Palestine but it was mandated to them by the League of Nations and the British set about running it as per their mandate. The Zionist terrorist organisations, Haganah and Irgun didn't like this and set about organising terrorist operations within Palestine. They were labelled quite widely as "Terrorists" even by that great beacon of democracy (not!) Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. They didn't seem to have any one side in the affairs of Palestine in their sights and set about killing and maiming Arab and British people alike. Eventually, in 1948, they bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem, killing more than 90, including British, Palestinains and Jews alike. To cap this off, they organised the killing of 107 Arabs, including women and children in the village of Deir Yassin. If you are going to kill unarmed women and children, don't be susprised if you are labelled "Terrorist"! The list of Irgun outrages is so long, it even warrants its own section in Wikipedia, 3 whole pages of them! Also, following the end of WW2, a lot of British servicemen had been released from the armed forces and those of the Jewish faith went to Palestine and were involved in attacking and killing their erstwhile mates; fellow British servicemen, along with any Arab who didn't have a gun! So, there's a nice introduction to the beginnings of the Israeli state.

And then, there is the question of dispossessing Palestinian Arabs of their homes and land. Sadly, this has gone on from the earliest days of Israel up until this day. Unless you have been there and witnessed the unimagable suffering this has caused and continues to cause, it is probably best if you hold your peace and say nothing until you have educated your self. Can you imagine a British population being invaded by others who take away your homes and land and then just sitting there quietly, uttering a lot of "tut" and doing nothing about it? No, I can't either. We would be up in arms and doing our best to remove the usurpers. Wasn't a great deal made during WW2 about the training of not only the Home Guard but the "stay behind Squads"? These people were expected to go to ground wherever possible, in order to attack German invaders, yet they were never called "Terrorists". They would be labelled "Freedom Fighters" (quite rightly too).

So, we come to today, 2023, when, after 80 years of brutal, sub-human treatment by the Israeli government, the Palestinians have said "Enough!"and decided it was time to dish out some of the treatment they are regularly subjected to, if only to say "Now will you pay attention to us?" Isn't it odd that we here in the UK have listened for years to various governments condemning the likes of Al Quaeda, Islamic Front and their ilk for being driven by a religious ideology, yet, when it goes on daily in Israel we don't condemn the religious drivers here. I have no time for any of those organisations. Anybody who uses religion as an excuse to inflict pain and misery on others belongs to the era of the Spanish Inquisition and deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history as was the Inquisition. During my time in Aden (1966/67) we had to put up with a lot of crap including attacks with hand grenades, shootings, mortars etc. yet I hold no malice toward the evil bastards behind it all as they were at least "fighting" for a political purpose, not just mindless terror in the name of religion.

By the way, Mr Paz49, during my time, it was my pleasure to serve with a bunch of your comrades, "B" Company, South Wales Borderers. I had 5 months with these boys in 1967 in Botswana and what a great bunch they were, except for the occasional "11 VCs before breakfast" chants if they wanted to wind us non-SWB up (refers to the battle of Rorke's Drift when they were the 24th Regiment of Foot). We put up with that and even joined in with them but I don't remember a single one of them ever spouting the kind of tripe you produce.