Hamas’ Own Masada! By rogue reporter Alfred N.Muggins

19/10/23  (17/11/23)

    Where have the other Arab and muslim states been? Where have the European States been. Only a few years before they all chastised Israel when it strayed from the United Nations path to potential peace and applauded when it genuinely talked to the Palestinians. Now Saudi Arabia moves close to normalization of affairs with Israel, and without any preconditions about the state of the peace process, or on behalf of Palestinian interests. Egypt, Jordan and Turkey are doing business with them without much negotiation in favour of the Palestinians! What of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrein and Qatar, and Oman? And the biggest one of all, The United States seems to have gone wholly over to the side of the conqueror and land grabber Israel, so similar perhaps to the United States in its earlier history, when it spread across the lands which had belonged to American Indians, without even much of a thought about the indigenous native inhabitants, or their land rights.

     It takes a further appalling disaster, an apparent Israeli air strike in the crowded car park/forecourt of a Church run hospital in central Gaza, which should have been safe, of all places. Estimates of 500 Palestinian dead, just like that!, men, women , and children,  and wounded of course. The Israelis refute that it could have been their missiles. They say it was probably an Islamic Jihad failed rocket. Whatever the truth this appears to be the final straw which finally awakes the Arab peoples and the muslims generally, in demonstrations and condemnation. Enough is enough. The Israelis have been bombing for a week and 2,800 had lost their lives, many of them children, even more injured. Now the figure has gone up by 500.

    Arab negotiators refuse to meet the American President Biden, who had been coming to Amman to speak directly to some Arab leaders. Palestinian flags are waved all around the world, and after many days those who do not know the history should at least be becoming aware of it, that there may be another side to the original atrocity, that perhaps the Israelis should restrain themselves as Gaza hurtles towards an even greater civilian catastrophe, as they begin to run out of food, water, fuel for generators and hospitals, as well as hospital supplies, including medications.

9/11/23

In AD 73 or 74 an ‘extremist’ Jewish Group had taken over the Hasmonean (Herodian!) fortress of Masada on a mountainous hilltop in southern Judea, in current southern Israel, not far from the Dead Sea, and held out against the Romans, who came to lay siege to it. They held out until the Romans built a suitable siege tower with which to enter the otherwise impregnable fortress. The story goes that when the Romans were about to take the fortress the noble Jewish resistance, committed collective suicide rather than be captured and submit themselves to whatever indignities the Romans would have put them to!

Hamas have entered their own Masada, in the tunnels of Gaza City, as Israel razes much of the Strip to the ground, refugee camps and even targets hospitals, including so many of Gaza’s citizens, including many children. Hamas, the impetuous resistance fighters, labelled terrorists by their annihilators, who have vowed to ‘wipe them out’ bravely fight in the streets and ruined buildings, while the Israelis take on the role of the ancient Romans, with superior numbers of soldiers and weaponry, and firepower. Will the Hamas fighters commit suicide or fight to the death as those ancient Jewish terrorists once did, or will they merely fade away through the tunnels to places of safe exit?

The Generals and Politicians of Israel are maddened. They have seen red, and red blood is to be produced in plentiful quantity. Why is Netanyahu still in the driving seat after his mistake of huge proportions? This Government of National Unity seems pretty right wing? They want to crush Hamas with no mercy, and they all speak the languages of killing and anger! Is there a left wing left in Israel? We in the West don’t really know. Collective anger seems to have descended upon the whole nation, although that surely cannot be in such a normally divided nation.