End The Carnage

A high-ranking Iranian state operative reacting to the madness that Hamas perpetrated in Israel on October 7, 2023, said, somewhat sarcastically, that history did not start on that date. He may be right because the crisis in the Middle East is almost as old as the region itself.

It is also important to point out that the world must not end because of May 14, 1948, when Israel was granted her Independence after years of living in limbo and being made the sacrificial lamb of international politics.

That epoch-making incident that represented the justified reaction of the international community to the horrors of the holocaust carried out by Germany under the Third Reich and which consumed six million Jews whose only crime was that they belonged to that race has continued to define Middle East politics to date.

For the first time in a long time, the Jews had a place they could turn to as their homeland. Curiously, their cousins, who claim Arabic blood, have refused to live with that reality, insisting that the land given to Israel was theirs by right. From that date in 1948, the world has not known peace, as serial wars have continued to be a dominant feature in the region, which is stoked by powerful nations seeking a sphere of influence.

Presently, the world is on edge as a result of the ongoing war between Israel and Iran, which started a year ago. In our opinion, that is the appropriate interpretation of what is raging in that region. Although Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen are the ones leading the charge, they are doing so as proxies of the Persians in Tehran.

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It is also true that the Israelis, in their righteous indignation, see themselves as fighting for what they consider their right to self-determination. They are doing so with the full support of the Western Alliance spearheaded by the United States of America seen by nations within the Axis of resistance- Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and their sponsors elsewhere, as Satan itself that must be extirpated.

As in matters of that nature with vaulting high-stake politics, the victims are the hapless citizens who, through no fault of their own, get caught in the crossfire. The revellers at the Nova music festival in Israel were not politicians, neither were the babies born into the maddening crowd that Gaza and Southern Lebanon is at the moment.

Israel perceives what happened on October 7, 2023, as a horrifying reminder of the Holocaust of the Second World War. At that time, the Jews had vowed never again. Much as we condemn the Holocaust and its sad repeat on October 7, nothing justifies the carnage going on in Gaza and Lebanon that has already consumed in excess of 50,000 lives, most of them the aged, women and children, not counting millions of others either injured or displaced.

Iran was reported to have fired about 200 ballistic missiles into Israel, some of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome mounted by Israel and their allies. However, some managed to hit their target, mostly the ordinary citizens. A response by that Jewish nation is anticipated delayed by the politics in the United States of America and the disinclination of the lame-duck presidency of Joe Biden to be seen to have escalated what is already a raging storm.

Amid this horrendous spectacle, weapons of mass destruction are deployed in that region by powerful nations out to claim superiority of their armament or the advanced status of their influence, utterly oblivious of the pains and anguish such mindlessness is inflicting on the people whose only interest is to be left alone to live their lives in peace.

Unfortunately, in our view, the crisis in the Middle East is diverting attention from the Russian-Ukrainian war and, for that matter, the Chinese muscle-flexing around the South China Sea and the attendant inconvenience that is causing Taiwan and the Philippines.

We are persuaded to argue that the humanity in all of us ought to be allowed to flow at this time in a way that should end conflicts everywhere. We are also compelled to appeal to the conscience of the world represented by the United Nations Organisation (UNO) to live up to the expectations of the tenet of its founding principles consistently trampled upon by countries that consider themselves too powerful to abide by the dictates of that world body.

In our opinion, it has become inexorably imperative that the world be saved from the hands of those who insanely believe that they must have their way at any given time and circumstance.

This newspaper believes Israel has made its point and must not over-stretch it. It is time for that Jewish nation to save itself from what the United States Secretary of Defence, General Lloyd James Austin, described as strategic defeat. On the other hand, Iran and its co-travellers must be made to understand and accept that Israel, as a nation, is an established reality that has come to stay. The ordinary people of Israel and Palestine desire this only condition for peace. Therefore, the carnage must stop. Now.