Palestinian Lives Matter

It may seem I'm lucky that, the week preceeding the Ed Sheeran fiasco, I had unveiled my new novel Conception with the tagline including the phrase "Free Palestine". However, both myself and Ed Sheeran are lucky. We're lucky in that we're not the Palestinians still having to deal with the onslaught of bombs, bullets and drones.

What's going on in Gaza right now is horrific. It's genocide.

I really cannot be more clear than this. What's happening in Palestine is a genocide of Palestinians being killed by the IDF under the command of Benjamin Netanyahu.

I'm sure we can all agree that the violence and the killing should stop.

That Israel and Hamas must reach a ceasefire.

I agree with Sheeran this is the most complex issue on the planet. Already, people are gasping and going to stop reading but I agree with him this is complex. My understanding of this issue came from Dave Rich's book "Everyday Hate: Antisemitism in the Twenty-First century". I agree that Israel has a right to exist. I disagree, strongly, with the idea that Zionism is racism. Zionism, in its original definition, is the establishment of a Jewish homeland (originally, this was to be in Uganda).

What's not complex is that the killing must stop. The IDF must stop this killing. Hamas, as well, must lay down their arms. People will accuse me of "both sides" but that's how a peace-process works. Both sides make concessions. I stress it is Hamas, not the ordinary Palestinians, who should make concessions. The ordinary Palestinians, I'm sure we can all agree, have been to Hell and back and have suffered enough.

Seeing the Ms Rachel clip of the double-amputee child Rafah broke my heart. No child should be an amputee. No mother should have to born the death of their child, not an Israeli mother or a Palestinian one.

I understand what it's like to hate the colonial oppressor. As someone of Irish heritage, seeing the film Bloody Sunday and its re-enactment of children being shot dead by British soldiers, and then those childrens' parents also being shot dead, had me infuriated beyond belief. I understand why people who want civil rights and are met by bullets want to inflict violence. That is human nature.

But violence begets violence. Talking about "throwing Jews in the sea" or "erasing the state of Israel" is unhelpful just as "Zionism is racism" is unhelpful. The closest this situation ever got to peace was when Yassar Arafat acknowledged Israel's right to exist and Rabin started to withdraw from the West Bank.

All that, though, is an argument for another day. First the killing must stop. That's not complex. The killing must stop.

STOP.