Godforsaken places

 The temperature here in the village peaked at 32½°C today but I fear some places are experiencing a veritable firestorm. Who would wish to live in any of that conglomeration of nations based in that area surrounding Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to the north and south? 

I certainly don't fancy a holiday anywhere in Turkey, Egypt or the UAE at this time. Well, to be honest I have never fancied going to any of them anyway but the chances of landing safely are getting slimmer by the hour, never mind being hit by a stray missile while you're there.

Actually I am beginning to wish that a missile does go astray and land somewhere where sufficient people in the country will finally wake up and politicians will be unable to resist calls to put an end to all this.

To date we've all been terribly sad or shocked or frustrated or whatever and have said that something must be done but never quite come up with the sort of solution needed. Now we have russia pummelling Kyiv (and various other towns that seldom get a mention) in Ukraine and Iran firing ever bigger missiles at Israel whilst Israel bombs the hell out of Iran and Ukraine does its best to minimise russia's visible armoury with drones and carefully exploited local action by agents and rebel assistants within the russian federation.

Lebanon are getting hit once again too and you wonder why they ever bothered to rebuild as having Hezbollah located there seems to mean the Lebanese will inevitably get blasted every few years whatever else may happen in the world.

Countries on the eastern fringe of the EU complain about russian missiles skimming across their skies on their way to knock out a apartment block or two in Ukraine but it seems to be no more than some kid moaning about some distraction in class.

In London and several other cities in Britain we see demonstrations against Israel and showing support for Palestinian organisations which seem pretty close to Hamas if not indeed actually Hamas. There seems to be little by way of demonstration in support of either Israel or Ukraine these days. That's odd when you think about what is actually going on and you do have to wonder whether those demonstrating or urging others to do so have ever sat down and thought it all through.

Russia invaded Ukraine and has caused immense destruction of that nation's town's, infrastructure and killed more innocent people than I want to specify here, never mind the huge number of troops lost in the battles that continue to rage. Ukraine fought back. What were the people there supposed to do? Let Russia take over? Of course not. Whatever anyone's views may be about who got what and why when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine was an independent nation with international borders and we sat back and ignored Russia invading Crimea and haven't exactly done much since. Britain, the United States and others signed an agreement to protect Ukraine in return for their giving up the Soviet Union nuclear weapons which had been based in Ukraine before the collapse. By my reading we had a duty to honour that pledge but all I have seen since from the USA is criticism of Ukraine's response and rather too much by way of fear of antagonising Putin. One does have to wonder what it is that Putin has on Trump which has been so effective in the USA being so pathetic in their action since Trump's re-election. 

There always has and always will be only one response to the bullying and atrocious actions of russia's leaders and that is to demonstrate a massive joint defence capability to back up Ukraine's actions. At the start that might have been sufficient to make Putin think twice about continuing but now everything is in such a mess that it is difficult to know for sure what will happen. With the USA seemingly trying their best to withdraw from the scene like school children shouting insults while running in the opposite direction, there remain just a few countries in Europe and the British Commonwealth who are prepared to consider standing their ground and helping Ukraine retain what they can. Putin will have seen, however, that the power we can amass with any degree of immediacy or certainty is minimal and that he can rebuild his armoury more rapidly than we can, so it will suit him to see this thing carry on for years and gradually he could edge closer and closer to taking over a good half of Ukraine at which point he may well feel he has met his objectives. I am not in the camp of believers that he wishes to take back the Baltic states or even the whole of Ukraine. In a way, though, I wish he would have a go as that would force the hand of NATO and I don't think the USA would be able to get away without lending their support at that point. But that's not going to happen so . . back to what has happened and is expected to happen.

In the other case, a mass of supporters of a terrorist organisation called Hamas went into a festival and brutally shot, raped and took hostage a huge number of innocent young people in one of the worst incidents of its type in most of our memories. This group, supported, funded and equipped by Iran and religious zealots, basically says that Israel should not exist. Simple. It's like russia saying Ukraine should be part of russia but worse - Iran's weird rulers don't want Israel or Israelis to exist at all. It's not just the land but the extinction of the whole thing that is Israel, as far as I can see. So it seems pretty reasonable that, if someone is pointing a gun at you and you know he has no intention of letting you live you are going to do your best to ensure that he doesn't get to fire it. If that means killing him then so be it. There's really no choice in that sort of situation and that's what Israel's military forces have been trying to do. It seems that they have been extremely successful in removing many of the people who were giving the commands to kill Israeli people and have recently moved on to attempting to destroy Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. I have to say that this seems absolutely necessary and I wonder why on Earth the world didn't act more firmly in the past when it must have been obvious that Iran would not just use nuclear development to make some electricity. We have all been stupid to allow them to have got so far that they have a processing plant hidden deep inside a ruddy mountain. It's not like this would have been built quietly behind the scenes over a few days while no-one was looking. The area known as Gaza is populated by people who we know voted by some majority for Hamas people to govern them. It's not like Hamas didn't make their views on Israel abundantly clear. So the folk who voted for them and support them must also be regarded as dangerous, if not necessarily all terrorists themselves. With Hamas burying offices and operational HQs inside or under hospitals and nurseries, it is not exactly easy for them to be taken out and, understandably, given the choice of letting those bad people carry on planning more atrocities in the world or preventing them doing so, Israel said we're coming for you loud and clear and gave innocent people in the areas as much notice as they could to get the hell away. Those that stayed will have been hurt but many will have had an option to move.

Of course, news script editors and social media writers have seen all this a great story and seem to have taken numbers and stories of events directly from Hamas supporters in many cases, or stories fed by russia into the system as well, and we get the headlines that make Israel out to be the baddies. In many ways, Israel's government and military seem strong enough to cope with all the criticism and are getting on with the job of destroying Hamas and hopefully Hezbollah and all their supporters and equipment in Iran too. Ideally, the whole religious shooting match that is Iran and goodness knows where else in that godforsaken part of the world will collapse as communism did in the Soviet Union. It would be a nice change to see some reasonable people, who didn't hate Christians or wish the destruction of whole nations and see all that as their prime objective, who might actually welcome doing business and working with us Brits and whoever is left in Israel, to show the rest of the area that all this hate gets people nowhere.

I can only conclude that the vast majority of those demonstrating in support of Palestine groups are reading solely from one religious book and, like some sort of zombies, are following each other with minds and eyes closed to any alternative view to their own. These people may look like innocent students or working people out to make a point but they're quite dangerous because they can influence others and make many more who don't really understand what has been happening support their cause. A huge number of younger people now seldom read any news or, if they do, it is a headline or repeated phrase which may have no credibility at all but sounds like something they can believe. Before long, they repeat that to a friend as if it is a gospel truth and next thing we know they'll be voting at an election for an MP who can have influence on the British government and before we know it we have a majority of MPs who come from a background sympathetic to the Hamas cause or, dare I say it, of decidedly anti-Christian flavour.

You would think that anyone in their right mind would be shouting at the world, government, whoever will listen, to put piles of troops and equipment up against Ukraine's borders and make it quite clear that we, as a group of nations, will fire missiles and stop any further advance by russia and encourage return to previously accepted international borders - by force if necessary. We have to call Putin's bluff but we need USA at least partially on board so that Putin doesn't feel there's any advantage in pressing that big red button. The same people should be shutting up about Israel and, if they're going to do religious stuff, pray to whatever god they have that someone with a bit of decency and calmer view of the world takes over the running not only of Iran but the whole area. We've had enough of the Islamic State and the bad things it has brought to the world at large. Maybe if there were to be a pleasant place where those with different religious views could live happily then we could persuade all the demonstrators and, for that matter, anyone else who doesn't like the way we do things here in Britain, to join them. And while we're at it, what better place to send illegal immigrants who, on the whole, seem to have no particular love for Britain anyway, just our benefits and the fact that we have some big communities of their relatives here already.