An apology

I failed to meet my own moral standards

I was listening to a podcast the other day when in part of the conversation the host apologised because he felt he had been uncaring about the plight of the millions of Palestinians impacted by the war in Gaza because he was so outraged by the events of October 7th. This really affected me and has left me pondering my own behaviour for the last few days.

I think it really struck me because I am and I was in a very similar position. I actually rose early on the day of the massacre and was on social media waiting for my family to wake up when the attack took place. In that that time I watched much of it as it was broadcast by different parties on the internet. The assault left me sickened, horrified and deeply hurt to be honest at a very human level.

I won’t apologise for that but it also puts my lack of empathy towards the millions of innocents affected by the Israeli siege and then attack on Gaza in perspective. I was so angry and upset and so desperate to never see something like that happen again that I managed for 18 months to gloss over what was going on the strip.

For the record Israel has not in my opinion committed genocide, mass murder or war crimes though horrible things have happened. That is the nature of war - we in the West after so many years of peace have forgotten its savage and brutal reality. We have become cossetted from what happens when states fight, especially in urban environments.

For all the technology and planning in the world will not stop buildings being leveled and innocents being killed and maimed. War is a vile act that is sometimes necessary and I still believe that the Gaza war was that. Even more so as I think Hamas like all Islamists groups are a death cult. They are not glorious freedom fighters - they are savage homophobic anti modernity terrorists and yes the world would be vastly improved by their departure.

However after a year and a half what gnawed at me was the very nature of the conflict and what it was doing to the people there. Yes there will be many who will shout at their screen reading this “They are all guilty” but that is simply not true. You can’t consign an entire population to suffering because of some or even a big chunk of it. This is especially true in a territory where over 50% are under the age of 18 - they are children.

This is doubly true when you consider that after 18 months of conflict there would have been babies born into the world whose entire childhood to date would have been lived to the background thud of high energy explosions and the rattle of machine guns. I finally broke after watching an especially upsetting report whilst sitting with my son on my lap.

Israel throughout did nothing to encourage me to stay the course. Though it made good efforts to protect people it did nothing that I could see to plan for the post war period. In fact all we got then and still do now are various reports from the extremes on the Israeli right planning for greater Israel whilst studiously ignoring the reality that once the bombs stopped falling Gaza and its people would still be there.

To those who even now want to keep going to finish the job I ask the question - how? Hamas still exists and Israel has no plan to remove them. How can they when Hamas hides in the population? If Israel had wanted to win this war they should have been planning for the peace from day one including bringing in the Arab league but alas they didn’t.

Instead of offering up some new future to the Palestinian people they offered up - nothing. It took Donald Trump to announce some sort of plan after trying to stop the conflict. You can say many things about the president but he did seem to be genuinely horrified at what was going on in Gaza. It is though sadly little and not backed up by a credible security plan from what I can see. So after all this death and destruction Israelis and Palestinians will be left locked into the same deadly embrace.

The entire horrifying episode has left me deeply distressed. I regret giving Israel a blank cheque when it was quite clear that they had become borderline drunk on their successes of which there have been many. I basically refused to see the suffering as I was too busy hoping that Israel had a plan to reshape Gaza for the better even when it was clear it didn’t. I traded empathy for all humans for just one side in this conflict and that shames me deeply.

It is also why I have become ever more vociferous about Israeli actions elsewhere. Not because I do not want to see Hezbollah gone or the Iranian revolutionary regime toppled but because I am not going to be blinded by the shortism and at times callousness that now flows out of Tel Aviv or to the people suffering on all sides because the leadership now think every problem can be fixed with a gravity bomb dropped from an F16.

I still see many online and beyond who would happily trade any number of dead so that Israel can get its revenge for October 7th. They, like I was, are completely blinded to the suffering being caused and perhaps even the damage it is doing to the future of the state of Israel. I mean they just brush any impact off as if it is nothing - yeah but they deserve it - is about the level of thinking in most cases.

This is especially true when we look at the Iranian war which Netanyahu managed to persuade Trump to get involved in. The implications for the world are dire and yet even now people seem to be in denial about the likely outcomes or perhaps they are not but they simply don’t care. I suppose I can hardly blame them. I was equally deranged for the first 18 months of the Gaza conflict though this is many orders of magnitude bigger in terms of the potential devastation - lets just lay it out clearly here.

Hormuz is shut and about 50% - 55% of all export crude is not flowing. That means much of the world is not getting much more oil and if they do it may well be the wrong type for their refineries. Even if the strait opened tomorrow oil would take a month or so to get from the Gulf to Asia, Europe etc and then even more time for the tankers to get back again. They are geographically and time wise out of place for an industry that is supposed to be always on. In short we will have shortages whatever happens and that means price rises.

For us in the West that means spending more on petrol - for the most part we can afford it or at least we can pretend we can. For much of the developing world they simply can’t afford to import oil at this price and so that means not just less driving but actual economic shutdowns. In short this oil shock will punish the very poorest first and hardest who can’t pay for energy. In case people think I am being hyperbolic this is already starting in Egypt and the Philippines.

Gas is even more serious with Qatar taking direct hits to its LNG system which means if Hormuz opens tomorrow they will not be able to export the same amount. Can this be made up for by say US exports - perhaps but at a cost and again who pays that price? Well the poorest again across the planet. With the southern hemisphere going into winter and the north looking to refill storage there will be a price competition and if necessary the rich will win.

Gas is also the feed stock for artificial fertiliser which feeds about 4 billion people. More expensive gas means that fertiliser plants must charge more for this most vital of inputs. An impact made worse by the fact that the largest producers of fertiliser are found in the Gulf and so they can’t even export their product. Farmers are already warning they will have to use less as they simply can’t afford it. That means less food over the next few harvests and higher food prices - again the poorest will be hit.

I could go on about helium, aluminium and more - all stuff being impacted by this dumb and dangerous war but you get the rough idea. I am not here shilling for the IRGC - frankly they can jump in their graves however sometimes the upsides are dwarfed by the downsides and this is one of those moments. It is time for people to make an effort and be rational for a moment. Is this worth a possible worldwide depression and global famine?

Personally I am clear, I am done with being an unemotional geopolitical thinker. I will not be blinded by my outrage anymore and I will not be silent because people don’t like the message. I will not repeat my mistakes with Gaza and shame myself again. Others may well be willing to look the other way but I can’t and I won’t. It is appalling that the poorest and more vulnerable across this planet should be made to pay economically and maybe with their lives due to destitution and famine for this war.

At a personal level I feel better just writing this piece because though that podcast triggered me consciously to think about this I have been on the edge of it for some time. Shame is a strange thing - it weighs heavily upon you. I think that is a good thing in my case as it shows that my moral code is still functional. I never want to not feel appalled if I fail to meet my own standards of behaviour which I did in this case.

I just hope that others wake up because even now there are so many who seem to get a hard on from a missile taking out people even if it does kill innocents along the way and is paving the way for so much suffering and misery. I hope that they pause and consider all the implications moving forward rather than just a narrow emotional response. By all means have an opinion, by all means want an outcome but let’s all try and think seriously about what it means for everyone because if more of us did that we would likely see better outcomes.