Here is a thought experiment

The past two years have opened my eyes to the definition of Left versus Right.

In 2023, as I was reading the Guardian (paying for subscription), watching Channel 4 News and a member of the Green Party, I thought I was OK.

If there was an anti-Nazi or anti-fascist demonstration, I would participate. I would walk in solidarity with people of colour, minorities. I’d wear a pin.

It all changed on October 7.

369 days ago.

The evolution of my consciousness happened, not because of the massacre.

The massacre stopped life.

The evolution occurred on October 8 when Facebook and Twitter lit up with anti-Israel, anti-Jewish vitriol.

Whilst the IDF were searching for survivors, looking for hiding Hamas, it all changed.

I ended my support for the Guardian, I stopped following certain Podcasts and moved away from the UK TV news. I ran into conflict at work, with colleagues, my family were affected, isolated and victimised.

When the Green Party shifted its criticism of Big-Oil and environmental degradation to single-minded attacks on Israel and the Jews I renounced my membership.

This past two years has been one of struggle for me, for my family, for my people.

The images, the names of the murdered and kidnapped haunt me.

And the tunnels.

The bombing. The death of innocents used in the defence of Hamas’ strategy to gain world sympathy. Thank you, Mr Starmer, Macron and Carney.

My blog, my haven for reflection of health, care, creativity and growth fell into a dark place.

My thoughts circle.

Today is Saturday. I considered a visit to Leeds for a mooch around the shops then realised I couldn’t face another anti-Israel protest; not that there is anything wrong with protest, it is the vitriol, the hatred, the aggression so accessible to those who have Tik Tok as the source of their malice.

I remember the red paint smeared on the windows of a bank in Sheffield. The men who climbed to the top of Barnsley and Sheffield town halls to replace the Israeli flag with that of Palestine. On October 8.

I unfriended and unfollowed a few who were blatant in their ignorance or even more explicit in their support for tyranny and murder.

I began to question whether friends had unfollowed me because of my ideology, my support for the victims, my publications in the Times of Israel.

Did I misstep, did I poorly like or follow? (Yes).

And the Right in the UK, the Tories, my natural opponents since I reached the age of reason seemingly the only group understanding the nature of the fight, the propaganda battle, the struggle for over-simplification, for re-writing history.

I remember last year’s Sheffield Marathon as I dodged the Palestinian flag flyers. Every dark green banner a trigger.

The comparisons or equivalents, imagine that 40,000 Americans were murdered in one day, how would the US respond? Consider if the population of my village were kidnapped in their pyjamas, babies, children, old men and women. Murdered.

I think of Batman.

I think of the dead, their remains robbed to Gaza, a cynical twist of the knife for families not allowed to grieve.

I see my shift, my realisation that it could, or it would have been me, or my children had we been in Nova on that day.

The population of Glastonbury shot, tortured, burned, dismembered, raped and bystanders cheering. That is what it felt like and later, I question why I was surprised that I found it difficult to empathise with the Palestinians and their suffering.

I visited the Nova site in March this year and later Hostage Square. I returned to Hostage Square last month and spoke with a former resident of Be’eri.

The pictures of the murdered and kidnapped are everywhere in Israel. A plea to Bring them Home.

When you arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, you see the faces of the now only men remaining in captivity, their ages, 20, crossed out, then 21, now 22 to mark the passage of time.

I think of the isolation my children experienced, the overt and covert Antisemitism.

I think of Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz murdered a week ago on Yom Kippur.

Of Yuval Castleman, shot at a bus stop, a hero, mistaken for a terrorist.

Of Otam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka, killed by friendly fire and Iris, Haim’s mother reaching out to the soldiers, sharing their pain, understanding the nuance, the complexity, something lost on the youngster chanting from the river to the sea.

What river? What sea? Social media was all over it.

Every headline.

The twisting of narrative, the flexing of famine and genocide.

The latter a term use by Raphael Lemkin to describe the Holocaust, the systematic murder of Six Million Jews. It didn’t matter that the numbers of those killed in Gaza include the terrorists or that the numbers, genders and ages are inflated or deflated, depending on the level of cynicism communicated by the ‘Hamas Health Ministry’ or the Al Shifa hospitals or the clinics, mosques and UN Schools that Hamas uses as weapons depots tunnel entrances.

Innocent women, men and children have died because of Israeli bombs. I do not deny this. I cannot conceive the magnitude of the horror and yet I blame Hamas. I blame Hamas.

The journalists who accompanied the invaders on October 7, who carried guns and hugged Sinwar who were later held up as paragons the ‘free press’.

The impossibility of unravelling the narrative, what is collateral damage.

What is famine when Hamas steals the food, feeds their ‘soldiers’ and sells it back to the dispossessed for ten times the price?

Eli Sharabi in his memoir, Hostage, describes his experiences in the tunnels (all 491 days), when he and his fellow hostages were given a pita. The captors ate four meals a day as well as Baclava and K’nafe.

Hyperbole. They were not starved. These are the starved, says the narrative. And we saw the images of Eli, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy at their release and we say that is not real. And the extent to which Greta posted an Israeli hostage on her social media, accidentally.

I don’t believe you and you don’t believe me. We have mutual distrust, and humanity is running in circles, initially around Twitter, now, X.

And Greta’s flotilla and my frustration at her renouncing the environment. For moving away from her expertise.

If she is as wrong about the nature and cause of the conflict in the Middle East as she is about climate, perhaps we should go back to mining coal.

Beautiful clean coal.

Orwell is laughing.

This morning on my way to the lake I listened to the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast. Donniel and Yossi discussing the ceasefire. Praising Trump for his leadership, his vision.

Good is bad and bad is good. Hot cold, take whatever opposites, mix them up, combine them then try to make sense of your situation.

I reflect on whether I am maturing.

I remember Ivor, a family friend telling me that I would change when was older; ‘I was a Communist at your age,’ he once laughed.

Is that me?

Have I pivoted?

I now criticise the Left, Labour, I reflect on the blessing that Corbyn was kicked out, on Starmer’s weakness which bleeds into my criticism of the government for the way it is mismanaging the NHS. What next?

I flinch when I see the flags.

I understand the outpouring of frustration from the ‘other side’ – the shift to the Right.

Will I be happy when Farage is crowned?

Maybe I should have been content with Boris and his hairbrained schemes.

I recently read an article written by my brother who has drunk of the Far-Right Kool Aid.

Going to extremes distorts your vision. It creates a parallax that doesn’t necessarily compute.

I see inequality.

I see that although there is proportionately 100 times more Antisemitism than anti-Muslim racism in the UK, wrong and wrong doesn’t make a right. We are in it together (me, the Muslims, the refugees and other minorities.)

Two years and I still believe in unity.

I have shifted and I doubt I will return.

I stand at the centre and cannot understand why anyone would want to visit the Right or the Left. Perhaps I have become wishy-washy. Bland. Pathetique. Pathetic. Apathetic.

I listened to two of Eli Sharabi’s many interviews on October 7.

Here

And

Here.

He describes his lack of hatred. His denial of loathing for the Israeli Right. His equanimity, his choice of life, his insight into pain and suffering.

I think of the paltry nature of my discomfort and sigh in disbelieve that I have considered myself to have had a hard time witnessing the encampments, the protests, the shouts, the slander.

I haven’t lived.

And yet I am determined that neither 10/7 nor those on either extreme will shift my compass. I remain autonomous, in control, able to influence some small outcomes.

Yes, it is lonely although better that than a false camaraderie.

I look to tomorrow.

To the release of the hostages.

Alon. Are you OK?

To the return of the stolen bodies.

I look to being able to shift my attention to areas I can influence, to tackling other issues.

I hope one day to be able to visit Leeds or Manchester or London without the triggers.

I hope to return to Israel, the pictures of the hostages gone; replaced by memorials that allow reflection and sharing of grief beyond the politics.

I now hope that although my heart says that Trump is not the one to bring about peace, maybe you need a trickster to unravel the unfathomable.

I look to a future where we can move beyond identify politics, where we realise that life cannot be summarised in a tweet.

I look to better times.

To elections in Israel.

To the removal of Hamas.

This may seem naïve.

The murder will continue.

The terrorists, whether you call them the Brotherhood or Qatar or Turkey will still pursue a goal of fundamentalist transformation.

There will still be the struggles.

We can but hope.

We can but hold-on, microscopic Cassandras in a stochastic Cosmos, believing we are able to influence.

I hope for a return to the lake, for an end to hunger, starvation, religiously motivated war and degradation, for the rights of black and white and Jew and Gentile.

Have we come very far since MLK?

I used to have a flag of his I Have a Dream speech on my wall as a student in the 90’s.

It was displayed alongside a map of Israel.

Some things are inextricable.

We need time to pause, to slow down, to heal, to recover, to remember and to forget.

We need to see that tomorrow doesn’t have to be like yesterday or the day before.

We need to be able to harness that which is good and isolate the rest; weaken it, turn it way.

Move from ignorance, tribalism and superstition to seeing the wonder that it is to be a human in a time of plenty, albeit when many have too much, and too many have too little.

We can’t allow our primitive impulses to control us. We need to adopt a methodology of listening, a narrative of discussion, moderation and tolerance, without prioritising money and capital above all else, to stand firm, to see that although most are good, there are those who seek to sow dissent and they cannot win.

Turning the other cheek when in a loving and trusted relationship is the way to maintain togetherness, not so when the relationship is a zero-sum game of me versus you.

We need to stand strong.

We need to identify with our love for truth and remain ready to challenge.

Ever ready.

Ever willing.

Ever able.