Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Facebook for Gaza

Dear reader if you are also a Facebook user may I direct you to two groups.

The first is that like Zimbabwe foreign journalists are being banned from the Gaza strip. A very dear friend of mine has a friend who is currently on a year out teaching in Palestine. With the media blackout and all that is going on even the Westerners, and yes there are some, who are in Palestine are being cut off. Unlike Zimbabwe from what we can gather the Palestinians want to allow foreign press in to see the other side of the story. One wonders why that is it is because the Egyptian border is permanently sealed and Israel control the only border crossings into Gaza.

Therefore please join the group calling to end the ban on international journalists reporting from Gaza.

The second I know may not bode well with all my readers. But whether you view Israel as the aggressor or the persecuted I trust that any sane individuals will agree that neither one, two or three wrongs make a right. The casualties in this conflict are heavily on the Palestinian side. With no escape route they men, women, the frail and call have to remain close to potential death or injury at all times. The USA, UK and Europe are being slow to cast blame at anyone treading too carefully. However, in the UK one political leader,Nick Clegg, has spoken out calling the west to stop arming Israel.

There is a lot of bad blood flying around the Blogosphere of late over this conflict. Neither the approach of my fellow Lib Dem Irfan Ahmed or Iain Dale the Tory Blogfather are doing the real victims any good. By carrying on a flame war and using deliberately inflammatory language about each other on the Internet they are deflecting from the issues at hand. Both are being subjective rather than objective as in unbefitting them trying to get a salient point across.

2 comments:

Iain Dale said...

Stephen, as a point of information, all I said about Irfan's disgusting post was that he "railed against "The Jews"". I could have gone a lot further, believe me!

Stephen Glenn said...

I'm sure you could well have gone further Iain. I also note that you're chasing across the Lib Dem blogosphere to make the point that none of us apparently is seeing this from an Israel perspective.

That may be true, but seeing as Israel are:

sealing in the people if the Gaza Strip, having boxed them and the West Bank.

Controlling the only border crossings in and out. Even denying additional hunaitarian aid when you are the ones perpetrating atrocities.

Being the most advanced and heavily armed militaristic countries in the region, with just cause down the years due to Arab threats.

But having a defence strategy that is based on attack fast and hard (I reckon that came along with the American hardware, someone left the war manual in something or other).

From what I see the bullied are taking on the even littlier kids in the Middle East playground.

However, I try and remain as balanced as I can be in writing about it. There just isn't that much room for balance in the present situation.

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