Afternoon, how are we doing?
Let’s start with this. If you’re a Horizon Scan listener - if not, why not? You’ll know that about a week after the attack on Israel in October last year I said this would happen. There’s a been a few nudges towards it from various news outlets, talking heads and now MPs. I think over this period I’ve been pretty clear about where I stand on what’s happening in that part of the world, fundamentally I don’t think it’s our problem and we give it far too much attention at the expense of our own struggles. It is not a new issue and likely will never end until one side ‘wins’, which for them is of course existential. Put how the attack was able to take place aside and it’s my view that Netanyahu decided there was an opportunity to further Israel’s interests by making Gaza unlivable and driving those who lived there out, or into areas that would become a focus for emergency humanitarianism. The conditions would then be so bad that the western worlds response would be to take these people as refugees in schemes like are mentioned above, Israel would of course push for this too as it removes a problem for them. As usual there is talk of the numbers concerned being small. You should be aware by now that this is how the state likes to work; it creates a policy crack in the public sentiment dam that appears innocuous and then proceeds to force more and more water through it until the dam bursts and the problem is so large that more change is required to deal with it. It should go without saying that ‘seek temporary sanctuary in the UK until it’s safe to return’ shows naivety in the proposer and assumes it in the reader at an insulting level. As I’ll come onto later, this kind of thing is likely to be one of the downsides of Trump coming into power for Europe and potentially the UK too, considering his backers are zionists.