Dear Friends,                                                                                                It’s tomorrow

Two simple statements:

Anyone who can think of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 without an immediate feeling of revulsion, abhorrence, anguish is lacking some fundamental element of humanity.

Anyone who can think of the destruction of Gaza by the IDF, following the October 7 attacks without an immediate feeling of revulsion, abhorrence, anguish is lacking some fundamental element of humanity.

I see no way around them.

I will never question the feelings and thoughts of one whose friends, loved ones and family died on October 7, or were taken hostage. I will never question the feelings and thoughts of one whose friends, loved ones and family died in the destruction of Gaza.

The rest of us must try to absorb their feelings and thoughts and bring them together: some of the mourners on both sides are themselves trying to do this.

We need to look and look hard at both atrocities: look at the photographs, realize the horror. We must commit ourselves, all of us, to challenge our governments, all of them, to demand that they will never again force on us the need to look at such images.

Today, the day after, we must come back to all the impossibly tangled web of events, and never allow one to stand out as if somehow it happened on its own, we must see how each one – and what came before and what after – makes up all the tortured history of Palestine.

All of us who can must acknowledge all the causes that have, over and over again, led to misery, pain and death. Over and over again as though a terrible fate decrees it forever. That sense of fate is what allows it to fulfill itself, over and over again. Against it all of us, all the ordinary people of the world must force our governments to act, to act to forbid that fate, to bring it to an end. To ensure that we will never see such images again.

Love and solidarity,

            Bobby

The Federal government no longer exists.