Ten foot cock and a few hundred virgins

I do not have a degree in history or modern politics, and therefore do not feel qualified to comment on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In fact, I am intentionally and almost outrageously ignorant. I do not have a legitimate defence for this, I simply do not have the time or motivation needed to wade through the decades of reports, opinions, propoganda and retaliations to come to any reasonable outcome. And were I to (a more disgraceful excuse), it would change precisely this: .

I took (and take) a similarly ego-centric view with Ye Olde Irifh Troubles. Growing up in 80s-90s London with a mother who worked in a bank and a father who pointed a videocamera at The News, I was well aware that I had a significantly (yet microscopically) higher chance of being murdered on the way to school than people who didn't go to school in London (little has changed there, I'm told).

But I honestly could not bring myself to care. The H22 didn't go over Hammersmith Bridge, and Ealing Broadway is on the other branch of the District Line, and frankly were I to see two guys beating each other up in the park I would stay away. To walk past the same two guys 100 years later is embarrassing for everyone concerned, but the two options: ask who started it, or call them both assholes, are hopelessly naive.

I have no issue with other people having opinions, of course, assuming they are well-formed. I received this leaflet today, however, which we shall join halfway through:

No amount of appeals to Western governments, the United Nations, the European Union or any of the Middle Eastern regimes - all of whom were overtly or coverty complicit in Israel's assault on Gaza - can safeguard the lives and democratic rights of the Palestinian people. Nor can this be achieved through the so-called "two state solution", which would leave the Palestinian people in little more than impoverished Bantustans and the Jewish people in a military garrison state, controlled by religious zealots.

Only the unification of the Jewish and Arab working class in the struggle for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East can bring peace to the region and secure a viable future for its entire people.

Communism is the answer! When they find out they'll be kicking themselves.

Unrelatedly, I have expanded the Sheffield Venn Diagram wiki to include the Captains Planet and Eternal Drunkness projects, because evidently this is where I ought to be focusing our collaborative energies.