Ex-British prime minister Tony Blair says he is appalled by the destruction caused by the recent fighting in Gaza. He was visiting the territory for the first time since he became a Middle East envoy two years ago. The-Latest gives two journalism students from both sides of the conflict space to air their views in separate stories.
Ella Lichtig
Unlike any other nation in history, Israel was founded after millions of Jews, were butchered in mass genocide by another nation - Germany. No people or religion have suffered more than 2,000 years of brutal persecution - including Pogroms, the Crusades, the Holocaust and Arab terrorism - like the Jewish nation.
And no nation besides Israel has on or within its borders enemies who publicly avow its absolute and violent destruction.
The mantra "Never Again" is something Jewish people live with every minute of every day, especially those living in Israel. Jews of every age, even those born after the Second World War, are haunted by images of concentration camps, gas chambers and mass graves. We remember how the world stood idly by and watched as six million of us were slaughtered like animals.
"Never Again" means that Jews would no longer be a passive partner in their own death. The existence of Israel in particular would come to symbolise strength and survival and ensure that the enemy of the Jewish people would be dealt swift and decisive blows, which is why Israel's invasion of Gaza is completely understandable and justifiable. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni describes the conflict in the Gaza Strip as "the right of self-defence of a state".
The violence in Gaza is not borne out of a new found crisis. Rocket and missile attacks into Israeli border towns by Hamas, the Iranian-backed terrorist group elected to power in Palestinian elections in January 2006, have been going on since 2001, increasing by more than 500 per cent since that time. Hamas's mission is clear: its charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, to be replaced with a Palestinian Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There's no grey area here: Destruction. How do you negotiate with an enemy who will only accept wiping you off the face of the earth?
Criticism of Israel's strikes into Gaza centres on proportionality. The debate is over how much retaliation is necessary and/or justified. To quote a very smart and concerned, (non-Jewish) student I met this week: "When you get shot in the foot, do you shoot them back in the head?" Yes, that's exactly what you do when your enemies have been trying to literally annihilate you for centuries.
How exactly should Israel proportionately address this non-stop barrage of rockets into its country from a terrorist group hell-bent on its destruction? How should Israel attempt to protect its people, long-term, if it merely acts defensively in a tit-for-tat manner, minimally answering each rocket with another rocket of its own? That would be a horribly naive response given history.
Colin Powell, a decorated war hero, four-star Army general, and former US Secretary of State, has outlined the position in what has informally been recognised as "The Powell Doctrine", that when a nation is engaging in war, it should harness every resource and tool to wage decisive military action against its enemy so as to minimise US casualties and achieve a quick resolution to the conflict by overpowering the weaker force into capitulation.
That's precisely what Israel is attempting to do now in Gaza. Strike quick, strike hard and eliminate the enemy threat in an effort to secure its homeland. It's terribly unfortunate that civilians are getting killed, but I suppose that's the collateral damage when a cowardly enemy uses its citizens as human shields. Israel is striking at Hamas's base of operations. But if that stronghold is centred in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods, only Hamas can be blamed for the resulting casualties.
Let's keep in mind history. It is not the Israelis who blow up buses full of innocent people, detonate suicide bombs at restaurants and nightclubs, kill school children or throw old people off cruise ships. To the contrary, no nation has made more concessions over the years to its arch enemies than Israel. It's given the Sinai back to Egypt and returned parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank to the Palestinians.
It was also ready to make peace with Yassar Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in a historic deal with then Isreali prime minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000; a deal which would have created a Palestinian homeland with its capital in Jerusalem. It is a deal which Arafat was widely criticised for rejecting. But in order to achieve real peace, Israel needs a rational, committed statesman-like partner in the process. That partner is absolutely not Hamas.
The situation in the Middle East, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been volcanic since the Jewish state was founded 60 years ago. There have been periods of relative calm, followed by frequent violent and deadly eruptions, including many multi-nation wars. The current escalation is no exception. It is just another example of the cyclical tumult that faces this region of the world and will continue to do so until Hamas recognise Israel's right to exist.
* Ella Lichtig is a Jewish journalism student from New York who is studying in London.
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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