Careering towards the abyss - Middle East in crisis

Even in a world with more than enough tragedy and hurt, even in a world where our future is in jeopardy because of our persistent and suicidal refusal to use the Earth’s resources is a sustainable way; even in a world trying to come to terms with resurgent Russian, soviet-style imperialism, and, yes, even in a world where the disease from all our nightmares — ebola — is claiming ever more lives in western Africa it is impossible to imagine a more disheartening example of man’s unending inhumanity to man than the atrocities unfolding in Gaza.

Even in a world where the gap between the super-rich minority and the billions of grindingly poor people widens every year; even in a world where thousands of lives are lost every day because tens of millions of disadvantaged people do not have something as fundamental as access to clean drinking water the horrors inflicted on the captive and mostly destitute citizen population of Gaza seem incomparable.

Israel’s utterly disproportionate response, one that has caused about 1,200 deaths already, is an outrage. It is inexcusable and puts Israel outside the community of civilised nations. That they will face no meaningful consequences shames us all is an indictment of our commitment to the idea of justice and tolerance. Even more than that it offers those, and there are more and more every day, who despise our western way of life, an unanswerable opportunity to challenge our principles and ideals.

But the Israelis are not alone in their contempt for decency. The use of densely-populated urban areas by Hamas to launch rocket attack after rocket attack on Israel — with the inevitable and deadly consequences for the vulnerable people they purport to represent — may not be a war crime, technically at least, but that terror campaign is a vile crime against the people of the region, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

Even in a world bludgeoned into accepting the idea that terrorists can bomb their way to the negotiating table — as the IRA did on this island — the Hamas barrage, especially as there is no possibility that it might achieve a nything other than harden already very hard Israeli attitudes, seems utterly nihilistic and wantonly cruel. Just as some of the leaders of our 1916 revolt fantasised about the power of their blood sacrifice Hamas seem ready to sacrifice lives in Gaza to generate ever greater momentum behind the Islamic extremists gathering such force and generating such fear right across the Middle East.

Appalling as the blood-letting in Gaza is it is just another symptom of a region in chaos. Syria is still in the grip of evil and chaos; Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan too are in various stages of disintegration. Egypt’s flirtation with democracy seems at least suspended. Autocracies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar seem untouchable. Turkey seems ever more polarised between strident Islam and the kind of tolerant pluralism we try to live by in most of Europe.

All the while Isis, the world’s richest terror organisation, gathers momentum, using savagery and social media to intimidate and recruit. And all the while Israel’s heavy hand beats the intolerant fundamentalists’ recruiting sergeant’s come-with-me drum. That so many disenchanted, disenfranchised, and brutalised young Muslims answer that call cannot be a surprise but it must be a concern for us all.

It may seem an over-reach to go from the razed suburbs of Gaza City to Grant Park in Chicago on an exultant day in 2008 — November 4 to be precise, when newly-inaugrated President Barack Obama made a speech of such force and optimism that all but the hardest of hearts were moved. Everything then seemed possible. More than anyone America is in a position to influence events in the region, to try to have sanity prevail and bring the latest carnage to an end. The insularity of American opinion makes this very difficult but Mr Obama has already overcome far greater challenges. Maybe it’s time he intervened more forcefully.