Covid-19 Statement

1 February 2024

A Palestinian Collective Memory Project

I’ve worded the sub-heading of this article as Jewish attack rather than Israeli because world Jewry has supported Israel's murder of the Palestinians and theft of their land for over seventy years. Fantasist Christian Zionists who profess to follow Jesus are complicit.

This war like all wars originates from beliefs in peoples' minds as battles of ideas but they can have devastating consequences as we see. It's clearly vital to keep the battle in the realm of ideas by reasoning together rather than killing for advantage. Worse, it's common to use lies and deception rather than genuine beliefs. Currently we have a mixture of both by Jews, Christians, Christian Zionists and opportunists.

No, I'm not anti-Semitic a Jew Hater or Holocaust Denier. Nor do I want to kill all the Jews or drive them into the sea. I'm a follower of Jesus and as such have the best interests of both Jews and Palestinians in mind. Nevertheless, like Jesus and the Prophets of Israel, if I may cite them as exemplars, it's inevitable that I will cause offence. Jesus had good reason to call the city of Jerusalem "...you who kill the Prophets". Intractable problems need fundamental examination and change of beliefs.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, as evidence of the Jewish claim to Palestine, that the Jews inhabited the land prior to the current Palestinians since genetic analysis shows that the current Palestinian population carries none of the former inhabitants' genes. This is because the Jews annihilated the original inhabitants of the ‘promised land,’ men, women and children with no survivors as I've noted in my previous article.   That is hardly a valid basis for a claim in the 21st century, legal or otherwise. History is repeating itself because the Jewish leadership is working from the ancient Old Testament record of the events and concept of God 3,500 years ago.

I added as a quick post-script to my last article:

As I'm about to post this article an appalling conflict between the Cousins, that is, of Israel and Palestine, has commenced. Dear friends, recall that Jesus came from God to warn Israel of danger. Recall Flavius Josephus' account of the Jews themselves firing the Temple buildings and of Massada when it was believed that God had abandoned Israel. I have explained how Christianity has brought both Roman and Yahweh's violence into the 21st Century. What will the Friends of Israel do when their expectations are disappointed? Nor did the Holocaust come from thin air. Consider Hitler, resentful and brooding in his prison cell, dreaming of power and reading in his bible the history of Israel and its God of Power. The Jews have prospered in our confused Christian culture.   They will be safe with Jesus and an example to Christianity if they make peace with their Cousins. This is their incredible opportunity to take Humanity forward which was not previously understood.   Israel is on the path to repeating a great mistake. Follow Jesus and share the land in equality and peace.

I have discussed the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) with an Imam, a Hafiz of goodwill. The Prophet calls Jesus the Messenger of God but does not mention his message. It was at that point not the right time. The time is now and the message is to love God, love your neighbour as yourself, love your enemies and preach the Kingdom of God.

I’ll unpack this in further articles. For this article, I’ll paste, in Appendix I below, a specimen of letters that I’ve addressed to a number of member countries of the UN Special Committee On Palestine. It’s a proposal to create a Palestinian Collective Memory Project. With American, UK and EU support for Israel it appears that nothing to help the Palestinians will happen in the short term so a comprehensive record of Palestinians’ experience out of Israeli control is the next best possibility. This promises many emergent, ie unforeseen, benefits because it's positive and ethical. This war will inevitably have the converse effect of further, probably escalating, disaster.

I sent these letters by surface post addressed to the London embassies of the countries concerned. I haven’t had an acknowledgement from any of them, which might or might not be significant. United Nations resolutions are clearly useless and the Arab governments appear to have accepted the Jewish Greater Israel project and written Palestine off for fear of wider escalation. This would assume that Greater Israel’s boundaries would stop at the Jordan River. There is reason to believe that Israel's ambitions are much greater.

The world has moved on since 1,500 BC due to the Jew Jesus. He saw the people as sheep without a shepherd and wept. The Elites, the leaders of Israel at that time took their people to disaster whether by action or inaction and are doing it again. It’s not inevitable because we humans have choice. It's a matter of belief in who we are, which can be changed with an act of will given a better option. The Jews are a talented, energetic people who if they follow their Prophet Jesus (as the Muslims call him) could be safely living within other cultures, marrying into them, raising children and celebrating the opportunities that our shared humanity gives us.

The present conflict arises because the Jews don't want this. The need for a Jewish state is an imagined one.   It is imagined that following the Holocaust the Jewish State of Israel will be the only safe place for Jews. To the contrary, it could lead to total annihilation of the Jewish people. Warfare and weapons, nuclear or otherwise are not the answer. They never have been for the Jews or anyone else. Nor will God or Jesus bring a solution from Heaven. The solution to peace in Palestine and for Jewish security everywhere lies in the simple decision whether to live apart from or together with the rest of Humanity.

The Abrahamic Covenant is a promise for victory in warfare as well as blessings for Humanity. It was appropriate at that time. One might say that the opportunity was lost 70 years after the Jews had Jesus executed. Four thousand years later it is a belief, a concept of the mind that can still be changed by consideration of Jesus' alternative for Humanity as a new Jewish identity.

Apartheid, defined as 'being apart' or 'separateness' is the specific purpose of the Jewish state. As in South Africa and the USA apartheid was seen to cause all manner of serious problems. These are potentially much more serious in the case of Israel. Tribalism is very similar and the Jews can be thought of as a large dispersed tribe.   Like the wars perpetrated by the USA, UK and EU who are Israel's Christian Zionist supporters, it is Israel's leaders who are leading their people to disaster. Ordinary people everywhere, Jewish and otherwise want peace, the opportunity for rewarding work and for raising their families in security. Jewish, Christian or Islamic, we are not on that path.

For the moment in this case I suggest a contribution to Palestine's welfare as a Collective Memory Project that will not harm Israel but will help the Palestinians.

I am including as Appendix II an article by a Jewish former advisor to the British Government who writes of his fears and insecurity but shows no awareness that Israel's behaviour might be related to these nor any reason why the Jews have always been under pressure except hate. It's difficult to accept at face value anything from an advisor to the UK government but what he says looks heart-felt, which it might really be. If we accept that it is and is typical, then the Jews are truly in a terrible place in their minds. Prejudice due to 'fear of the foreigner' or on racial differences is well known, but the Jewish experience is different.

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Appendix 1 - A proposal for a Palestinian Collective Memory Project

These two items are a copy of one of the covering letters to the proposal and the proposal itself.   If you agree that it should be implemented please pass it on to organizations sympathetic to the Palestinian disaster or to sympathetic governments, perhaps via their local embassies. The countries of the UN Special Committee on Palestine are shown here.

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8 December 2023

His Excellency Jeremiah Nyamane Mamabolo
High Commissioner to the United Kindom
High Commission of the Republic of South Africa
South Africa House
Trafalgar Square
London
WC2N 5DP

Your Excellency,
UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
Ethical Intervention In Gaza: A Palestinian Collective Memory Project

The horrific Israeli war against Gaza following 70 years of Palestinian suffering suggests that we should think differently about the Palestinian issue.

Your government is a member of this UN Committee that might consider a project to transform the Palestinian People’s experience of deaths and suffering over the last seventy years into the form of a material record. In doing so, their experience will acquire an independent existence from considerations of international law, genocide, political trading and national interests that are subject to various viewpoints and manipulations.

The memories of the Palestinian People are their most valuable possession and should be recorded. Such a record will speak in the present and future of our minds which is where wars commence. It will be a reproach to those who lack the compassion owed to our joint humanity, without which we are lost.

It might please you and the government of South Africa to consider the attached proposal as a different approach from those used for the last seventy years to no effect.

Yours faithfully,

(Signed)

Christopher King MSc DipM DMS
Consultant and lecturer in management (retired)

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Proposal to the United Nations Special Committee On Palestine

A Palestinian Collective Memory Project
as intervention in the current Israeli war on Gaza

8 December 2023

Their Excellencies, Members of The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine

Your Excellencies,

Ethical Intervention In Gaza: A Palestinian Collective Memory Project

The following outline proposal for intervention in the Israeli war on the people of Gaza and its rationale is presented for your consideration and possible implementation.

The suggestion is to create a database project to record the personal story of every Palestinian world-wide who might wish to contribute his/her personal experiences from the time of the Nakba to the present. It is intended to remind us of our joint humanity both in debating it and in the future should it be adopted.   The announcement that it is being considered could have an immediate moderating effect on the Israeli Government’s thinking about the current war and if so, could give the Palestinians benefits immediately and certainly over time. Debate about it could also open up avenues for diplomatic progress on Palestine that are not at present apparent.

The Israelis have always targeted for seizure or destruction all demographic records that might be evidence of the Palestinians’ occupation of the land and right of return.   This includes the Ottoman and British land records, records from libraries, local authorities, trades unions, and commercial firms such as insurance companies. Hospital records are probably current prime targets. Most of the material evidence of the Palestinians’ lives, culture and devastating experience of dispossession will never be recovered.

Unless assistance is given to them, deaths, time and population dispersal will also destroy the living memory of the Palestinian experience and its homeland culture along with its physical evidence.   It should not be allowed to happen. Their living memories are now the Palestinians’ most valuable asset because they are experiencing the most significant period in their history and culture in current time. They are, moreover, of value to Humanity as potential statements against warfare.

The Project’s objective is both to make a detailed record of the past and to provide a focal point from which Palestinian culture can begin recovery and develop its future. It would give enormous psychological benefits as hope and motivation to the Palestinians and generate an overwhelming case and body of evidence for developing them and their culture out of refugee camps. In contributing, every Palestinian would have the opportunity to fight peacefully and ethically for his or her people.

Israelis and the Jewish people are acutely aware of the value of records and history due to the basis of their own culture in the Bible story and their profoundly traumatic experience of the Holocaust, now an influential part of their history and that of the world. The significance of this Project will immediately be apparent to them. It is related to their motivation and that of their supporters in this war, that is, in their minds, which is where wars start.

None of the means of punishing Israel that the United Nations might use, even a finding of genocide, would give any benefits the Palestinians. Nor are threats likely to change Israel’s long term behaviour. The two-state solution has been dead for many years. In view of Israel’s past behaviour and damage to the Palestinians, in reality no just settlement is possible or even imagined.

An immediately achievable task is to help the Palestinians to record their story as a basis for developing an economy and culture as far as possible independent of Israel and to bring at least some out of the refugee camps. Many sympathetic countries are well able to finance or administer this project.

Every Palestinian might write of their original homes, who of their family, friends and neighbours were killed in dispossession of their property, subsequent personal events and incidents that they witnessed. One hundred and eight United Nations staff to date, whose deaths are part of the Palestinian disaster would have an essential place in it as told by their families and colleagues who knew them. The participation of all UN staff who worked in Palestine over this period would be valuable verification of Palestinian accounts.

The deaths of many journalists and volunteers of goodwill should not be forgotten, nor the eyewitness accounts of survivors. In short, there is an immense body of living humanitarian knowledge that might usefully be preserved, not only for direct Palestinian benefit but also as a unique historic record.

It is also right that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians should be recorded and held up for the world, the Israeli people and their supporters to see and not forget the loss of compassion for the Palestinian people that they are currently experiencing and have experienced in the past.

This is potentially a large project, but not everyone eligible to contribute will do so. It is well within the capabilities of current database technology. Moreover it will certainly be constructive, safe geo-politically and cost much less than armed intervention if that were desirable or possible.

An announcement that the Committee is considering this proposal would itself be an intervention that might cause the Israelis to reconsider their present extreme military action. Even if that should not occur, it would still have merit for the cultural and economic benefits that it could give to the Palestinians in recording the story of loss of their land and in drawing attention to the need for more than meagre refugee relief.

This proposal is respectfully submitted for your consideration.

Submitted by Christopher King MSc DipM DMS
Independent researcher

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Appendix 2

Note: I find it difficult to decide whether the following article that was published in a newsletter is genuine belief or propaganda for Israel. Is the UK really a bed of Jew hate where 'Death to all Jews' is a common sentiment? It's true that there have been anti-Jewish attacks by the sort of idiots who are glad to identify any imagined enemy against whom they can be violent. It's far from mainstream and shouldn't be presented as such. Why is any criticism of Israeli, or Jewish behaviour, immediately Jew hate and antisemitism? In the past I've blogged against Israel's claim to Palestine because the Jews have never respected the rights of the Palestinians as required by the Balfour declaration, the British Mandate, the terms of the UN's recognition of Israel and UN human rights resolutions. Is that Jew hate? The response is always 'hate' and 'antisemitism', with no discussion about facts. The article writer cites Israeli stories about Hamas's rape of women, dismembering children and cooking babies. Cooking babies??? Any list of crimes containing 'cooking babies' has to be suspect. Hamas's attack on October 7 was indeed terrorism but the plan wasn't to rape women, dismember children and cook babies. A counter-claim is that Israel itself killed many of its own citizens by its paniced initial defence. Israel has, as fact, dismembered more children by bombing the Gaza population and killed more babies by cutting off power to hospitals than Hamas could possibly have done if they killed any at all.

We need a rational debate. We don't have one and it's Israel's strategy to avoid one with accusations of hate and antisemitism while establishing facts on the ground for Greater Israel. I used to think that Israel was to be a civilizing influence in Palestine with right to the land because that was the media message and of the film Cast A Giant Shadow about Mickey Marcus and the war of independence. Some time ago I learned the truth which is what we now see on our television screens. I don't hate the Jews but I know I've been deceived by them. I don't want to kill them. I want them to change their view of who they are in the 21st century. Similarly for Christians and Muslims, so I'm not picking solely on Jews. We all need to reconsider who we are. Israel/Palestine is the immediate focus however.

If the writer of the following article genuinely believes what he says, then he and the Jews are in a terrible place in their minds. Genuine or not, these sentiments seem to be about a world environment with another Holocaust just below the surface. That might be the case, but it need not be.

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Why you should march against antisemitism tomorrow if you can

November 24th 2023

XXX is a public policy and communications leader based in London. He was formerly a Political Adviser at YYY.

‘Death to all the Jews’ has been trending online in the UK. The National Solidarity March Against Antisemitism organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism and taking place this Sunday, is no parade of paranoia. Here’s why it’s so important that you join us, if you can.

The level of hate infecting the current discourse explains why “You’re so brave” has been a common refrain heard by Jews just for being Jews. It always is when antisemitism is roused from its light sleep.

Apparently I was brave for publicly revealing my Jewishness on LinkedIn. Rather than someone bringing his whole self to work, as HR departments insist we should.

Brave for penning ‘Bring them home’ on the remnants of posters vandalised for documenting kidnapped children. If promoting the return of terrified toddlers is brave rather than human we have a problem.

Brave for accepting my latest synagogue security call-up. It’s called being a Jew. Thou Shalt Do Your Stint. They’ve just never had to ask us so often.

Brave for enjoying my favourite falafel house in the week its windows were shattered by thugs. You try tasting it and staying away.

Brave for wearing my Star of David to a peaceful rally for the hostages, according to surprised Tube passengers. Twinkle, twinkle, little Star, how I wonder what a risk you are. In this age of identity and equality, somehow a religious symbol had me self-identifying as an unequal.

Brave in these cases may simply be a euphemism for stupid. Because for every antisemitic incident here before 7 October, there are 15 now.

It always starts with an atmosphere, before emboldened perpetrators graduate to physical harm. Those conditions for intimidation have gained oxygen from a minority of agitators on student campuses and protest marches who signally fail to practise what they preach about peace and freedom.

To be clear: making Hitler comparisons in this debate is grotesquely offensive and plain wrong, and indulgence of Hamas is indulgence of raping women, dismembering children, and cooking babies. Please excuse the stark imagery, but never forgetting 7 October must mean never forgetting 7 October. Many want the world to forget. Don’t let them.

While recorded hate in the UK is rampant, mercifully we haven’t (yet) plumbed the depths seen abroad in recent weeks: Jews stabbed on their doorsteps in Lyon and Detroit; Jewish homes exposed by graffiti in Berlin and Paris; Jewish cemeteries torched in Vienna; an elderly Jew killed by a protester in Los Angeles; Jewish tourists murdered in Alexandria.

None of the victims were in Israel or involved in the conflict. All opportunistic Jew hate.

In that environment, drawing attention to ourselves may indeed be stupid. It seems thousands don’t mind because, despite that backdrop, sales of so-called Jew-ellery have quadrupled.

As for what’s really brave, I look to my family that arrived in the 1800s and, in particular, their next in line: my late grandmas.

Esther cycled across Berlin in 1938 as a young, female Jew. That was brave. You might say stupid. I’d certainly add inspiring. Norah was brave too. An abiding image of her is in British Army uniform as part of the Allied effort facing down the Nazis in North Africa.

These glorious, British, Jewish women, who gave much to their community and country, would be turning in their graves at what confronts their descendants today - and questioning what the battle of their generation was for.

One descendant in particular wants to know. My son went to bed last week asking: “Daddy, why does everyone hate us?”

Speaking of brave or stupid, as a four-year old boy he is both. But that’s beside the point. Neither at that age nor any age should he have to ask such a question. Not in a civilised society, and especially not with great-grandmas who almost a century ago were fighting for the right for British people - Jewish or otherwise - to be safe and free.

The Jewish contribution to national life reflects a people wanting to fit for the long term. No race or religion in this enlightened country should face hate.

Yet now the sirens of antisemitism are sounding. It is a lonely place to feel that those under threat are the ones who hear it. A pitch that Jews recognise from times past. We need other people to tune in too. Silence is more terrifying than golden right now.

This is a cry for the help of reasonable voices. The only side I ask that you take is against hate of all kinds wherever it emerges. Readers should refuse to tolerate intolerance, speak out against the growing threat to a tiny community and - for those able and available - join the National Solidarity March Against Antisemitism.

It should not be controversial for someone to write these words, nor for people to act upon them.

So, we Jews who refuse to cower but instead show ourselves with pride. Are we brave or stupid? A bit of both, perhaps, but fully defiant.

Those Stars of David. On they go. On they stay. Those Jews. On we go. I just hope we can stay.

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A Palestinian Collective Memory Project

Ethically Defending Palestinians Against Jewish Attack