The fog of conflict Israel-Hamas and Palestine 18th July 2014

If you wake up to the news, like me, and it has the propensity to colour your day, like me sometimes, then today was surely one of those grim days.

In effect there's never not a grim day around the world, but for the items of 'news interest' that find a broadcast outlet, it was difficult not to feel psychologically under siege and let your empathy run amok.

Jemima Kiss, head of technology at the Guardian newspaper captured it piquantly.

My day started with a flit around social media and looking at RSS feeds. Israel's forces ground invasion of Gaza was the expected big news today. Another grim cycle of deaths. 

It is impracticable and impossible not to write about the subject, without incurring the wrath of either an intellectual, whose view differs, but they can not contain their emotion, or a troglodyte without the etiqutte or understanding of rationale and rhetoric.

Civil argument gets lost, personal invectives get traded. 

Today, as only a cynical PR spokemsan might think, the downing of a civilian aircraft Malaysia Airline flight MH17, knocked the Israel-Hamas-Palestinian state story of the lead.  298 people murdered.

The opprobium was needed, the ourtage, barely enough to assuage the thought: 'What the **** is going on?'

Politicians and leaders are then called upon to say something poignant for the news; something matching the profoundness that resonates with: 'She was the people's princess', she was and that was different.

For now, I care less what PM David Cameron and the likes have to say. It has been the leader's collective insouciance that has contributed to this grim day.

Our thoughts go out to the families. News has started to build its narrative matching faces to circumstances and nationality. The senseless of it all and the human cost gnaws at you. Sorrow, anger, frustration.

Then this... confusion, but in a different guise. It is a piece entitled

Whose Palestine?

by Nathan Thrall

 

It contains passages like this.

"For a moment in early June, it seemed to many Palestinians that their political leadership was on the verge of making a historic shift".

and 

"The resulting crackdown on Hamas by Israeli forces working in coordination with Palestinian security forces 
..."
and this...

"But in early June, to the great surprise of Fatah, Egypt, Israel, and the US, Hamas agreed to renounce responsibility for administering Gaza..."

Thrall's piece had clearly caught attention, as the tweet attracted quite some activity.

The day is far from over, and no doubt the grimness of the news stands to get worse. Thrall's piece though sheds some background knowledge on a situation so fuzzy from the fog of confusion.

Read Thrall's piece here.