After a Year of Bloodshed in Gaza: We have one word to give. “ENOUGH!”
After the initial horrors of October 7th 2023 what has followed for twelve long months is the world witnessed the unrelenting destruction of Gaza, a campaign of such brutality that it makes a mockery of the very concept of ‘self-defence’ and ‘proportionate response’. Night after night, our television screens have flickered with images so horrific they would make even the most hardened war correspondent blanche. Yet, for all this carnage, for all this ‘strategic’ devastation, the hostages remain unreturned, their fates hanging in the balance like some grotesque game of geopolitical chess
It is high time we uttered that most powerful of words: “Enough.”
The world watches, sickened, as this conflict spirals ever outwards, now into Lebanon threatening to engulf the entire region in its insatiable appetite for destruction. We stand aghast at tactics that are less about security and more about lust for revenge, so all-consuming it threatens to devour not just its enemies but any pretence of its own moral standing. It has become a genocide, it has become a blot on the people of Israel who deserve better than this act of destruction its government is carrying out.
To those at the helm of this war machine, we implore: change course. Pull back from this precipice of total war. Your justification long expired. The 97 hostages still in captivity will not be saved by more bombs, more destruction, more dead children dug from the rubble of what were once homes, schools, hospitals.
Negotiate. For once, let diplomacy have its day. Bring these 97 souls home alive to their families and in doing so, save countless others – Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli alike – from the meat grinder of this conflict.
It is time to silence the drums of war, to still the gears of your terror apparatus, and give peace – true peace, not just the absence of gunfire – a fighting chance. For if we do not, history will judge us all harshly for the horrors we allowed to unfold in the name of ‘self-defence and ”security’.
The choice is yours. Choose wisely, for the eyes of the world – and of history – are upon you. “#ENOUGH!”
