Loss of land, loss of rights, captivity under pitiless masters are all tremendously suffocating things for any people to endure - be they Irish, Italian, South African, Vietnamese, Aborigine, American Indian, Maori or Palestinian. Verdi comes alive if you think of Gaza.

“Jewish people exterminating men, women and children in a concentration camp is _______.”

How do you finish a sentence like that? The words should fall like acid into your ear drums. It should be an impossible sentence. And yet, not so. We are witnessing it today in Gaza – the world’s largest open-air prison, home and hell to 2.3 million brutally repressed human beings – carried out by the Jewish State of Israel. Genocide.

According to Israeli media reports, no babies aged 0-3 years have yet been named amongst the dead of Hamas’s October 7th attack. The stories of beheaded babies, it now seems likely, were in fact weapons of mass destruction launched by experienced Israeli and American media warriors to enflame emotions and soften the ground for genocide. It’s not the first time this has happened. It is time we learnt the lessons of history.