Only those who have lost their general humanity can celebrate the deaths of any member of our species by the hands or orders of other members of our species. This is why many ordinary working people will not be joining in the chorus of joy or threats of retribution emanating on all elite sides of the 70 plus years of division between Palestinians and Israeli’s. In this complex reality, there are those on both sides who have worked for peace and there are those on both sides who have done the opposite. As in all wars, initiated by elites, the ones who will suffer most will be the non-combatants who just find themselves in way of those bent on aggression and hatred to continue the contradictions of the current hierarchical mass society systems.

The problem for those of us living within such societies is that the ruling elites, not only control the decision making processes, but also control the armed forces and control the narrative of justification for war and control the means to disseminate it. The rest of us within such societies have little or no say or influence in the outbreak of hostilities, the conduct of them or the ideological justification for them. This means that only one biased viewpoint – on each side of the conflict – will dominate the public narrative.

However, none of us need to be entirely at the mercy of the narrative preferred by the elites in control of our own particular hierarchical mass society, nor at the mercy of the narrative emanating from any other elites. This is because one of the first things most of us learn as children and adults is that far more often than not, there is a strong connection between cause and effect. If we play with fire, we can get burned; if we annoy a sibling he or she retaliates; if we eat too much ice cream we feel sick, etc.

As we grow older it turns out that cause and effect have a much wider spectrum than just our individual selves. If a bridge or building suddenly collapses from no external force, the likelihood is that the cause has been bad design, shoddy construction, faulty materials or lack of maintenance. If a ocean going liner, like the Titanic sinks, then the cause may well be a mixture of the above – design, construction plus going too fast in an area full of icebergs. There are myriads of such examples of cause and effect that we encounter, as we grow up.

We working class activists also observe throughout life that those elites with primary responsibility for things that turn out badly, in public affairs, prefer the rest of us to focus on the effects, and prefer us to ignore or down play any causes which may implicate them in some way. Thus responsibility for the Grenfell Tower Inferno, the dodgy dossiers leading to the Iraq War or faulty preparation for Pandemics and out of date personal protection, will be downplayed or ignored while those responsible urge that instead of looking for causes and blame for unnecessary deaths, the ‘lessons’ from each failure should be learned from studying – in lengthy inquiry detail taking years – the effects.

This is how the elites everywhere are currently positioning themselves with regard to the many problems humanity is now facing. This is so whether the problem is climate change, wholesale chemical and material pollution, ecological destruction, deflation of currency value or low wage poverty; nothing is ever their fault. And it should come as no surprise that many elites would prefer it if the causes and effects of the Israeli Palestine conflict are similarly ignored or downplayed.

Fortunately, however, there is also enough reliably recorded history to provide some context in order to judge the probable causes of most conflicts. This is the case with the situation in Palestine For example, until the collapse of what was left of the Ottoman Empire, in the early 20th century, the indigenous people of Palestine went about their daily lives in their fields, olive groves, animal pastures, shops and workshops, making and selling various products, just as they had done for generations. When the allied forces of Britain and France defeated the Ottoman Turks in the First World War and temporarily occupied Palestine (ie Britain) and Syria (ie. France), with an eye to the oil rich countries of the middle east, they set about installing governments friendly to France or Britain.

Britain, in control of Palestine,  was eventually persuaded by Jewish Zionists to allow Jewish exiles and survivors to come into Palestine in considerable – but not unlimited – numbers. The newcomers began to acquire assets and establish themselves in Palestine. However, militant Zionists in Palestine, wishing to allow more homeless (and persecuted) Jews to settle there, eventually commenced a guerrilla type war against the British occupying forces, bombing their headquarters and killing their soldiers.

Eventually the British Troops were withdrawn by the British Government and the Zionist Jews in 1948 then instigated a forcible takeover of Palestinian owned Land, houses and civic buildings (mostly after British troops left) and declared a Jews only state called Israel. This was a conquest and take over of Palestinian assets by Jewish Zionists (a major cause) which the Palestinians now classify as the Disaster or Catastrophe (Nakba) and which began an armed campaign of resistance by many Palestinians (a major effect).

Much later, in 1967, after a defeated Arab uprising and multi country incursion, the Israeli military and government extended the boundaries of the newly declared state of Israel, occupied this extra territory and excluded more Palestinians from rights within these illegal borders. This later exclusion and control (was a further major cause) also created further Palestinian resistance (a further major effect) in the occupied territories of the West Bank and in Gaza. However, as in the case of long chains of causes and effects, later participants can to some extent choose the particular cause or effect in the chain they wish to start from in order to reduce or eliminate any initiating blame.

That pattern was (and is) not new. It was the case that the European New World settlers who became the American colonists blamed Native American Indians for the latters eventual violent retaliation against previous settler violence against them and the annexation of their hunting and gathering territories. The British elites did the same when the indigenous people rebelled against British occupation in India and also when the Zulu Uprising against them occurred in Africa. This tit for tat narrative pattern of blame and counter blame between settlers and native inhabitants is essentially the same with regard to Israel and Palestine.

The anti-semitic pogroms in Europe and the effect of Hitlers ‘final solution’ against them was (and is) felt as sufficient cause for most Jews to then and now put their own individual and collective well being far above everyone elses. Thus Palestinians, like Native American Indians, Asian Indian peoples, Zulu’s and Australian Aborigines before them, just happen to be living on a territory where another stronger and richer conquering group had decided they wanted it exclusively for themselves.

It is a long established historical fact that powerful colonialist elites like nothing better than seizing someone elses territory and then declaring it to be their own country. It is a matter of historical record from as far back as the foreign conquests of ancient Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, that for hierarchical mass society elites throughout the history of such societies – might always equals right. Those on the receiving end of conquest and annexation are expected – sooner or later – to shrug their shoulders and accept their fate like North and South American, Asian, African and Oceanic native peoples were eventually forced to do – and the rest is ‘their’ history as the saying goes.

One difference between Palestine and the earlier noted colonisations is that the 20th century colonisation of Palestine by Israel took place when the United Nations had already agreed that this traditional land grab method by the powerful should be no longer valid. It also took place before the Palestinians had been sufficiently eliminated to prevent them from significantly protesting. Thus, over 70 plus years, Palestinians have successfully campaigned internationally and dozens of United Nations resolutions now support them, and urge Israel to end their ‘illegal’ occupation and control of what remains of Palestinian territory.

However, powerful countries in the United Nations Assembly, such as USA, UK and other European countries have blocked the implementation of these UN resolutions. It is now over 70 years since Palestinians were first excluded from their land and homes and things have steadily become worse for them, while the rest of humanity ‘innocently’ ignored their year by year deteriorating situation and deaths in custody. During that time, the Israeli government has continued to allow (and even encourage) the building of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, which take place on fertile land and water aquifers so that the amount of viable land now available to Palestinians has shrunk from 100% in the early 20th century to to 10% in the 21st.

The numerous peace efforts since 1948 have routinely failed to resolve the ongoing conflict, because the Israeli perspective on occupation was (and is) for an exclusively Jewish State which in order to allow it to grow in sufficient size and wealth needed ever more land and Jewish people to live on what amounts to a rather limited strip of eastern Mediterranean territory. When I went to the west bank as a peace activist during the olive harvest of 2003 the Palestinians I talked to wanted either a multicultural one state solution or a two state seperate Israeli and Palestine solution with enough land for a Palestinian State to be viable.

However, when I talked to some Jewish academics and peace activists they told me these solutions were not what the Israeli government wanted; the governing elite wanted all of Palestine! And so the slow pattern of settlement building on occupied land continued decade after decade until with only 10 % left in the 21st century, there is now insufficient land left for a self-governing Palestinian homeland to be a viable possibility. Gradually over the years, the vast majority of Palestinians have now lost all hope (an effect of indifference) that the countries of Europe and America would eventually honour the principles of the United Nations Charter and help to end the illegal Israeli occupation of their land.

So with this abbreviated 70 plus year chain of cause and effect in mind the reader can pick their own preferred starting point for a cause and effect pattern to be asserted. But anyone with a humanist stance in choosing a starting cause and subsequent effect must ask themselves what are the Palestinians (the economically and military weaker side) to do now? In the absence of an Israeli willingness to share the land in either a one multicultural state or a two-state separate solution it appears that enough of those imprisoned in Hamas controlled Gaza have had enough of living within the confines of Israeli imposed, slow land-grab that Israel describes as – normality.

So rather than continuing to experience a steady, economic and cultural collective death, some of them have become desperate enough to join Hamas and brutally attack and kill peaceful citizens of Israel ‘on-mass’ or die. This is a course of action which will now be mirrored by many in Israel who are now also prepared to brutally attack Gaza on mass (by air or land)  and also kill their  peaceful citizens or die. The inappropriateness and tragedy of the most sophisticated (and supposedly most intelligent) species of life on earth – humanity – destroying each other and much of nature was already mind-bogglingly nihilistic in the 20th century. Yet it is 2023 and the pattern continues.

The fact that neighbouring communities in the land of Palestine and Eastern Europe (ie Russia v Ukraine) are being urged in 2023 to annihilate each other by their respective elites and by those onlookers who have had their own humanity impaired, by living in competitively structured societies, is an immense condemnation of the socio-economic system we humans are currently trapped within. It really does feel that the hierarchical mass society system dominated by the capitalist mode of production between 2019 and 2023 is once again undergoing a protracted death agony as it did between 1939 and 1945. Knowing even a little of the history of Palestine in the 20th century, the fact that many in Gaza have now in the 21st, decided to return Israeli indifference and brutality with their own indifference and brutality, can hardly be surprising even to those of us who totally reject the use of indifference and violence in human affairs and would act and hope for a peaceful resolution.

Whether this decision by Hamas to launch a makeshift large-scale invasion was a rational but inhumane decision based upon some calculated or hoped for change in outcomes such as an attempt to; a) galvanise a wider Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation; b) to exacerbate recent Israeli social divisions; c) to embarass the alternative Fatah regime; d) counter recent Israeli right wing settler incursions; e) to embarras the recent Arab Oil elites flirtation with Israel; f) invite a full-scale, ally-splitting, excessive loss of life invasion of Gaza, or an irrational act of emotional desperation, is impossible to say from outside of the situation. However, given the long history of hierarchical mass societies and the recent history of Israel and Palestine, it is not too difficult to anticipate the possible near and medium-term trajectories, if not the probable ones.

Neither the Israeli right wing or Hamas leadership are likely to peaceably negotiate; both have now upped the stakes. The Israeli government elite will probably retaliate further with the utmost overwhelming force it can muster and use this latest Hamas invasion event as a reason to tactically finish quickly what they have strategically intended to do over the long term. This will involve engaging in open warfare and doing to Gaza and (possibly the West Bank) what Putin has done to parts of Ukraine and its military and civilian occupants. The elite strategy of bombing resistance into absolute oblivion until there is nothing left to even call a makeshift home and leaving insufficient people left to fulfil normal economic activities, is a hierarchical mass society strategy since ancient Rome did similar to ancient Carthage and many empires in between have done to others. Leaving nothing left for any state let alone a two state solution is part of the historic play book of aggressive hierarchical mass society elites down through the ages.

If and when such Israeli totalitarian total retaliation does take place then Israel will increase its existing reputation as a pariah country and state and invite other middle eastern opponents of Israel to condemn its existence and perhaps even to begin their own acts of counter- retaliation. We in the Anglo-Saxon west, dominated as we are by the single narrative that terrorists are everyone else except our own government, need to remember that a majority of the world have a completely different view. Many in the rest of the world have a narrative which includes the fact that the elites in America, Britain and Europe have been colonial and imperial terrorists par excellence for much of the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries devastating countries and peoples in North and South America, India, Africa, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The fact that  western elites are again  aiding and abetting the annihilation of yet another part of the human family – the Palestinians – most of whom have not raised a finger against anyone, will not rehabilitate the west in the eyes of humanity as a whole. And even their own subject populations are increasingly aware of the perfidity, duplicity and greed of past and present elites – in all countries. If total destruction of Gaza (civilian and military) happens, that in turn will draw supporters of Israel into further forms of inhuman support, leading to unintended military and non-military escalations.

Furthermore, such destabilisations and extra government expenditures caused by supporting elite systems in other counties (eg. Ukraine and Israel) will further increase the already high levels of austerity and social tensions in advanced capitalist countries of Europe and North America. It will also set back the already meagre policy attempts at controlling pollution and climate change and once again demonstrate that elites prefer to provide billions in aid to other elites rather than to their own old and young working class citizens.

The heyday of the hierarchical mass society forms is long past and despite space stations and rockets to the moon, their collective descent into high-level self-destructive activities against other rival mass societies and against nature is becoming obvious to all who are not blinded by self-interested bias. Some elites are fighting to retain their privileges, others are fighting in order to expand their territory or obtain assets, (as Russian and Israeli elites) but the human species fighting against the human species once again epitomises (or self condemns) the hierachical mass society form of social organisation.

And of course, the accumulated frustration and disillusionment with the bourgeois international order is not restricted to Israel and Palestine. The crisis of the capitalist mode of hierarchical mass society living is spreading out from its centres to its peripheries. The system in its latest capitalist iteration is self-destructing and crumbling wherever the hierarchical mass society model has become most contradictory and fragile and at the moment there are multiple sites of fragility.

If present and future generations contain any level of humanity and wisdom concerning lfe on earth they will probably judge the hierarchical mass society form as the most destructive, alienated and alienating part of the evolutionary trajectory of life on earth. Hopefully they too will recommend, as I do, that people more diligently follow the chains of cause and effect to their actual original sources, rather than naively accepting the ones the elites in charge of their systems most prefer them to hold.

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2023)