The tragedy of Jews v Arabs when they are all descended from Abram/Abraham

Here is the proof of the crucial part the Bible plays in reinforcing Israel's intention never to share the Land with any other tribe, faith or faction.  No Palestine, ever.  And, ideally, no Iran to threaten God's nation of Israel by its very existence - 1,074 miles away in a straight line.

I have read ALL of Bibi Netanyahu's 654 page magnificent tome and enjoyed it: 'Bibi: My Story' (pub 2022).  He believes that his ancestor Abram/Abraham, was given the land after he moved (1900 BCE) from Ur of the Chaldeans to Canaan, or the Levant, at the Mediterranean end of the Fertile Crescent.  Bibi is convinced Abram got there first to claim the land in Canaan - "north, south, east and west, as far as you can see" - to be his and his descendants who will become a great nation, Israel and, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."  (Genesis 12)  What a way for the Jews/Israelis to be a blessing to their neighbours - by slaughtering them!

Our great ally and friend Bibi, conveniently overlooks that the Bible says that there were other tribes in Canaan when he finally arrived.  The Jews' ancestors did NOT move into an empty land.  The Canaanites were one tribe already there - Genesis 12 v 6.  In the next verse, the Lord told Abram, "To your descendants I will give this land."  And it is always by coercion, force and violence, apart from the first, with Abram's family arrival about 1900 BCE - like today perhaps, as unwelcome immigrants.

For Bibi the Bible is historically correct, with no anachronisms or even areas of uncertainty, with the Jewish tribe as only the legitimate claimant to the Levant/Canaan.  Bibi has the support of the evangelicals who are equally convinced.  It is crucial in the current thinking and behaviour of Israel's leaders. They are on a mission.  They got there first, gained it by aggression for a second time in winning wars over the indigenous tribes, like the Canaanites, Moabites and Ammonites under Joshua, and were duly rewarded by their God in keeping it.  Until the Exile.

The  Bible is written by about forty Jews and Christians, of how Abraham's son Isaac and his descendants, from Jacob/Israel, have considered themselves as being blessed by the One and Only God who has chosen them to be His Chosen and honoured People and the only Rightful heirs to, and owners of, the Greater Promised Land.

The other son of Abraham is Ishmael who was actually the first born.  He was born out of wedlock to slave woman, Hagar and was cast out of the family along with his mother and, against the custom of the day.  Ishmael was also to become the father of a great nation - the Arabs.  No wonder divided humankind is unable to live in peace and harmony despite the promise to Israel to become a great nation and mediating blessings to other peoples.  Instead, constant resort to mutual recriminations and violence.

The Bible is crystal clear that it is the Jews/Israelis who alone must have the Promised Land of Canaan. Not the Arabs or Palestinians. Hence, our friend Bibi is so intransigent that his lot are the only Rightful Owners of the unHoly Land. He will forever fight and war over it - into eternity.  For the present, he lives in paranoiac fear that his country will be attacked and overrun by Iran with its ballistic missiles and, one day, nukes.  "It only takes one nuclear bomb to land on Israel for it to be all over", claim the Israelis to justify their forever war on Iran and its proxies.  No attempt at conciliation, friendship and the Good Samaritan approach!

It is so tragic. But it goes to the heart of the human condition  - we can never share, equitably, the earth and its resources.  Forever wars.  Forever divided in hatred and fear.  There is unlikely to be a happy ending when the evangelicals are longing for Armageddon and the return of Christ to well and truly End everything.  They and Bibi are going the right way about it.

(Sources: Bible; 'How Did We Get Here' on BBC Sounds; and 'The Lion Handbook to the Bible')

War is a monstrous crime perpetrated by the violent

War is a monstrous crime perpetrated by the violent.

America and the Western/EU countries as wealthy nations can easily afford all things military and aggressive and, then are so easily tempted to throw their weight around using their vast piles of conventional weapons and WMD.  Exactly what we have seen over the last 100 years.

Green Party takes Gorton and Denton - from Jonathon Porritt

"Finally, the ongoing genocide in Gaza was a massive issue – and not just for the 30% of voters in Gordon and Denton who are Muslims.

"Keir Starmer – Yvette Cooper – David Lammy – Shabana Mahmoud: their complicity in the destruction of Palestine gets clearer and clearer for all to see. This obscene moral failure will continue to haemorrhage votes away from Labour until it changes its position."

God is on the side of the most military aggressive and powerful and victorious

It is unacceptable that over 3,000 years ago one group of Arabs or semites(?) used God's command "to go and possess the land", to justify a war of aggression and subjugation against the original inhabitants of Canaan.  The victorious group said God was on their side, had given them the victory, that they were His Chosen Nation, alone and, had given them and them alone the Promised Land in a glorious, aggressive war.  This is obscene and deluded.

It means that our friend and ally, Bibi might is right Netanyahu is saying that the Israelis and only the Jewish Israelis are entitled to occupy the full area of the unHoly Land from the River to the Sea.

Two very different High Streets!

How can Stourbridge High Street be turned from a popular car parking centre into a pleasant shopping centre to rival the lovely traffic free High Street in heavenly Halesowen?

How would you prioritise/choose these options?

1. Strictly enforce the present car parking arrangements in High St.

2. Extend the underground car park in Stourbridge to take High St cars.  Negotiate with Tesco.

3. Use the government billions for 150 miles of tramway for the planned conversion of buses and trains, instead, to extend Fare-free Public Transport to beyond my old geezers age group.

4. Extend the Shuttle to bring shoppers in from edge of town car parks at Jct sta and at Birmingham Street, near the Household Recycling Centre. 

5. Only allow residences and blue badge holders to park in the High Street, with strict enforcement.

6. Maintain car parking in Lower High St which works well.

Your idea?  Please put the numbers in your order of importance and send to:

dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk

and, to me at timweller1@gmail.com

It is preposterous ...

 ... that the one God of the world should have tiny Israel as His Chosen Nation and that we are commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and for no other capital city.

Not just this but, Israel alone, being given the whole of the unHoly Land from the River to the Sea, as written in the Likud Charter.

It is outrageous that this extremely violent and aggressive nation should be allowed every highly expensive, high Climate/resource impacting material blessing, including WMD and ballistic missiles which can wipe out every Arab country which surrounds it.

It is unacceptable, that God should be on the side of Israel and the Devil or Allah has Iran for his nation.

My God, the JC of Nazareth, is a god of non-violence and justice and of sharing equitably.  Especially towards and with the other children of Abraham, Muslims and all other races.

Since 1945 ...

Since 1945, the country which does the most killing in the world is the one in charge!  This is America.  After the USA and the Soviets/Russia, Israel must be the third country at the top  of the Slaughter league table.

In addition, Israel must be the country which has been the most violent throughout its short history.  The most violent and the most unsuccessful in stopping the intermittent warfare.

Indeed, the culmination of 80 years of violence towards its enemy was the most revengeful, audacious, violent and largest attack by its enemy of 80 years.  All because of violence and aggression to win territory that it previously had nearly two thousand years ago.  This had also been won by violence and aggression when, with God commanding them, they had first murdered and massacred the previous inhabitants!

"Hamas set back at least a decade" ... THE 654 PAGES FROM BIBI

"Hamas set back at least a decade" ... THE 654 PAGES FROM BIBI

... Bibi in his book, 'Bibi: My Story', pub 2022.  But in the very next year, Hamas struck to make their attack the biggest failure of security in Israel's 78 year history.

Hence, these famous last words: "Hamas set back at least a decade", p 647 out of 654, in chapter 64 covering 2019 to 2022. Pride comes before a fall.  Complete complacency and total disbelief that the military wing of Hamas, from Gaza of all places, could ever carry out such an enormous and audacious attack.​  But any fleeting thought of honourable resignation never crossed Bibi's mind!

The biggest failure of Israeli intelligence in eight decades - AND, when they knew something was going on over the border, they did nothing; they let it happen, such was their ​incompetence, over​-confidence and their arrogance.

Here is violence, aggression, one-sided genocide and such a total and complete 'David v Goliath' scenario of extreme asymmetric warfare for 78 years that the world has ever seen.  Bibi says that Israel is like David standing up to the most enormous military of the many Arab nations surrounding it.  So how does he explain that his poor little 'David' has slaughtered many times more humans than the Goliath of Hamas/Fatah/PLO has done over the eight decades​?

Bibi is a one trick pony.  All he ever understands is that happiness, peace and security can only ever come down the barrel of a gun.  And worse, by WMD being held only by his country and no-one else in his region.  He lives for violence and aggression.

Winning by violence only ever results in evermore violence, as we saw on 7.10.23 which was bad enough but that was followed by a holocaust of many tens of thousands massacred in Gaza.

Israel must be the biggest failure of any country the world has ever seen because it has to rely on coercion, force and violence.  Might alone is Right.  The Iron Fist is all that matters in life.  Israel Rules OK from the River to the Sea.

The book is well worth reading for how not to live with your neighbours in love and peace.​  So entertaining!

Let's hear it for Jonathon Porritt - extract

I’ve been in this world of radical campaigning, on and off — from Friends of the Earth and the Green Party back in the 70s and 80s  — for 50 years. I’ve never experienced anything quite like this. It has moved and inspired me in a way I still can’t quite make sense of.

Which is why I’m not unduly worried about the possibility that Friday’s High Court judgement (that the Government acted unlawfully in proscribing Palestine Action) may well be overturned in the Appeal Court, or ultimately in the Supreme Court.

Indeed, a bit of me, after a weekend of cautious celebration, is saying “BRING IT ON”. If Ministers still don’t understand the determination and the power of this community, which their own continuing genocide-denying moral depravity has brought into being, then……

Jonathon Porritt

Rebuild for Civilisation, Co-operation and an Enduring Peace

Dear friends - please tell me what you think.

I have now finished reading Bibi Netanyahu's massive but revealing, 654 page book, 'Bibi: My Story' (published 2022).  Triumphant to the end but - all undone on 7.10.23.

I now realise that the Zionists, the Jews, Israelis, Gazans, America and the West, wealthy Arab countries must all rebuild Gaza in their image.  But not as the Riviera of the Middle East but in the image of a multi-racial, Jew and Arab Palestine/Israel.  Gaza as another even tinier state with modest, energy efficient, solar powered homes and buildings for the two million Gazans - and for Israelis who wish to move back there, in due course.

Trump's Board of Peace must include the regional nations and the EU - and Tony Blair is already a member.  The military option has failed over the 80 years since the end of the holocaust of mainly Jews in 1945.  And, spectacularly, for all concerned, so tragically, in the more than two years of pointless extermination of well over 70,000 fellow humans (the large majority being women and children) since 7.10.23.

I think the only option remaining is the Israel/Palestine based story of the Good Samaritan to be tried.  You treat the Gazans/Palestinians royally and generously to buy their goodwill and co-operation.  You heap metaphorical coals of burning fire on their heads so that they are almost embarrassed by Israel and the West's new found change of heart of sympathy and empathy for their plight - and so active, constructive, solidarity.  And include them in rebuilding their homeland in Gaza.  Mainly a Palestinian homeland but one closely connected and partly reliant on Israel.

Perhaps, the new tiny state might be called Palestine/Israel to emphasise the importance of co-operation, of unity with diversity and the interdependence of Jew and Arab on each other - as we all are in putting our humanity first.

There must be an internal security force of Jews and Muslims/Arabs and that must include IDF/Hamas to ensure law and order and the rebuilding to go ahead at the fastest possible pace.  Security must minimise bureaucracy and prevent corruption.  But a joint IDF/Hamas/Arab/Muslim force working together is intelligent enough to oversee the rebuilding and to stamp out or minimise revenge killings.

Added on 21.2.26

The people who wrecked the place, IDF/Hamas, must work together to put everything back together again.  They have to learn to live with each other in peaceful co-existence - in construction.  To learn from the wonderful children's story, 'The Squabbling Squirrels'.  Every killer must lay down his weapons, be searched every morning before work and learn a trade from the professionals to rebuild the Gaza they have destroyed.

There must be a multinational, peacekeeping force to ensure compliance and law and order, of course.

Gaza - the new Palestine/Israel - can indeed be the new model of humans of all faiths and of none being able to live and work together in harmony.

Bibi's 654 pages book ... of making deadly enemies instead of foreigners into friends

 ... does make a good read.  He comes out of it very well, with nothing much left out but it means he tells us the good, the bad and, ugly mistakes which makes him more human.  But he doesn't act with humanity towards his neighbours.  Instead he wants to exterminate Hamas (perhaps just the military wing?) and to take over all of the unHoly Land from the river to the sea.  Always using coercion, force and violence.  No attempt to win them over with generosity, sacrifice and justice.  Nor, to recognise that Arabs and Jews all have Abraham as their one ancestor 4,000 years ago and they all need to live together as a family of humanity.

It is always bull in a china shop approach.  Of always the iron fist and none of the velvet glove to win friends and influence people.

Berlinale Film Festival

They cited the refusal of more than 5,000 film workers, including several major Hollywood names, to work with “complicit Israeli film companies and institutions”. The letter also noted that the Berlinale had made “clear statements” in the past about other “atrocities” including in Ukraine.

“We call on the Berlinale to fulfil its moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for accountability,” they said.

Gaza death toll in early part of war far higher than reported, says Lancet study

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/19/gaza-death-toll-higher-than-reported-lancet-study?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other 

​Dear Adrian and Stewart - and Churches Together in Halesowen along, sometimes, with Life Central Church in Halesowen

You all have a duty to get our MPs to raise this matter in the House, to ask questions and to challenge the PM and Cabinet members responsible for their silence, let alone their responsibility for their cold blooded murder and inhumanity.  This is our, Judeo-Christian side behaving despicably, immorally in both Gaza and, in Judea and Samaria towards Palestinians.  This disgrace comes from our supposedly, morally upstanding Bibi Netanyahu, Trump and Keir Starmer who are all directly responsible for the most disgusting, inhumane conditions that you and I have made and, are making, Gazans to have to live in.

The inhumanity and disgrace of the unHoly Land has steadily worsened over the last 100 years and is the most despicable example of man's inhumanity to man in that time - courtesy of pretty rotten ethics by the Judeo-Christian world following some Old Testament ethics more ardently than the glorious ethics of the Jewish founder of Christianity.

Many other areas are equally shameful thanks to our iniquitous international arms trading.

Please act in the only way we can.  The pen and cogent, respectful argument are mightier than the sword so beloved by our leaders.

Random thoughts from 'Bibi: My Story' - Netanyahu's autobiography

"Security and reciprocity/revenge" But I feel that security has never been found by Israel and there is only ever revenge 70 x 7!

Better red under Putin than dead under Zelensky and the West is the worst of the lot around the world from our track record of claiming anything we find around the world is ours, slavery and warfare.  Putin is ruthless in his sphere of influence but has not gone further around the world than Afghanistan.  While the British led and then American led West has gone everywhere.

Bibi is so eloquent with words and phrases in debate.  But he can only live in peace with one neighbour, King Hussein of Jordan and, even then, he fell out spectacularly with him over a botched Mossad assassination attempt in this friendly country that so angered King Hussein!

Always, the ferociousness and enmity from Israel has failed in 80 years to win the peace for them.  It has only upped the anti on both sides and increased the anger and hostility - from the Palestinians and Iranians in particular.

"The justice of our cause and our rights in our ancestral homeland" p 338 - from 4,000 years ago.  Yet, the descendants of them all, Arabs and Jews, is Abraham.  They are one big family - supposedly.

Bibi's paranoia and fear: after 2,000 years they have re-established the Jewish state in the face of forces that sought its destruction, "our annihilation".  "We will walk among the giants."

He is constantly excoriating in condemning terrorism.  Every enemy of Israel is denounced as a terrorist and anti-Semite.  Yet, it was three Israeli terrorist gangs, one of whom became the IDF (Haganah), which were successful in sending packing the world's most powerful and biggest empire in the history of humanity, in 1948.

Haganah, (Hebrew: “Defense”), Zionist military organization representing the majority of the Jews in Palestine from 1920 to 1948.

Israel's idiocy and folly in developing WMD then led to Iran, of course, wanting them too.  It would have been far better for Israel never to have bothered and to have set a very fine example to Iran.

page 411/412: Bibi believes that colonialism was done by the Arabs against Israel who were the native population for 4,000 years and have the greater right to claim all the Land from the river to the sea, as in the Likud Charter.

p 421: Bibi's reciprocity is about "give and receive, not give and give more"

Both sides believe coercion, force, violence is the only way to win.  It seems that only total and complete surrender by one side or total annihilation of one side to leave the other victorious, can only ever bring peace.  Both want annihilation of the other.  As taught with actual examples, ordered by Yahweh in the Old Testament.

Bibi acts as if he is the only one who can be trusted with WMD.  None of his neighbours are allowed to have them.  The world's super power is on his side and would never allow Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth.  Since he completed writing the book, it is Bibi who has stated and acted to annihilate Hamas which also entails holocaust for the Gazans.  His policy of enmity and slaughter for the enemy has failed in each year for the last 78.

In the CW, Russia and the USA/West had WMD but war between them did not break out.  Why should it do so between Israel and Iran with MAD?  

Palestine to recognise the State of Israel is unnecessary, an unnecessary blockage to peace.

Both sides talk about utterly destroying the other.  But that is a given in a time of anger and bitterness and revenge.  As has been the case for 80 years, at least.

Jerusalem is for the Jews only, Bibi writes.  "Temple Mount is the holiest place for our people."  He is not so bothered about the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem.  Does he lack empathy, perhaps?

I don't think it matters that Iran denies the first Western nations 1930s/40s holocaust.  The second holocaust is what international bodies describe as the genocide in Gaza from 2023 to 2025.

Ethical and Climate friendly transport spending

Huge funding pot agreed for new West Midlands transport projects supporting Aston Villa and Birmingham City https://share.google/kJUvzSA5zLnj4uLal 

Always wealthy football clubs and the rich Merry Hill property developer get the funding and top priority for the funding!

Totally unacceptable. 

LR and VLR are wrong, unjust priorities which accelerate the Climate Emergency. ULR is the very cheapest of the five rail modes and, therefore,  has the lowest GHG emissions in construction and operation.  So suitable at Stourbridge where it is useful for modal shift, to empty the High Street of parked and polluting shoppers' cars.

The £15 billions going into trams for the 150 miles, 8 lines, 380 tram stop needs to be spent directly on the "deprived areas". For hydrogen fuel cell battery electric vehicles (HFCBEVs) and Fare-free Public Transport (FFPT) for all across the region. Not just free for old geezers like me.

For insulating the homes of the poorest PLUS, 101 more important projects which must be done.  Not LR Metro and VLR in Coventry.

Bibi is THE citizen against terror!

Bibi is THE citizen against terror - his title for chapter 32 of his autobiography

In an astonishing piece of hypocrisy on page 332, Bibi praises the non-violence of Gandhi, the East Germans in bringing down the Berlin Wall and Martin Luther King Jnr (“a great supporter of Zionism”) “in fighting for equal rights for all Americans”.  Our man, Bibi recommends the Palestinians to also renounce terrorism and use non-violence.  But Bibi never does so himself!  He uses “strength and reciprocity” which means a quantity of 70 times 7 of revenge attacks for one piece of terrorism (violence).  70x7 breaks the command of the Hebrew Scriptures of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”.

For Bibi, my heroes of non-violence who were all democrats to “pursue their cause” and not totalitarians which brings tyranny.  But he will not and will never be a man and leader of non-violence, himself!

He is confident that history, science and archaeology prove that the Jews were the first to occupy the unHoly Land over 3,000 years ago.  Therefore, they alone have first and the only claim on the land.  All other races, tribes and groups have to accept that the Jews alone are the Entitled Ones and have the Title Deeds to the land.  However, in the past 100 years there have been occasions when the Zionists were prepared to accept the land division proposed by the authorities but, all were turned down by the Arabs who would not share.

Bibi wrote: “The root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism, a tyranny that systematically brainwashes the minds of its subjects to suspend all moral constraints for the sake of a twisted cause.  Those who fight as terrorists rule as terrorists, setting up the darkest dictatorships whether in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Arafat-istan.”

Those places have had Russia attacking them in Afghanistan in the 1980s but all four areas have had our Western/Israeli intervention and much military messing them up good and properly, to bring catastrophe to them all, still to this day.  Our strong and violent but deluded Bibi speaks and writes so eloquently but he has left a wake of terrible tragedy behind him - especially since his oversight in allowing 7.10.23.

His autobiography, on page 328, also shows, as I have feared, that the man admires Putin and gets on well with him.  No wonder our dear Bibi was, I thought, a little reluctant to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

from Jonathon Porritt on 10.2.26

There will, in time, be a reckoning. Both literally (as in the tens of millions of pounds – and eventually hundreds of millions of pounds — of public money spaffed down this legal drain) and politically. That reckoning will surely be laid at the door of former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Prime Minister Keir Starmer (both ardent members of Labour Friends of Israel) for their despicable decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation back in July last year — essentially to cover up their continuing complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

And before anyone starts blaming me and my fellow supporters of the Lift The Ban campaign for such an abuse of public money, let’s just remember what this is all about — in terms of the ‘All Too Real’. In terms of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. (And it really is ongoing, despite the fact that our despicable mainstream media can barely be arsed to provide any serious coverage).

For those who still can’t get their heads around what this means on the ground, here’s one gobbet of genocidal data that you might be able to remember:

“Israeli Defence Forces have killed the equivalent of a classroom full of children every single day since the assault on Gaza in October 2023”.

'How did we get here?'

They discuss the value of the Bible as a guide to history, the concept of a “promised land”, the archaeological record of the various peoples who lived in the region in ancient times, the coming of the Romans, and the Jewish revolts against them in the First and Second Centuries AD.

'Bibi: My Story' - Netanyahu's autobiography

All his adult life, Bibi seems to have believed in the use of violence to get Israel's way.

He also strongly believes in immediate violent retaliation and, that only violence and unconditional surrender is the way to peace.  A rocket from Saddam so Bibi wants instant retaliation to stop a second and descent into terrorism.  He did relent when USA said 'No' - page 

He will not recognise that Arabs and Jews are all Children of Abraham.  They all have the one ancestral father and have all come from the Ur of the Chaldeans, round the Fertile Crescent to the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean.

They seem to have never been able to live together in give and take, in peaceful co-existence and harmony.

But all of humanity is like that - not just the Judeo-Christian world - whose track for slaughter of humans does seem to be the worst in the world: World wars, holocaust, WMD, actual use of nuclear weapons, biggest, longest and most extensive slavery humanity has ever seen, killings from colonialism for centuries ...

He wrote, "Not accidentally, the first half century was marked by Western weakness, culminating in tragedies including the unimaginable Holocaust (yet, he told us earlier in the book that his father prophesied it), while the second half was marked by American strength in defense of freedom, including the triumphant rise of the Jewish state."

Don't two world wars initiated by the Judeo-Christian world indicate Western strength rather than weakness in the first half?  A European Christian world that was so strong six million Jews and all other minorities were murdered.

The second half of the century saw a balance of power between one former ally of Britain in two world wars and the West.  We fell out badly with the Soviets after they had helped us win both world wars.  But we finally fell in love with the Jews after murdering six million of them and, to such an extent, that we broke international law in allowing their aggression in warfare to be rewarded with keeping the land captured.  In 1947, the UN voted to let them have the land but the Arabs, whose region it was, went to war in '48 but lost the Jewish War of Independence.

Our support and armaments for Israel was not entirely one of making reparations at the expense of the Palestinians.  The West saw it as getting a foothold in the Arab Middle East to influence the region in the pursuit of capitalism and Western freedom and democracy.

Right from the outset, Israel was on the side of the West and, so fervently, that it fell out of love with her neighbouring Arab nations and they with her.

The Arabs abandoned the Palestinians to Israel and, this century, with the Abraham Accords, Israel began a more formal relationship with four Arab countries.

Bibi wrote about economic aid from America being a form of welfare - page 261.

Thoughts on Mandelson/Epstein?

What I really want to ask you is this, for your opinion and to put me right:

How can there be such a big row over whether or not the PM should resign when, ultimately, it is all about children/teenage girls under age having sex with much older men?  Should there not be some responsibility placed on their parents/guardians who should know where their children are?  Weeks ago I heard on radio of one dad rejoicing that his teenage girl had brought down a prince - Andrew Mountbatten Windsor!  The dad, or it might have been an uncle, had phoned in to the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2.  He had no shame about the behaviour of his daughter/niece.  The victim, if under age, is always totally innocent and blameless.  But the parent/guardian too?

Thanks so much for engaging and debating.  I have read and re-read your points which are similar to the ones that Linda has put to me.  My comment: We behave no better ourselves and, even worse, by selling them the ammunition and weapons galore.  What hypocrites we all are!  I am so horrified, I help fund the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.  The West is at the centre of the iniquitous international arms trade which is always great for the desperately needed economic growth/greed.  But it comes from rather finite gas and oil with, in addition, the most disastrous consequences from burning the stuff!

I am wanting my side, us lot, to accept that "judgement begins in the House of the Lord" (1 Peter 4.17).  That we have to start behaving ourselves and getting our own house in order, without pointing the finger at other nations, groups and tribes when there are three fingers pointing back at ourselves.

We are setting such a very bad example and have done so since the time of Elizabeth 1 in the 1500s when the Queen knighted Sir Francis Drake for piracy, warfare and for sailing slaving ships!

Thanks again for writing and for your thoughts on life.  Much appreciated.