When there is nowhere to run.

Right now the world is a sad and dark place. In all corners of the world children are dragged, unbidden into the darkest and most horrible of conflicts. 200 school girls kidnapped in Nigeria for no greater crime than hoping to get an education, children returning from their holidays shot down, innocent pawns in a conflict which has nothing to do with them, millions of children displaced and in danger in Syria and children bombed whilst they sleep in the only sanctuary they had in Gaza. Victims of Israel's brutal and disproportionate response to the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas.

I will get one thing clear from the start. I am not an anti semite. We live in a world where any criticism of the Israeli state is met with the standard accusation of antisemitism. And this is part of the problem. No one in their right mind questions or attempts to belittle the terrible crimes committed against the Jewish people by the Nazis. It was a dark and terrible period in our history and one that should be remembered. As both a student and teacher of History, the Holocaust is something I teach and place great importance on. Even when I worked in schools in the Middle East where the teaching of the Holocaust had to be handled with great care,  in large part due to the conflicts within the region, I insisted it should be taught, that an understanding of these events were essential to the study of our world and to a more contextual understanding of the world we live in currently, something I stand by to this day. The fact that this needs clarification in the first place is a massive part of the reason that Israel is allowed to act as it does towards Palestine and faces very minimal international condemnation for its actions.

However, the time has come. Whilst no one will ever wipe away the pain the Jewish people suffered in the Holocaust, the attempted annihilation of another people will not do it either. Hamas is a problem, they operate outside the bounds of diplomacy and politics and endanger life through their rocket attacks, but wholesale slaughter of Palestinian innocents will not prevent that. The International community and that includes Israel's erstwhile allies such as the United States and the UK must no longer be complicit in what amounts to war crimes against largely civilian populations.

Lets look at Gaza.

The Gaza Strip is currently the focus of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas and the map gives as good an indication as any of the issues faced by civilians living in Gaza. Both the Israeli and Egyptian borders are closed to them. They have no escape from the unrelenting horror of shelling. Nowhere to run from the ground incursions. Unlike Israel, who has some fairly solid self defence in its Iron Dome technology (more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome) which has significant success in rapidly significantly reducing civilian casualties, the people of Gaza have no such succour. Whilst the Israelis make claim that residents are warned prior to rocket attacks, the number of casualties on the Palestinian side make it difficult to argue any real case for 'self defence' or proportionality of response. Quite simply, the Palestian people, particularly those in Gaza right now, have no where to go and no where to hide. In 2012, Noam Chomsky described Gaza as 'the world's biggest open air prison'. No hope of escape, little hope of a better future. And think on this. The average age in Gaza is only 17 years old. 250,000 Gazans are under the age of 10. These are children. Children who have no safe place to go. Children who were shown without a shadow of a doubt that there was no sanctuary to be had, by the bombing of a UN shelter by Israeli forces.

The news is full of such atrocities. Even amongst the massive media bias towards Israel shown by many boradcasters, you cannot escape the horror. You cannot fail to see what the people of Gaza are being subject to. We, the world, are watching the murder of civilians. Of Children, whose only crime was to be born in the wrong place. As a parent, as decent human being, I am at a loss as to how our governments are able to stand by and do so little, to be so tepid in their responses. I am at a loss as to how any person with even a modicum of empathy, of compassion can even begin to justify Israel's atrocities or call them self defence. How anyone can standby and see the frightened faces of children, the injuries they have suffered and not want to it stop.

Putting my own children to bed last night I was overcome with the notion of just how lucky I am. I was able to put my children to bed last night in the knowledge that they were unlikely to come to harm. That they would sleep peacefully and easy. That they would wake care free and live another happy day. I was shaken by the understanding of just what a luxury that really is. That so many parents cannot, for reasons outside of their control want nothing more than to keep their children safe and yet live with the knowledge that their children live under a blanket of fear, danger, of pain. I cannot begin to truly comprehend how that must feel. But the pain in my heart even contemplating it is such that I know it must be a burden almost too heavy to bear.


If you want to help the people of Gaza there are a few things you can do:

Donate to charity.

There are a massive number of appeals to can contribute to but here are just a few;

Save the Children, Gaza Appeal
Oxfam
The Red Cross

Write to your MP, the Foreign Secetary or Prime Minister or join in demonstrations such as the one outside the Israeli Embassy in London TODAY (1st August).

Keep raising awareness, share stories, put pressure on news outlets to be more balanced in their coverage. 

Why Zumba can save the world.

I woke up  this morning, it was dark, I'd slept badly and was woken from the middle of really interesting dream (I was lion if you're interested, a talking one) and I won't lie I was not in a good mood. In fact, had I been a cartoon character I would have had big cartoon bags under my eyes and a black cloud over the top of my head. I did my usual early morning stuff and then trudged to gym for my Zumba class. In fact trudged might be too tame a word. Stomp, might put it better. An hour later I was red faced, sweaty had almost lost my balance at least three times had ground to a halt in confusion twice and been stood on by the woman next to me once. And, I was (and still am) in a brilliant mood. Yes, of course I know a large part of it is the endorphins, a rush I could most likely have gotten doing any kind of physical exertion, but there is something a bit different about something like Zumba and this is why, I think, it can save the world.

(Zumba is, for those who are unaware of its existence a latin dance based exercise class that popped up a few years ago and seems to have been on the rise ever since.)

 So let imagine, that every morning of the G20 summit, or the G8, or any get together of the UN, or basically anywhere that those people who make decisions that the rest of us have to live with gather to make said decisions, all those people had to have a big Zumba class. I genuinely believe the world would be a happier place. Its a lot harder to be cross with someone who you have just busted out a high energy cardio workout routine to LMFAO's 'I'm Sexy and I know it' with. Even when the lady next to me stood on me and put a big mark on my new trainers I just smiled and shrugged it off. If that had happened an hour previously I would have cut the bitch. Another reason it has to be Zumba is that it is completely non competitive. You could get them to run round the park together, but that would turn into a race, you could send them to the gym but that would turn into a competition to  see who could lift more, team games are right out for obvious reasons. But Zumba is a level playing field. 99% of the people who do it are at best mediocre, a significant number of those are completely crap. (In the class I would say out the 50 or so people about 5 are decent and one of them is the instructor, I look like I'm fighting off a swarm of angry bees whilst running across hot flag stones and there is a lady who appears to be dancing to an entirely different set of songs to the rest of us) Yet every single one loves the class, comes out smiling. You catch someones eye during a turn and smile at each other, you're are in it together. A flailing mass of uncoordinated limbs united in the sheer joy of putting your hands in the air like you don't care.

                                             

So lets make Putin, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, Obama and the rest bust a move every morning. It won't make the problems go away but it might make them feel a bit more like they want to work together to solve them. (Plus it would make Parliament TV a lot more interesting than it is most of the time)