About twenty odd folk from my town here in NZ, Martinborough (small town of about 1500 residents, in a wine growing area, excellent pinot noir by the way) gather every Wednesday for an hour in peaceful solidarity with Palestinians killed, maimed or otherwise abused in Gaza. Most folk support us, friendly toots from passing cars. One middle aged man wasn't so happy, and called us Hamas apologists, going on about the claimed atrocities done on 7th October including one about a baby being burned alive in an oven. Now as far as I am aware, most of the worst of these claims have never been verified, and indeed most proven untrue. However, perhaps a baby was burned alive, I don't know. But neither does he.

But what particularly got me annoyed is that we were standing in front of the war memorial, every town or village has one, and we've just commemorated ANZAC day. He shouted that they didn't die for us to support a murderous organisaition, we should be ashamed.

That really angered me for one, we're told they died for our freedom, if that is so then that doesn't mean much if we cannot stand and protest. How the hell does he know what they died for and what they'd think if they were alive now?

However, even more it annoyed me because these soldiers in WW1 in particular died for nothing at all They were conned, deceived, manipulated and abused by powers and ideologies they didn't understand or know, and until we recognise this simple fact that war is the ultimate in futility we'll never progress and we'll keep repeating them.

But there we are, here we go again.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/25/world-war-3-uk-russia-china-iran-20169382/