The propensity of the West, and Israel for that matter has been to impose a forced forgetting on the rest of the world. Each event that occurs in the present day is taken as a beginning and not a consequence of what went before. We have willingly adopted Orwell’s “memory hole” as our way of simplifying events and allocating blame to those we have chosen as the less than worthy scapegoat inferiors for our own failures.

The massive Iranian rocket response to the Israeli assassinations of Arab leaders raises the question of who began this process of escalation and why? Given the tinderbox present situation of the Middle East and the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, why has the conflict escalated to Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, at the very minimum?

In these complex Middle Eastern matters context and history are vital to a realistic understanding of the situation to enable workable solutions to be achieved. The entire Middle East has been unstable since the end of the Second World War and the consequent division of the region, previously largely the remnants of the Ottoman, British, French and Italian colonial empires, between the victorious Allies.

The US entered the picture rapidly as it recognised the oil resources of the region were the greatest prize in history, control of which would give them world domination. That commenced a nearly 80-year period of massive interference in the affairs of the region and major contestation between these powers and the Soviet Union for control.

In addition the West particularly Great Britain desired to salve its conscience for its utter failure to deal with the Nazi Holocaust, which was driven by a significant anti-Semitism in British policy under Churchill. That salve was to promise European Jewry a homeland for them on another people’s land. Therein lies the fundamental cause of much of the long-standing tensions in the Middle East. Britian and ultimately much of Europe, were happy to make the Palestinian people the people who would suffer for Europe’s failure of the Jews of Europe.

Whilst the West has worked assiduously to shift the blame for their failures to the Arabic people of the Middle East they have simply failed utterly to understand that a people oppressed by them and deprived of their ability to rule themselves and of their ancestral lands would never accept that oppression and deprivation of their homelands.

Unless this historical perspective is understood it is difficult to make sense of the present state of the Middle East. That fundamental wrong imposed by the Imperialist West on the region has led to all that has followed. The propensity of the West, and Israel for that matter has been to impose a forced forgetting on the rest of the world. Each event that occurs in the present day is taken as a beginning and not a consequence of what went before. We have willingly adopted Orwell’s “memory hole” as our way of simplifying events and allocating blame to those we have chosen as the less than worthy scapegoat inferiors for our own failures.

Moving to the present we have decided that history in Palestine began on October 7th 2023. Terrorism against civilians, which has become a standard practice for Israel in it’s attempts to cleanse Palestinians from their historic lands, is never acceptable. That Israeli terrorism has been clearly and unequivocally demonstrated over the last 80 years at least and is confirmed by international and incidentally Israeli scholarship. It is a war crime, so in dealing with the events of October 7th we must and should also condemn HAMAS terrorism on that day. Israel is now justifying its genocide and ethnic cleansing (as found by the UN General Assembly and implied by the International Court of Justice) of Gaza on the basis of that instance of terrorism.

Israel has for many years sought US assistance to eliminate the only government in the Middle East that presents a challenge to Israeli military dominance of the region. It and the US have been assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists and military commanders as a way of creating a war between Iran and Israel, which Israel seeks to draw the US into, to eliminate Iran as a threat. These are incontrovertible facts revealed to us by Wikileaks and other US whistleblowers in recent years and by statements of both US and Israeli leaders. Hence the current range of provocations initiated by Israel against Iran and Hezbollah, who are supported by Iran as fellow Shias.

Western mainstream media of course reverse the onus of blame by the simple expedient of eliminating context and causative events prior to that to which they refer. That has been a commonplace of propaganda since Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

That leads us to the major barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at Israeli military bases which have been the base for the bombing of Gaza and the bombing and invasion of Lebanon. This was preceded by months of serious Iranian efforts to improve relations with the U.S. which Israel had sabotaged. To understand what precipitated that attack we again need to examine context. The new President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate and Cardiac Surgeon campaigned on reconnecting with the ‘West’, the lifting of sanctions on Iran and a more liberal policy orientation.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran by an Israeli attack. Haniyeh was killed in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. This was regarded as an attack on the sovereignty of Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) favoured retaliation. But Pezeshkian wanted negotiation. On September 23, during the UN General Assembly in New York, he again attempted a new agreement with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program.

On the 27th September Israeli air-strikes killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and several other Hezbollah leaders as well as the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). the order to do so had been given by Netanyahu from New York. These killings were clear evidence that Pezeshkian’s moderation had failed.

In his remarks, the Iranian president warned that Israel is intensifying tensions with the direct support of the United States to prepare the ground for increasing the presence of the United States in the region. Over 250 ballistic missiles were launched at Israeli military and intelligence facilities on October 1st. Verified videos show considerable damage to Mossad headquarters and the Nevatim Airbase. Israel under its far Right Wing government will retaliate and so escalation will continue until Netanyahu gets the war he wants with Iran. That will inevitably draw in the US in support of Israel, and thus also Russia on Iran’s side. So another US inspired war will break out, possibly leading to Israeli use of the nuclear weapons they possess but deny having. That may be the beginning of the end for us all!