Once again, Israel is at war in the Middle East.

As a teenager, I was already interested in geopolitics. I was aware of the Six-Day War in June 1967, and I mentioned it in My Diary of that year. That was the war in which Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip.

By the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, I was a member of a benign Christian cult. My beliefs at that time were what my church taught me. The leaders of the church believed that they knew the future based on Biblical prophecy.  I decided to do some quick research to remind myself what that was all about. I soon found The Middle East in Prophecy, published by the Worldwide Church of God in 1972.

In midlife, I began thinking for myself, lost my faith, and left my church. I became a left-leaning secular humanist. I soon became a believer in the two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

In retirement, I had some difficult conversations with my Christian conservative friend, Henk Wilms. He had an extremely biased pro-Israeli point of view. If I had time, I would find these conversations buried in my old emails and add them to My Conversations with Henk Wilms on my website.

With this as background, I now want to express my views on the latest war between Hamas, based in Gaza, and Israel which began on October 7, 2023.

I often watch the news on Al Jazeera English TV. I watch with an awareness of bias and they have an understandably pro-Palestinian bias which does not seem extreme to me. When discussing issues, I like to know the sources that participants access and I encourage transparency.

Al Jazeera is a mainstream news source and I generally do not trust the mainstream media. All MSM has a preferred narrative which shapes coverage. Better information is available from the alternative media. However, worse information is prevalent in the alternative media. Knowing who to trust on any matter is very important, as is being transparent about our sources.

I have developed a high degree of trust in Tomas Pueyo and I am a paid subscriber to his Uncharted Territories articles on Substack. He has recently been publishing lengthy articles on the current conflict and I particularly like his tone. I first became aware of Pueyo in March 2020. His article, Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance, is now legendary.

Another source I trust is Jonathan Rowson, who in his recent article, The Alchemy of Crisis, gives excellent advice that I try to follow. 

The alchemy of crisis is about looking into the idea of crisis with sufficient discernment that you begin to see the power it has over you, and start to free yourself from its clutches. There is a place for the idea of crisis, and the world is full of crises of various kinds, but crisis-thinking should be a mindset we can choose to select and learn how to set aside, rather than our default mode of being and primary modus operandi.

The current conflict is very polarizing and captures many people, including some of my close relatives. I do not want to be in ignorance of what is going on, nor do I want my attention captured. I am aware of the atrocities on both sides but I am not experiencing strong emotional reactions.

I continue to be more interested in that other war which has faded into second place. I wrote About the Russian Invasion of Ukraine last year and I continue to believe that it is important that Ukraine wins. I also wrote about my emotional state, which persists.

Day after day I have a line from a 1980s rock song on a loop in my head: It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Actually, I am feeling better than fine but not to the same degree as during My Enhanced Well-being in 2020. I feel energized and excited by this very important moment in history.

However, I am also tired, tired of war, tired of all the suffering and I long for a radically better world.