Christmas. It's a time when we're supposed to switch off, to forget about our own troubles, let alone the world.

Now, if you're, say, a state's committing horrendous war crimes, slaughtering innocent civilians with impunity,

starving them, destroying their civilian infrastructure, wiping out their health

care system so that they're exposed to disease and untreated underlying health conditions, this

provides something of an opportunity, particularly if, say, your estate largely armed and backed

by nations dominated by the Christian religion,

knowing that the peoples of those countries

will be celebrating Christmas with their families,

understandably seeking out joy and escape

from anything that is distressing and painful

to read, listen to, and watch.

You know that those people, if you're that state,

have a particular power, to put pressure on that state to cease unleashing

their barbarism so that they're otherwise occupied and distracted you can commit horrors

under the cover of Christmas. I am of course describing the state of Israel as it

escalates its murderous terror against what remains of Gaza. What remains of

Gaza? That should be a blood-curdling thing to write but it is true. As a new study finds, Israel's

military onslaught is amongst the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. That is quite the accolades I have given the horrors that have been

unleashed by humans against each other. In just over two months it has caused more destruction

than was achieved by Syria's Assad regime and its Russian ally against Aleppo over the course of four years,

what was unleashed by the Russian army against Maripol in Ukraine,

as well as the three-year US-led campaign against ISIS.

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