Three minutes after ten is the time and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC.

For the final time this year, live and in your living room or your car or possibly your kitchen,

maybe even the bathroom, but it's probably best if we don't think about that.

Shall we set ourselves one of the hardest tasks of the year by way of a sort of valedictory nod?

Would it be possible do you think to have a conversation about what is sort of

officially termed as the Israel-Gaza war, confined only to people who are not heavily invested

in either territory?

I don't know if you can say side, because the war is, you know,

ostensibly against Hamas, and I have no desire whatsoever to speak to anybody ever who would

describe themselves as being on the side of Hamas. But the Palestinian people, everyone should be

on their side, including Israelis, to be honest with you.

So that's why the word war sometimes doesn't even seem to fit the circumstances.

But I am fairly confident that nobody would dispute, nobody honest or vaguely human, could dispute the conclusion that the conflict has been a categorical, catastrophic

humanitarian disaster for the people of Palestine.

The terrorist atrocity of October the 7th was precisely that, an atrocity, a disgusting act of

terror.

But the minimum, I think, of 20,000 people who've died in the Gaza

Strip since have to constitute a catastrophic humanitarian. Well, could you call it an atrocity

as opposed to a disaster? And there already is one of the indications, one of the explanations,

of why this is such fraught

territory. But do you think it would be possible to have a conversation about this that is

confined to people who come at it with perhaps suddenly no preconditions or prejudices, but also not

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