There should be no quarter given to those who would destroy civilisation

I support the right of Israel to employ the harshest measures necessary in defence of its peoples against mad, bloodthirsty, terrorists. The best form of defence is attack.

Israel, therefore, has every right to pursue its foes right into their lairs in the Gaza Strip, and eliminate their capacity to launch deadly missiles across the border.

Israelis have the right to safety and security within their borders, and the right to wage war against any entity that threatens their very existence.

But those rights are not for the Jewish people alone. The Palestinian people also have a right to nationhood.

They have the right to safety and security within their own sovereign nation, and with that the right to self-defence and the right to take war to any mad, bloodthirsty génocidaires that pose a danger to their freedom and liberty.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

I don’t know much about the history of war and the rules of engagement, but I have seen enough in my short life to discern that there are winners and losers, and that the winners are often those who are most determined, most brutal and most tireless in battle.

We’ve heard plenty of talk about the right and justice emerging triumphant in war, and about God favouring the virtuous in battle.

But such fanciful notions usually come after the war when the history of the conflict in inevitably written by the victors.

Right and wrong are therefore hazy notions in any war. The age-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict — from which spawns the Clash of Civilisations we are now seeing spreading across the globe — provides a textbook example of the fuzzy boundaries.

One’s notions of justice and evil in this conflict will thus be shaped, not by dispassionate examination of events, but by ingrained beliefs and faiths, biases and prejudices.

PRAGMATIC CONCESSION

Sticking dogmatically to a position when there is little prospect of any side securing victory is the sure path to Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD.

That was the reality check during the height of the Cold War that forced the Americans and the Soviets to the pragmatic concession that any nuclear war would only result in the destruction of both, and pretty much of the rest of the world.

That is why, also, the Israelis and the Palestinians must every so often be pressured to sign ceasefires, if not full peace treaties, that win all a respite.

Global powers such as the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and Frances, as well as regional powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, therefore, have the duty to do all within their powers to secure a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, even such a pact might mean little in what is clearly a growing conflict that seems to bring true old prophecies about the clash between cultures and beliefs that would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.

IN THE FRONTLINE

The so-called Clash of Civilisations seems to be taking shape across the world, and Kenya is in the frontline with the menace wrought by Al-Shabaab terrorists out of neighbouring Somalia that is now firmly entrenched within our borders.

Al-Shabaab is an offspring of Al-Qaeda, as is the brutal Boko Haram that is spreading havoc across northern Nigeria, and similar groups across the Sahara to North Africa and the Middle East, and now the even more fearsome ISIS (now known simply as Islamic States or IS) that threatens to overrun Iraq, Syria and the general region.

If the Clash of Civilisations is really about a radical branch of Islam trying by force of arms to impose itself on the rest of the world, then the rest of the world must come together and confront it as one.

The mistake, whether at the local level against Al-Shabaab or the wider global arena, would be to make the prophecy come true by turning it into a war against an entire faith instead of focusing on the extremist fringe.

What is clear now is that no quarter should be given until the groups that threaten to end civilisation as we know it realise that they have no choice but to exist with those of different beliefs and faiths.

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Twitter: @MachariaGaitho