"Were the soul of man easily alarmed, it would long ago, one thinks, have perished out of the earth. It has stood its ground against the giants and dragons, the material powers and terrors, amid which its lot is cast. It has survived the denunciations of prophets and the wrath of kings. You would not say that it was born in the purple, you would not say it has had an easy journey since the birth of time. But an enduring heart has been given by the gods to mortals. The human soul is inured to hardships. Its resilience is not spent, nor its natural strength abated." - William Macneile Dixon, "The Human Situation" 1937. Related.
"That Christmas truce of 1914, with its tales of camaraderie and warmth between supposedly bitter enemies in the crater-scarred territory of no man's land, that bit of ground between opposing trenches whose very name appeared to forbid such intercourse, is a remarkable chapter in the history of the First World War and indeed of all war. While the highest incidence of fraternization took place along the British-German front, there were numerous similar occurrences between the French and Germans, Russians and Germans, and Austrians and Russians. The Christmas truce of 1914 reveals much about the social values and priorities of the opposing armies and, by extension, of the nations they represented. That such massive fraternization was never to recur during the war suggests, furthermore, that it was not the "guns of August" but subsequent events that shattered an old world. The "Edwardian garden party" did not end suddenly on August 4, 1914, as has been claimed. W. A. Quinton, of the 1st Bedfordshires, was to write a decade after the war:
Men who joined us later were inclined to disbelieve us when we spoke of the incident, and no wonder for as the months rolled by, we who were actually there, could hardly realize that it had happened, except for [the] fact that every little detail stood out so well in our memory.
R. G. Garrod, of the 20th Hussars, was one of those who consistently refused to believe that fraternization had taken place. He wrote in his memoirs that he had never actually met a soldier who had gone out into no man's land and consorted with the enemy that Christmas of 1914, and consequently his conclusion was that the Christmas truce was simply a myth, like the angels that were supposed to have aided British troops in their retreat from Mons in August 1914.
Garrod's disbelief and the expressions of astonishment at the truce are of course related. To many the truce, particularly its dimensions, came as a surprise. It was a surprise not because truces in war were unusual-quite the opposite; they were normal-but because the fighting in the first five months of the war had been so bitter and intense and had taken such a high toll in casualties. Moreover, from the outset propaganda played an important role in the war, and the Anglo-French campaign to portray the German as a barbarian beyond the pale, incapable of such normal human emotions as compassion and friendship, had by that first Christmas already taken effect. And finally, the attempts by various parties, including the Vatican and the American Senate, to arrange an official cease-fire for Christmas had been rejected by the belligerents. Hence, most combatants who had survived those first five grim months and, more notably, those and they were the majority-who had come to the front recently, imbued with certain ideas about the enemy, had good reason to think that this was no conventional war and that the world was indeed in the process of being transformed by it. But what the truce revealed, by its unofficial and spontaneous nature, was how resilient certain attitudes and values were. Despite the slaughter of the early months, it was the subsequent war that began profoundly to alter those values and to hasten and spread in the west the drift to narcissism and fantasy that had been characteristic of the avant-garde and large segments of the German population before the war." - Modris Eksteins, "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age" 1989, pg. 97-98.
The war in Palestine is a not contest between the occupied and occupiers, or settlers and natives. If it were that simple the conflict would have been resolved decades ago. It is instead a religious struggle that was initiated by adepts of masonic orders a long time ago. Like the Jews, Christians, and the Muslims, the Masons also have eschatological aims in mind for the Holy Land and are obsessed with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
We must remember that Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which itself was a creation of Freemasonry and the British Empire.
Towards the end of World War I, the British Empire, with the sober realization that it was losing the war against Germany, decided to play the Jewish card by promising the Jewish people a state and thereby gain their favour against Germany and the Central powers. This fact is well documented. They also played the Arab card against the Ottomans, promising various tribes and warlords their own little shitty kingdom.
And, credit to the wily British, their desperate strategy worked. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and many other states would not exist without them or the Americans who followed them. They can be classified as the winners of World War I.
The problem is World War I also produced many losers in the region, and unlike in Europe, they haven't gone away into the sad pages of archival history. The Palestinians, Kurds, and Armenians, who were the losers of World War I, are still alive and kicking, despite the best efforts by the states around them to genocide them.
Would the histories of these peoples have gone differently if the British Empire lost World War I? Who knows. Germany was an ally of the Ottomans, so they obviously didn't care about the fate of the Armenians. And they also had their own Arab and Muslim clients, with colonial projects planned for the region.
Maybe the Germans would've been better imperial rulers.
Could they have done worse? I don't think so.
It's clear to everyone that the British and Americans have made a mess of things in the Middle East for a century.
The tragedy of our age could be that the Germans lost World War I. They were the superior country, with the superior army. Victory belonged to them on the battlefield. But external events and backdoor politicking turned them into losers. They then went crazy and embraced a demonically possessed weirdo who promised them revenge.
The dishonourable victors - the British, the French, and the Americans - were not satisfied with glory. They decided to carve up the Middle East to their own liking, and thereby ushered in a series of long-standing conflicts and crises that continue to flare up three decades into the 21st century.
Now, these same criminals, after creating the problems a century ago, believe they should have a say in the destiny of the Middle East for the next hundred years.
There's hubris, but this is beyond hubris. It is ungodly madness. Genociding the Palestinians will be a hell of a way to exit the Middle East. But that's the course they've taken.