The media onslaught against Israel keeps increasing day after day with wall-to-wall coverage of dead children, injured children, malnourished children, etc.
The world is rising up in horror at the callousness shown in the indiscriminate bombing.
Dire warnings of famine even giving out the estimated numbers of expected deaths within days are ascribed to respectable media outlets.
The world, which is more prone to think bad of the Jews than otherwise, jumps to all sorts of conclusîons.
Mass demonstrations are being held practically everywhere (except, it would seem, in Malta) and you can't go to a sportíng event such as Il Giro d'Italia without seeing the Palestinian flag being waved next to the arrival line.
Now those countries usually considered as Israel's friends like the US, the UK, etc have cooled down considerably and are even voicing public criticism.
They are right: the scenes of bombing and dead bodies are terrible to watch.
The Palestinians today have become like the Jews of yesterday.
But there are stories within stories. The people still in Gaza want peace and food. Some 60,000 queued at one of the new private US centres that have been opened before Hamas disrupted everything.
Later that same day an angry crowd sacked a Hamas warehouse which was full of stolen goods.
That is only one version of what happened. Other versions are diametrically opposite.
The US initiative will try again as the people have shown they want it.
All over the world the campaign to recognise the State of Palestine is gaining support. Among these we must now include the Maltese State which hitherto had stayed rather at the back.
Gone are the days when the President, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister all wore a Keffijeh round their necks and when the Foreign Minister was elected President of the General Assembly of the United Nations and Malta openly backed the Palestinian State.
And when Yassir Arafat's immediate family lived more or less in Malta.
History continued to move on and the Palestinians continued to exist without their state. Then they found they were split into two entities - the West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza became more and radicalised and was taken over by Hamas.
The 7th October attack was no spur of the moment: it had long been planned and would have led to much worse such as an attack on Tel Aviv were the attackers not tempted by the immediate gains of the killing fields of the young ravers of Nova and the courageous, though late, defence put up by the Israeli soldiers.
After that, the die was cast. This is a fight to the very end and those pleading for a ceasefire have not understood the basics of the situation (unless it be to get the release of the rest of the hostages).
In the meantime Israel is breaking up Gaza into smaller pieces and smashing the grip Hamas has over the population.
This is the reason for the battle over food and medicine supplies with American private companies trying (so far unsuccessfully) to break the Hamas grip.
They still have a long way to go, which means unfortunately more deaths by famine if not by bombs.
But the real battle to preserve the Palestinian national identity, if we can call it that, is not the battle being waged in Gaza (a lost battle thanks to 7/10) but the tricky one being waged in the West Bank, called by the Jews Judea and Samaria.
Here there are ancient rights dating hundreds of years (and also in Jerusalem) but settler violence and weak courts are letting the Israeli far Right get away with practically anything.
On the one hand this has resulted in the gleaming tower blocks on the hills surrounding Jerusalem but on the other hand the ugly concrete walls and the harassment people trying to cross over have to endure. And the harassment to take land, houses, fields owned since time immeasurable by what used to be called Arabs, now Palestinians. The Palestinians have become a subject people, a humiliation genesis of future deaths.
The Palestinians used to taunt the Jews: "From the River to the Sea". This has not happened, nor does it look like happening even though the Israelis have broken I don't know how many UN and Security Council resolutions.
There is no doubt in my mind that most Israelis would prefer to remain alone, without Palestinians, and thus turn that ancient saying on its head.
This is as bad as when the saying was referring to the Jews.
What happened on Jerusalem Day when Jewish extremists swarmed all over the Muslim Quarter and threatened every Muslim trader they could find, shows the dark days coming.
Or Israeli Finance Minister Simotriz urging the beginning of the rebuilding of the Temple (thus meaning the pulling down of the Al Aqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam).
The future is dark indeed.
[email protected]