Contested Land

A new book takes shape

A year and a half ago, on October 15, 2023, I described my horror at the (even then) disproportionate Israeli revenge action in Gaza, following the brutal attack by Hamas on the population in the southern border area of ​​Israel. Israel retaliated mercilessly with heavy bombardments on densely populated areas, a ground war and a blockade of humanitarian aid, which has now lasted for a year and a half and has all the properties of genocide and war crimes. It is no longer an act of revenge or defense, but an extermination war against the civilian population of Gaza. The numbers of dead and wounded and the actions of the state of Israel speak for themselves.

Hamas is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and was originally an Islamic charity organization (Al-Mujama'al-Islami). Initially, the movement even had Israeli support, because Israel viewed it as an ally against Yasser Arafat's PLO. During the first intifada (1987-1993), Hamas emerged as a resistance and terrorist organisation. It won a (disputed) majority during the 2006 elections  in Gaza. Hamas not only fights against Israel, but also takes merciless action against dissident Palestinians, suppressing any opposition.

Writing triggered by horror

In 2023 I mentioned my own experiences in the Middle East in 1973, just after the Yom Kippur War. Writing a book about the atrocities in the Middle East wasn’t fun, as the title of this blog suggests. It was a release to my pent-up horror. The new book has the provisional title CONTESTED LAND. The English title is provisional, as there are several books about whose title has a similar ring. It is a direct translation of the Dutch title HET BETWISTE LAND. The Dutch manuscript is about 80% complete, although the work is progressing in fits and starts. Actual publication has yet to be arranged, following which translation into English will probably take a few more months. 

provisional book cover

The story begins with my own experiences as a young man on a November morning in 1973, when my ship, the mv Oostkerk, arrived in the Syrian port of Latakia. As the ship was approaching the quay, we were faced with a boycott and a massive demonstration ashore, probably orchestrated by the Ba'ath party of the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad, following Dutch war support for Israel. The tugboats cast off and left us adrift in the harbour. A collision with a Russian frigate, tied up close by, was only just averted.

In the book, things really go wrong. We crash into the Russian vessel, with catastrophic results. The subsequent (fictional) adventures of the main protagonist in Syria and Lebanon are the subject of the new book.

The 1973-1974 episode tells of the prisons of Syria, an escape to Lebanon and a ruthless Israeli air attack, and the 1980 episode is in the midst of the Lebanese civil war, once again complicated by Israeli and Syrian meddling. I delved into the history of the Middle East for the background and, to be honest, the research opened my eyes. 

Beirut, November 1973, photo taken from the yacht club. The mv Oostkerk in the distance: the orange masts on the left.

Israel and Palestine

Especially today, during the apocalyptic massacre in Gaza, Palestine is a controversial subject dominated by ideology. Many would rather look away than engage in an honest conversation about it, and Western politics almost unconditionally support the genocidal acts of the Netanyahu regime. We can only guess at the reasons, but money, propaganda and geopolitics play an undeniable role. Critics of Israel are vilified and slandered.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict of today is the legacy of Zionism, which emerged in the 19th century following East European pogroms, of the simultaneous rise of Arab nationalism within the Ottoman Empire, of British intervention during 1914-1918 and mismanagement during the British Mandate period until 1947. This undoubtedly fitted the colonial Zeitgeist, but a hundred years later we are still confronted with the bitter consequences of the ideological and geopolitical choices of that time.

Because the new book is an historical thriller set against the background of the conflict, I have done in-depth research into its history. For those who want honest insight into it, the information is there for the taking. I am merely referring to the following Wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Israeli–Palestinian_conflict 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Commission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel

Lebanon

A second theme in the book is the Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990, a chaotic conflict with many warring parties. It is virtually impossible to get a complete picture of what happened from year to year. Ultimately, the conflict degenerated into a proxy war between Israel, Iran and Syria. Israel and Syria both repeatedly invaded Lebanon. 

Palestinian refugee camp Nahr el-Bared, Lebanon, 1960. Source: UNRWA

 

The battles in Beirut left the city badly damaged. There also was heavy fighting around the northern port of Tripoli and the nearby Palestinian camps of Beddawi and Nahr el-Bared, which are featured in this book. The country was largely destroyed in those years and the war led to 120,000 to 150,000 deaths.

One of the sources I found on the civil war was a declassified CIA report on Lebanon and the warring parties from 1987. This gives an interesting picture of that phase of the civil war and its run-up. For example, the report states that the Syrian-backed Amal militia blocked the supply of cement for the reconstruction of the Palestinian Shatila camp near Beirut, where a massacre was committed by the Phalangists in 1982, with Israeli support.

Other sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahr_al-Bared_refugee_camp 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA

A good source that was sent to me late in the writing of this manuscript was De oorlog van gisteren (The War of Yesterday, a Dutch publication, ISBN 978-90-8321-088-9) by Jan Keulen, former war correspondent in Beirut, Cairo and Amman, and ultimately director of The Rights Forum, an organization committed to a just Israel-Palestine policy. Information from this book filled many gaps in my knowledge of the Lebanese Civil War.

Finally, in describing the devastation and chaos in Lebanon, I gratefully made use of the atmosphere described in the book Beirut Blues (ISBN 978-0-385-47382-8) by the Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh. She knows better than anyone how to portray the despair of the Lebanese about the demise of their country and the questionable role of local warlords and militias, who were often little better than bandits and lived off the drug trade.

Sunrise over the coast of Tripoli, Lebanon, November 1973

Crushed people and peacemakers

CONTESTED LAND is not only a thrilling adventure. It is also about people being crushed in a region ravaged by terror and war. Looking at the daily news, you’d hardly believe there are ordinary people like you and me living there, trying to survive, people whose family members and loved ones have died, people who have enough of the horrors and the dehumanization and are trying to build bridges.

I have tried to put a human face to both Israelis and Palestinians, people often with conflicting feelings, who are struggling with their existence in the middle of war in the Middle East. Others are the embodiment of all those brave employees of organisations such as UNRWA, UNHCR, Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross or the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL, who risk their own lives to alleviate the suffering in the area or to keep the peace.

Big brother is watching you

George Orwell - 1984 - 5th edition 1951

 

George Orwell was right.

Almost 80 years ago, just after the end of the Second World War, George Orwell wrote the dystopian novel 1984 (Nineteen-eighty-four), a chilling vision of the future, in which he incorporated all the elements of the dictatorships of his time, such as the recent memory of Nazi Germany and the then still very much alive Soviet Union of Stalin. His vision of the future was a world split between three great powers (Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia), which are in a continuous struggle with each other and periodically change allies.

I urge you to read the book. It will help you understand a few things about the time we live in.

After the commotion caused by Donald Trump and his acolytes, in which Ukraine and Europe are being discussed with the aggressor in the Kremlin without consulting them, and the brilliant plan for Gaza in collusion with Netanyahu and his extremist friends, a feeling of deja vu assailed me. The world of today is beginning to show Orwellian traits. Trump throws Ukraine to the wolves and meanwhile turns a blind eye to Europe. 

 

I am apparently not the only one who sees this connection, because this morning I read in the newspaper this is also being noticed by commentators and journalists in the United States. They concentrate on the kind of 'Newspeak' Trump is introducing - the 'American Gulf', etc., which they consider clearly Orwellian in character. Apparently they are not yet afraid of being muzzled by the White House, but I wonder how long that will take. They are already banned from the White House press conferences. And if the wind continues to blow from the wrong direction in my own country, it may well be that next year I will no longer be allowed to draw the comparison with what Orwell once wrote.

In 1984 Africa and India are only represented as battlefields. In the contemporary world we see something similar happening (especially with regard to Africa). Africa is only an exploited region where countless people are being slaughtered for rare raw materials. In our Eurocentric view of the world we shrug our shoulders at that.

Big Brother watches you everywhere in the year 1984. From the face of buildings, from posters in the stairwell of your apartment building, in the restaurant of your workplace.

In 1984, history is continuously being rewritten to meet the reality dictated by the Party. For example, the main character Winston Smith remembers that Oceania and Eurasia were in an alliance four years earlier, but that has already been erased from the history books. He knows this because he is one of the army of civil servants of the Ministry of Truth, who are constantly reassessing and rewriting history. At the moment in time the tale begins, Oceania and Eurasia are at war, and according to official history, that has always been the case! The all-powerful Party says 'whoever controls the past, controls the future'. But in fact it is the other way around: whoever controls the present, controls the past. The propaganda is aimed at replacing all personal memories of the past with the Party line.

EDIT: History is being re-written as you read this. The newest claim uttered by Trump (18 Feb 2025) is that Ukraine should never have started the war, and they could have settled for a deal long ago! I'm a little unsure about the state of Donald's memory, but mine is in perfect order: wasn't it Russia who invaded Ukraine three years ago? But perhaps Elon Must is already busy setting up a Ministry of Truth. They already have a Party line called Truth Social... 

In 1984, technology is being used to spy on the populace. There are cameras and microphones on every street corner. Helicopters hover in front of your window to peep inside and check what you are up to. In every house there is a Telescreen, a kind of TV that you can never turn off, which indoctrinates you with all kinds of poisonous propaganda. In our time that is called (often targeted) advertising. The sneaky thing about the Telescreen is that it also has a camera and a microphone installed, which continuously observe your actions. Does that sound familiar? We too are constantly being observed in the street and we carry our Telescreen in our pockets… have you learned to turn off the camera, microphone and location services for all apps on your phone unless they are strictly needed? Do you block and erase cookies? And even then the phone can be hacked in such a way that all your bedroom secrets are listened to.

The world of 1984 is full of blatant distortions. Big Brother claims:

     War is peace

     Freedom is slavery

     Ignorance is strength

I will try to show a few more parallels with the world we live in.

'If you want peace, prepare for war'. We know that phrase by now, and perhaps Donald has a point there, because Europe has been preoccupied with petty internal quarrels for decades instead of watching the burglar at its back door. Even the American shot across the bows did not galvanise our leaders into action, when they met yesterday in Paris. What are they going to do about our extreme vulnerability to that unscrupulous eastern neighbour?

The freedom we think we have is slavery: it is corrupted by our internet and shopping addiction, thanks to the technology mafia.

And ignorance of the people is where new populist leaders worldwide draw their strength and power from.

In the Ministry of Love of 1984 there are execution cellars, and in Room 101 of that institution a 'thought criminal' is tortured until he admits that 2+2=5, which is the Party line. And if he doesn't show enough love for Big Brother, he is 'reset' with a kind of electroshock, which erases his memories so that he becomes 'healthy' again. This happens to Winston Smith, because he keeps a diary just out of reach of his Telescreen, and also because he has a forbidden relationship with the beautiful but promiscuous Julia. Relationships between party members are forbidden, although a 'quickie' is allowed.

1984 is full of ideas that are now proven to be prophetic, which are masterfully tied together. What about the machines of the Fiction Department, which write books on their own? They are so good that the 'underclass' buy them under the counter, thinking that they are illegal and therefore true. Today we have AI, which can do the same thing.

And then there is the phenomenon of the 'spontaneous demonstration'. These supposedly arise from nothing in 1984, but are organised by agitators. And in the cinema, the propaganda film programme is interrupted for 'Two Minutes Hate', where the audience is expected to shout the most horrible things for two minutes about opponents of the regime, such as the villain Goldstein and his Brotherhood, who have been officially 'cancelled'. Nowadays, for the cancellation of opponents we use the media of the technology mafia, the filthy rich sycophants who are now suddenly all on the side of Donald.

bombs falling on Gaza

And finally, in 1984, Oceania is constantly at war, now with Eurasia, then with Eastasia. Every once in a while a rocket bomb falls on the city. The image is of course based on the V1 and V2 projectiles of the Nazis. But nowadays we have Russian glider bombs in Ukraine, and American 'blockbusters' in Gaza. The US has delivered another 1,000 of these murderous devices to Israel in the past week. So that Netanyahu might just flatten what remains of that tragic strip of land, and make the wet dream come true, of the real estate trader who now sits in the White House.

returning home, if there is one - Mohammed Salem

 

A Riviera built on corpses, over the backs of another 2 million displaced people?

Mr. President, sweet dreams.

Words of hope

This year I had the greatest possible difficulty in writing anything that even remotely resembled a Christmas wish.

Anyone who follows the news in this month of December would almost become depressed. There is nothing but murder, war, commotion, hatred and polarisation. One cannot close one’s eyes to it, but rarely was bad news as prominent in the media as it is now. Good news seems to be hard to find. I have written of it before.

That is why I went looking for anything that gives me hope: memories and current events that move me.

First of all the joy of my little granddaughters, the eldest of whom is already toddling around the house and has become a real little person. The youngest, five months old, who gazes at you with her big blue eyes and is already trying to roll over onto her stomach.

designed by Henriette

 

The Surinamese party in a community centre in Leiden, which I recently attended. The pleasant, respectful atmosphere among all those present, whether they were Surinamese, Dutch, Moroccan or something else. During the preparations we got the sound system working, upon which a Moroccan-Dutch volunteer searched for Moroccan music on his phone and played it to the microphone, amidst general laughter. 

 

The wisdom of a young girl, about nine years old, to whom I told the story of Anansi, who could not steal wisdom and accidentally dropped it into the river, so that it spread throughout the world. Why is there a little wisdom in all of us, I asked of her. ‘Because we all drink water,’ she said. 

The Israelis who out of their compassion stay overnight with Palestinian families on the West Bank to prevent intimidation and violence by gangs of settlers. 

The man from Uganda, an immigrant who has been delivering our morning newspaper for years. He recently came to the door again with his usual Christmas greeting. Early one morning, a few years back, he found the key that we had accidentally left in the front door the day before, and put it in our letterbox so it wouldn't be stolen.

The New Year's Eve celebration on board my ship that was in the port of Gdansk, fifty years ago during the communist period in Poland. An armed soldier was on guard at the gangway. As the Third Mate, I went ashore with a piece of cake to wish him a happy new year. He didn't want the cake, because he was a Polish officer. But we did shake hands.

A Moroccan woman and a conservative Jewish man, who one sad day did something important for me that I have never forgotten.

The people celebrating in the streets of Syria following the dictator’s expulsion. A people that finally hopes for a better future. And the cautious rapprochement of the West to the new rulers in the country, in the hope that they have indeed abandoned their previous radical ideology. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

Long before our time: the spontaneous Christmas truces in the trenches in 1914 and 1915, when German and British soldiers met in no man's land. I still have a quiet hope for a speedy end to the slaughter in Gaza, on the Ukrainian front, in Sudan and Eastern Congo. Or anywhere in the world, in the hope that leadership and reconciliation will prevail over hatred and enmity.

source: Wikipedia

Our blood is all red, whether we are white, black or brown. That is for a reason, as it is what connects us all. Whether we are Israeli or Palestinian, Russian or Ukrainian. Whether we are European or an African immigrant. 

Shalom, salam, odi, привет, вітання, greetings, bon bini, გამარჯობა (gamarjoba), saludos, 你好 (ni hao), gegroet, peace be with you and us all. 

Happy New Year.

Enough is enough

I thought I had written everything I needed to about war and dehumanisation. Shortly after the start of the Gaza war a year ago, I tried to write down my thoughts. Even longer ago I wrote about the Ukraine war, which is now in its third year. And I have not yet mentioned the forgotten wars in Sudan and eastern Congo, which may well be worse than the other two combined. But it just goes on and on.

Putin

Vladimir Putin, obsessed with the delusion of a Greater Russian Empire, stops at nothing and has hundreds of thousands of deaths on his conscience. Not only in Ukraine, but also on the Russian side, where a new mobilisation order is imminent. This ice-cold ex-spy and mafia boss learned his tricks during his KGB years, in the St. Petersburg mafia and in the partly or entirely Russian-orchestrated wars in Syria, Chechnya and Georgia (read up on Putin with Catherine Belton). His specialty is poisoning his opponents (which he learned in the KGB) and bombing schools, busy markets, residential areas and hospitals. No war crime is too horrible for him to commit. Russia with its rich culture, the country of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Borodin and Tchaikovsky, has become a rogue state thanks to him.

Although Ukraine still defends itself bravely and hopefully will turn the tide, other former Soviet republics are holding their breath. The war front is sometimes described as a meat grinder, which applies to both sides. I still hope, perhaps against my better judgment, that the Russian people will finally turn upon the warmonger in Moscow and his acolytes as soon as another mobilisation is declared and more thousands of young men are sent to the front as cannon fodder. Change only comes from within, but when comes the breaking point?

Netanyahu

Then there is Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a criminal trial for corruption if he has to resign, and is therefore trying to prolong his existence as the figurehead of the state of Israel as long as possible, now with a new war front in Lebanon. You’d expect Israel to remember what was done to the Jews during the Holocaust and not commit genocide itself. It isn’t for nothing that an international arrest warrant is to be  issued against Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense Gallant. But they and their ultra-right-wing allies Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have conveniently forgotten the horrors of the Holocaust. That is, unless they are criticised, when they suddenly assume the victim role. 

A Palestinian farmer on the occupied West Bank, whose olive trees are cut down and whose house is torched by the colonist scum supported by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, will feel the same as a Jewish shopkeeper, whose windows were smashed and whose merchandise was destroyed in 1938. Kristallnacht seems to be repeated on the West Bank, only the descendants of the victims of 1938 have now become perpetrators themselves. I am sure some people will object to my saying this, but I will do so anyway: as a human being and as an author, I have a duty to speak out and I see no difference between one gang of criminals and another.

Under Netanyahu, Israel has become a rogue state that is constantly at odds with the international legal order and the United Nations. In Israel itself there is enough protest against this man, who only stays in the saddle by stoking the fires of war. He has the blood on his hands of tens of thousands of men, women and children, ‘collateral damage’ in the extermination of Palestinian rebels. Israel uses criteria for the number of innocents that may be slaughtered when killing one suspected terrorist. Is it 50 to 1, or 100 to 1? I forgot. When four Israeli hostages were liberated some time ago, hundreds of innocent Gazans were slaughtered. Palestinian lives matter, to coin a well-known phrase. Any self-reflection on this is lacking.

The Norwegian cartoonist Morten Morland drew this appropriate image of Netanyahu
hitting Gaza, as ayatollah Khamenei blows out the match he used to light the fire. 

Khamenei

The ‘freedom fighters’ of Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t nice people either - the horrors of the massacre of October 7, 2023 speak for themselves. The militants are supported by or even controlled from Tehran, where another hateful old man is in absolute power, a man in his eighties who has never tolerated contradiction and executes women’s rights activists. The Axis of Resistance, that is what he calls himself and everyone who opposes the state of Israel. They act out of a vengeful ideology, no less than Netanyahu.

According to Human Rights Watch, about 80% of the population in Gaza is of Palestinian origin. In Lebanon there are about half a million, and the same number are in Syria. Most (2 million) live in Jordan. Lebanon in particular is a patchwork of cultures and religions, although they usually live in separate towns and districts.

The usual tactic of Hamas and Hezbollah is to hide among the civilian population, who serve as human shields, potential ‘martyrs’ in their warped jargon. It is difficult to determine how much support there actually is for Hamas and Hezbollah among the Palestinian refugees and their descendants and whether they are happy for these fighting groups to hide in their midst. But perhaps they are given no choice. In some parts of Beirut, as we can read in the news, support for Hezbollah is high, but the line between militants and civilians is not always easy to draw. But all those women and children slaughtered by Israel, are they also militants?

Let me be clear: both parties have enough reason to hate their opponent as a result of all the injustice and cruelties committed. But the spiral of violence can only be broken by a ceasefire and negotiation.

The US and Trump

In the Middle East, effectively a proxy war between the US and Iran is enacted. The United States preaches peace, but meanwhile supplies Israel with billions in military aid. Netanyahu consistently sabotages every peace initiative, under pressure from his extremist friends. The only way to force him to a ceasefire is to immediately stop American arms supplies to Israel. Only then can a peaceful solution be found. But with a faltering president in the White House and risky elections in prospect, US policy is frozen and Netanyahu can do as he pleases. If Trump is elected president - yet another offensive old man who plays the public - all hell will break loose. Not only in the Middle East, but also in Ukraine. 

Conclusion

Who will rid the world of all these hateful old men? Democracy, the legacy of the 20th century that we should actually cherish, is under pressure everywhere. Also in the Netherlands, where attempts are now being made to undermine constitutional law by calling an emergency, portraying every refugee as an enemy. An asylum crisis? Nonsense. It is the consequence of decades of deliberate neglect, which is now being exploited to push through a populist agenda.

I am no longer young, an old man if you will, and I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren. Will they live in an authoritarian state? A banana republic on the North Sea? Where are the statesmen, wise women and men who we need to turn the undemocratic tide? Those vacancies are still open. 

As James Freeman Clarke wrote long ago: the difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while a statesman thinks about the next generation.