Coup d'état

After a cool night, a bright sunny start to the day with wind from the north west blowing clouds across the sky. Up at eight and making breakfast. 

In the news the Israeli cabinet is set approve complete military occupation of Gaza with measures to allow commercial companies to deliver essential supplies, medicines and food. Having reduced the military forces of Hamas to uncontrolled gangs of armed insurgents, the invasion of Gaza will now lead to the overthrow of an elected Palestinian civil administrations. No matter how wickedly Hamas has betrayed the trust of the electorate, Gazans will no longer have any say in what happens to them, robbed of dignity and freedom so cruelly and inhumanely by the Israeli military and the remnant of Hamas clinging to the remaining hostages while refusing to admit defeat.

This is happening in the face of widespread opposition within Israel and the wider world to Netanyahu's policy. How this will free any hostages still alive and how civil administration by an army of occupation can be established successfully in these circumstances is unexplained. Meanwhile an average of 28 children die in Gaza each day, along with scores of people desperately seeking food from the inadequate number of aid convoys and air drops being carried out. The Palestinian death toll in this war now stands at nearly seventy thousand. 

Refusal to let UN famine aid teams take part in relief operations has accelerated this crisis. Trump is one of the world leaders whose support Israel relies upon. He's no fan of the United Nations and cannot be expected to influence Netanyahu's decision about occupation one way or another. Neither of them has any concern about international opinion or international law regarding Palestine. No good can come of it. It's so heart breaking and distressing to think it's been like that for the past half century. It weighs on my mind.

I did very little this morning apart from listening to the radio and editing photos of my visit to the DDR in the weeks leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's fifteen years since I digitized them and more useful editing tools are available now than back then. They're not high resolution scans, but lifting shadows does reveal hidden detail in photos taken on overcast days while we were there. I think I took my Praktika SLR film camera with me without auto-focus or flash so the results were a bit hit or miss. A few photos are quite sharp however, a reminder of how well the Zeiss lens worked with the Russian made camera. 

We shared cooking lunch, then after a snooze I went out to buy olive oil and inspect some of the local restaurants with a view to dining out tomorrow, our 59th wedding anniversary. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with the menus I looked at. A limited range of dishes with fancy labels in pretentious foodie jargon with high prices, if you could identify the numbers, displayed in small print. I swear it's got worse since one of the local restaurants was awarded a Michelin star. 

On my afternoon walk in Llandaff Fields I inspected progress on the Padel court construction. Four of the six courts are now covered with green astro-turf, and the walk-ways between them are reddish brown. A consignment of concrete slabs has been delivered for paving surrounding the exterior of the courts. As I took photos through the fence, one of the building workers quipped "You're not one of those breaking in are you?" "Too old for that." I replied. Although the site is surrounded with security fencing, its location in a part of the park with no houses overlooking the site must make it attractive to thieves. 

After supper I watched another episode of 'Classified', so packed with deceit and lies it's not easy to follow on times. Then Rachel called and we chatted for an hour until bedtime.