By continuing to commit mass murder in Gaza, and given it was founded on terrorism and continues every day to oppress others and steal their land, Israel has, in my view, forfeited any right to continue in the form it has been.

Some politicians talk about trying to re-establish the two-state settlement. Israel has made clear it will never submit to that restriction. It simply wants all of Palestine, with no Palestinians remaining.

The mirror ‘solution’ to Israel’s present policy would be for all Jewish people to leave the former Palestine and return to Europe. This would be too hard and too unjust to those born there. It is no more just or practicable than wanting all Arabs to leave.

Here is what would work. If this sounds fantastical, that is a measure of how far Israel’s behaviour is from being a humane state.

Israel should dismantle all barriers – the wall, the fences and barricades. It should vacate at least the parts of the West Bank it has illegally occupied. It should allow Palestinians free access to the presently separated areas called Israel and Palestine. It should allow Palestinians full citizenship, in practice not just as a pretence. It should restrain its citizens from attacking their fellow occupants of these areas.

In other words Israel/Palestine should become one state with all occupants having equal rights. What this state would be called would be up to them.

This would be the end of the attempt by Zionists and others to create an exclusively Jewish state. So be it. It was established with no consultation with Palestinians.

Those Israelis who appeal to ancient history, to the Old Testament or to a supposed promise from their God need to yield to the immediate imperative to treat their fellow human beings with respect and kindness. That is as the Prophet/Saviour Jesus urged.

This would not necessarily be the end of a safe homeland for Jewish people. It could be that, but it needs to be safe for Palestinians too. The present Israelis would have to learn to respect the people they have despised. That would be very good for them.

Israel has used the Holocaust as an excuse and a fig leaf for their atrocious behaviour for a long time now. It has blamed all criticism on ‘anti-semitism’, but it is their behaviour, not their ancestry, that has drawn criticism.

Militant Israelis have been acting out the classic behaviour of the traumatised. Rather than learn to heal themselves of trauma they and their people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, they have retained their trauma and retained the hypersensitivity of the traumatised, likely to be triggered at any moment into violence. The abused became the abusers.

Nothing can justify the terrorising, injuring, maiming and killing of children in Gaza. Nor of innocent women and men, who Israel’s forces make little attempt to distinguish, it is clear. Now we have more abused and traumatised people, thus perpetuating the endless cycle of violence.

Israelis need to attend to themselves. They need to learn how to heal their own trauma, how to return to being humane people, how to break the cycle and create a peaceful population whose peace will endure.

But wait, you might say, aren’t I similarly at fault, living in another settler-colonial state, Australia, that murderously dispossessed its First People? It is true: that is Australia’s history and legacy. Now, at last, there is a rising movement among settlers to learn our true history, acknowledge the wrongs, reconcile with our own inheritance and treat First People and their descendants with full respect. Even to recognise the wisdom of one of the more subtle and sophisticated cultures of the world that persisted for 60,000 years, and counting, without great invasions of each other.

This change is being fiercely resisted by some Australians. They do not want to acknowledge our history. Many seem still to regard Whites and the British as innately superior, and by their implication, more deserving. But the shift is happening. As it does, so we heal ourselves, and break our own cycle of abuse and violence.

Israelis need to begin their own process of healing. It may take time, but there is no other way to break the cycle of abuse and violence.