“Maybe I’m one of those people who’s
always wanted to do it but never had a
chance. It’s a pipe dream. Maybe it’s
like you said. Maybe I need to grow up.”

- Mia in La La Land

La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. When I originally watched the film on its release I was somewhat unimpressed and was surprised that it garnered so many awards. However, over the Christmas break the film was shown on TV, and possibly due to the dire state of the world, my view of it changed. For me, it was not so much a simple story about dreams but one about aspirations and the sacrifices made by the leading players in achieving their artistic goals (Emma Stone’s performance in particular was exceptional).

Dreams are fantasies that seldom come true. So many of us exist in a world of fantasies such as the imaginary friends on Facebook or computer gaming or gambling or fixation with reality TV shows. But there exist more serious dreams that to me seem impossible to become reality…

I watched the horrors of the Ukraine war and murderers like Putin escape censure and punishment for what he has done. The dream of his demise appears pure fantasy, at least in the medium term and with his admirer Trump now firmly ensconced again in the White House. There’s the seemingly impossible dream of Gazans and West Bank Palestinians to achieve independence, freedom, security, peace and prosperity while Israel and the USA combine to dominate, murder and destroy. Since 1948, the situation has worsened to the point that Gaza is now virtually uninhabitable with homes, hospitals, schools, churches and key services such as water supply decimated by Israeli bombing.

“We are fighting against human animals and we are acting accordingly”

This declaration by a senior Israeli politician was in response to the horrific and criminal massacre of Israelis on the 7 October, 1923. However, this unforgiveable brutality was in response to the suffering of Palestinians for many decades. There was indeed a context and the response by Israel over a fifteen month period was far from proportionate and viewed by many as genocidal.

Even the most recent ceasefire agreement won’t help fulfil the Palestinian dream of an independent state. In fact the political background to the agreement was obscene in that rival USA politicians - Trump and Biden - wanted to claim that they achieved the ceasefire prior to Biden’s departure and Trump’s inauguration. The original agreement proposal was tabled back in May 1923 but Biden failed to back it up with cessation of arms supplies. Instead $billions more of arms and support were forthcoming and key levers were lost. Nobody knows what Trump’s envoy promised Netanyahu to achieve the final agreement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed to legalise West bank settlements with approval for future land and property annexations…It is clear that Israel’s Netanyahu delayed agreement to the May 2023 proposals - costing thousands of lives - with the probability of sympathiser Trump winning the November presidential election. Finally, with the Gaza ceasefire, Israel will now concentrate its violence on the West Bank with more imprisonment, destruction, death and injury.