WHEN I was a kid I had ambitions to play for Aston Villa. In Gaza, the ambition of most children is likely just to stay alive.

There is a genocide taking place in plain view — but those of us who call this indisputable fact out and demand a ceasefire are attacked.

I was raised in a Roman Catholic family where the only books in the house other than school or library books were ones with Bible stories.

I am not a Christian now, but I do remember those books and the teachings that Christians claimed to follow.

I recently read a piece by the legendary African-American writer, journalist and activist James Baldwin that reminded me, if I needed it, of the hypocritical times we live in.

In an article for the Nation in September 1979, Baldwin quoted Matthew 25:40 from the Bible’s New Testament: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

I agree with his view that it was “a merciless description of our responsibility for one another. It is that hard light under which one makes the moral choice.”

He added: “The Western world has forgotten that such a thing as the moral choice exists, my history, my flesh, and my soul bear witness.”

In the article, titled Open Letter to the Born Again, Baldwin also had words to say about Jews and the Palestinian people — because contrary to what some people may believe, they are both in fact human beings.

Baldwin said: “Jews and Palestinians know of broken promises. From the time of the Balfour Declaration (during World War I) Palestine was under five British mandates, and England promised the land back and forth to the Arabs or the Jews, depending on which horse seemed to be in the lead.

“The zionists — as distinguished from the people known as Jews — using, as someone put it, the ‘available political machinery,’ ie, colonialism, eg, the British empire — promised the British that, if the territory were given to them, the British empire would be safe forever.”

He also makes the point that Israel was not created “for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests.

“The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience.”

I will deal with that latter very important issue some other time, but for now, I want to concentrate on the non-existent guilt and conscience being shown by so many over the indiscriminate killing of so many innocent human beings.

Over many hundreds of years many of the same people who claim to be practising Christians, of many different denominations, have variously supported the transatlantic trade and enslavement of Africans, brutal colonialism, child labour, curbing women’s rights and, of course, the genocide currently being meted out against the Palestinians.

None of this suggests to me the remotest fragment of guilt — something I was very familiar with as a Catholic — never mind a conscience.

How can anyone with a conscience not be sickened by the sight of so many children, women and men being blown to pieces in anyone’s cause?

At the time of writing the latest figures showed around 3,500 children had been confirmed dead in Gaza out of more than 8,000 deaths overall.

The UN says that there are around 1,000 more children who have been reported as missing and are likely trapped alive or have been killed underneath buildings that have been targeted by what we have always been led to believe are the precision missiles used by the Israelis.

These same devotees to truth and light, who in December, will be extolling the virtues of “peace and joy” to, presumably, everyone but Palestinians, will happily, and without conscience, slam anyone who dares to call for a ceasefire. Or, in other words, anyone who wants to see an end to the killing.

Heaven (if there is such a place) forbid anyone should dare to call for peace over killing in anything but some kind of theoretical or biblical sense.

The warmongers, perhaps protected by their religious blindfolds or impenetrable self-righteous covered suits of armour, will just continue to watch innocent people, children or adults be blown to shreds whilst barely raising a murmur.

The only way that they can justify the treatment of the Palestinians is in the same way that Africans were portrayed during enslavement. They have to consider them less than human.

One senior Israeli was at least open about it when he labelled the Palestinians as “human animals.”

This is essentially permission to treat Palestinians as badly as you like, because, as with Africans during enslavement, they are less than us, have no feelings that count and simply don’t matter.

Those of us who argue for peace regardless of the war and who are fighting it — the peace mongers — have and no doubt will continue to face ridicule and be subjected to all sorts of threats and the possibility that our commitment to peace may somehow be detrimental to our future prospects — job, political or otherwise.

This has been the case with the conflict in Ukraine but also goes further back in my lifetime to the Iraq war and even the Falklands conflict.

The Iraq war, for those of you with good memories will recall, was not always the unpopular war that it eventually turned out to be. It began with enormous support.

When the lies behind the war eventually emerged the public turned against it. I hope this happens with both the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts and that it comes in time to save the innocent lives being sacrificed for whatever geopolitical plan is being played out.

I remember campaigning against the Falklands adventure and facing abuse for my view that we should not be involved in a shooting match with the odious right-wing Argentinian military junta over land thousands of miles away that most people in this country had never heard of.

I am fairly sure the same could be said of plenty of other wars where peace activists have been turned into the bad guys and those supporting the killing are portrayed as doing some god or another’s work.

In the end, the war crimes being committed against the Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territory have nothing to do with conscience or other such luxuries.

It has everything to do with cold hard geopolitical choices which usually come down to profits and the strategic global dominance necessary to maintain access to natural resources to keep the global North in the comfort to which it has become accustomed.

Meanwhile the innocent pay the price with their lives.

Even with all the pressure to do otherwise, those of us who are peacemongers must continue to do what’s right and argue for an end to the killing.

It is not inevitable that the current lust for war and death will continue. But it will do if we give in to the pressure and keep quiet.