Grace L (picture by Palestine Solidarity Campaign)
Every time I think I have become hardened to the relentless suffering in Palestine, a new report will punch me in the stomach with the sheer injustice of it all. Last week it was a video from a community activist in Al Mawasi filming his return home after the ceasefire. His voice cracked as he reminisced about the beautiful views from his home, of the sea between the trees, where his children now scrabbled around in the rubble for lost toys. He spoke with deep resignation and tiredness as he scanned his camera phone over the devastated remains of the community centre where he used to run schemes such as an after-school club for local children, and where I used to help him with some online English lessons.
In this area of Gaza, long before October 7th, people were already struggling with deep poverty and generational trauma from living under Israeli siege and intermittent military assault – any feelings of relief about the ceasefire seemed to be mixed with a kind of numbness as they tried to process the overwhelming task of rebuilding absolutely everything.
Their courage to return, to rebuild, and to resist the push to leave their land and homes, is as humbling as it is inspiring.
Of course here in the UK we are meant to identify with the westernised Israelis whose individual names and faces are shared by our media whenever they are victims of an attack, and empathise with this fellow ‘democratic’ country regardless of what atrocities it carries out.
But for millions of us who feel no sense of affinity whatsoever with the apartheid Israeli regime – nor with our own government who lend them military, diplomatic and financial support – we can suddenly find that the brute power our government exerts in support of Israel and against the people of Palestine, can also be used against us.
Obviously we are not in an apartheid state. We are not all routinely subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, mistreatment and torture. We are not collectively humiliated, abused, reviled and provoked by colonial troops who are raised and trained to revel in our suffering. We have a lot of freedom to raise our voices in opposition and engage in public campaigns against injustice. Our freedom, however, is contingent – and we usually only feel the limits on our freedom and feel the state tighten its grip on us, once we start to struggle against it.
On the last national demonstration for Palestine we saw just how easily the state could portray peaceful protestors as dangerous anti-semites and use that to justify banning and criminalising what would normally be seen as a routine campaigning activity – protesting and marching outside the BBC.
The last Tory home secretary called us hate marchers but it was left to our new Labour home secretary, Yvetter Cooper, to go this one step further by banning us from marching and then tweeting out a disgusting slur against every peace protester, implying we were trying to march against Jews: “Everyone should be able to worship in peace. @metpoliceuk have my support in ensuring that synagogues were not disrupted today.”
Over 1000 police, brought in from all over the country at god knows what astronomical cost, arrested 77 people – not just for petty acts such as carrying a flag in the wrong bit of trafalgar square, they arrested people just for saying they wanted to defy the unjust ban on marching.
The level of repression against Palestine protesters has been ramping up for months and maybe it’s a backhanded compliment about the strength of our movement that they are so desperate to shut us down.
We had a taste of it here in Hastings last year when three protestors were arrested at the General Dynamics arms factory that makes the equipment used to carry out war crimes in Gaza, and held for 14 hours. Last week they were found innocent of any crime, but the process was the punishment – dragged through nearly a year of court hearings on spurious charges, with huge financial costs and risking their jobs.
Our justice system was used by one of the biggest arms companies in the world to scare off local people engaging in peaceful protest. Even though we posed only a minor inconvenience to their death machine, maybe they feared we might open the eyes of their workers to what they are actually engaged in? Maybe they know that the only way their system survives is not just by holding people down at the point of a gun, but also more importantly by maintaining the passive consent of those of us here in the belly of the beast who allow it to continue.
Clem McCulloch, one of the Hastings 3 arrested and tried for ‘aggravated trespass’ at General Dynamics, had never been on a protest at that factory before that day. He had come with his homemade sign determined to make his voice heard and when asked in court why he stepped into the place of the other protestors who were being arrested for standing in front of a doorway to the arms factory – people he had never met before and an act which then led to his own arrest – he said “ because I believed it was the right thing to do”.
In a country where arming a genocidal regime seems to be legal, and where journalists can be arrested for telling the truth but it can be illegal to protest outside the national broadcaster – we all need to trust in our own good judgement to know what is the right thing to do, and we need to find the courage to do it! Not just for the sake of people in Palestine, but to have any chance for a democratic, peaceful or just future for us all.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Hastings is holding a protest rally against General Dynamics sending arms to Israel on Saturday Feb 1st at 12 noon in the town centre, followed by laying flowers in memory of all those who have died in Palestine in the past year and a half at the peace garden in Alexandra Park.
Find out more about ongoing local boycott, divestment, educational and awareness campaigns by contacting info@hastingspalestinecampaign.org