What is Criminal is the Incarceration of Thousands
of Palestinians and the Hannibal Directive Under Which the Israel Army Killed
Hundreds of its Own Citizens
Prison Breakout October 7
Dear JVL,
I am not, nor have I ever been, a
member of Jewish Voice for
Labour. Nonetheless I consider myself a critical supporter. It is in that spirit
that I view with dismay the motion that JVL’s Executive has proposed on the ‘Gaza
War’ at your AGM this weekend.
Speaking with Haaretz, Israeli reserve pilot Col. Nof Erez describes Israeli army's response to Oct. 7 as "MASS HANNIBAL."
The Hannibal Directive orders the army to kill their own to prevent them being taken captive. pic.twitter.com/5IrERAAtVl
I know that it is a minor point but
it is important to point out that in the language we use we don’t unwittingly lend support to the Zionist narrative. There is no war between the people of
Gaza and the Zionist state. What has been taking place since October 7 is a
one-sided slaughter in which thousands of non-combatants, including children,
have been slaughtered in a campaign that has defied every tenet of
international law.
Socialists have always supported unconditionally
the right of people under occupation to resist their occupiers. That does not
mean that that that support is uncritical but any criticism which we make is
premised on our support.
Contrary to the lies of the mass media that babies had been beheaded, no baby died on October 7th, unlike the incubator babies that Israel killed in Al Shifa Hospital
I was therefore astounded that JVL’s
Executive sought to characterise the attack on October as ‘criminal’. According
to whose law? Israeli law? Of course the colonial occupier characterises resistance
to its occupation as criminal but I am surprised that JVL should join them.
The right to resist is recognised
in numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly as well as the Additional
Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions (1977). Article 1(4),
classifies conflicts in which peoples are fighting against alien occupation and
racist regimes as armed conflicts in which individuals engaging in such
“fighting,” if captured, should be afforded the status of prisoners of war.
Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says
It is not necessary however to resort to international law to
understand that just as the French and Czech people had the right to resist the
Nazis, just as the American colonists had the right to resist the British and
the African slaves had the right to resist their overseers, so the Palestinians
too have a right to resist Israel’s Apartheid regime.
Between 1791 and 1804 slaves in Haiti and Santo Domingo
overthrew slavery, in the course of which they slaughtered every single French white
person. I would hope that if the JVL Executive had been around at the time that
you would have supported the slave uprising even if you had deplored much of
the killing that resulted. The same is true of October 7 when the Palestinians
of Gaza broke out of their prison.
Al-Qassam Brigades release letter of "Israeli" captive:
To the generals who have accompanied me in recent weeks, it seems that we will part tomorrow, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
For your unnatural humanity that you showed towards me and to my daughter Emilia,… pic.twitter.com/MstMv2BJF8
— AoR News 🇵🇸🇱🇧🇸🇾🇮🇶🇮🇷🇾🇪 (@AoR3138) November 27, 2023
As you are well aware Gaza has been occupied for over half a
century. For the past 16 years Israel has imposed a starvation blockade and
bombed the territory regularly (‘mowing
the lawn’) causing thousands of deaths. What right have we to call an
uprising of Gaza’s people ‘criminal’?
In 2018 when Palestinians in Gaza took part in the peaceful Great Return
March over 300 were mowed down by Israeli snipers and thousands more were
disabled by illegal Israeli ammunition. We all remember Razan
al-Najjar, the 21 year old medic gunned down by Israel as she was tending
to the wounded.
Great Return March
Israel
holds approximately 8,000 Palestinian prisoners, 3,000 of whom have not
even had the luxury of a ‘trial’ in a military court where the conviction rate
is over 99%. By what feat of intellectual gymnastics are Palestinians forbidden
to take Israelis prisoner when so many of them are imprisoned? This sounds very
much like Jewish Exceptionalism. We support the Palestinians whilst they are
nobly suffering but the moment they fight back we call them criminals.
The motion from the JVL Executive,
which talks of ‘Hamas’s killing of up to 1,200
Israeli residents, mostly civilians’ is simply wrong. According to the Times
of Israel approximately one-third of those killed were either soldiers or
police.
It is an open question as to how many of the remaining 800
civilians were killed by Israel itself as part of the infamous Hannibal
Directive which decrees that it is better to kill an Israeli captive than
have them taken prisoner and later swapped for Palestinian prisoners.
Israelis in Tel Aviv 26 7 2014 There's no school tomorrow,there's no
children l
We know for a fact that at Kibbutz
Be’eri tanks were brought in to shell the houses where Israelis were being
held captive with the result that those held hostage died along with their
captors.
There is also considerable evidence
that Apache helicopters strafed
concert goers and cars indiscriminately. How then can the motion ascribe the
deaths on October 7 solely to Hamas when Israel acknowledges it bombed its own
bases when they fell under Hamas control?
Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says (Full
with subtitles)
I also find the sentence ‘Israel’s
military onslaught is no surgical
operation targeting the militants responsible for October 7’ (my
emphasis) very strange. It implies that if Israel had launched a surgical as
opposed to a genocidal attack on Gaza then JVL would have supported it!
In the list of demands in the bullet points at the end of the
resolution JVL calls for the release of the (Israeli) ‘hostages’ but refers to Palestinian
‘detainees’. Why the difference? Are you implying that Palestinian prisoners are
lawfully detained? That they are not
hostages?
It is to be hoped that this resolution falls or is withdrawn.
Israel’s siege and occupation of Gaza are unlawful and it is therefore the
right of Hamas and any resistance group to resist that occupation.
This AGM rejects attempts by Israel and its Western backers
to portray the death toll inflicted on Gazans since October 7 as justified by
Israel’s claimed “right to defend itself”. Hamas’s
killing of up to 1,200 Israeli residents, mostly civilians, and the taking
of more than 200 hostages were criminal
acts. But Israel’s military onslaught is
no surgical operation targeting the militants responsible for October 7. It
is a vengeful retaliation by a government openly bent on the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians.
This ongoing catastrophe stems directly from the consistent
policies of the Israeli settler-colonial state for decade after decade. It has
stolen Palestinians’ land and their water. It has demolished their homes. It
has imprisoned, tortured and murdered them and attempted to obliterate their
culture. It has created a vast open-air prison in Gaza and now turned it into
an open-air grave. Israel wants Palestinian land without Palestinians. In closing off all forms of non-violent
resistance to their apartheid policies the Israeli state has set the conditions
for the current disaster.
We deplore the proliferating attempts to silence Palestinians
and those who stand in solidarity with them by accusations that they are
motivated by antisemitism. It is Israel, a state, not the Jewish people
worldwide, that is carrying out the shamefully indiscriminate butchery in Gaza.
We reject the hypocritical arguments from politicians, Tory
and Labour, who talk of international law while ignoring obvious war crimes,
and who propose only temporary interruptions, so-called “humanitarian pauses”,
in the genocide. We welcome the negotiated release of some hostages and
detainees and any easing of the blockade. But only a permanent ceasefire can
open the way for an end to decades of injustice. A lasting peace, bringing
security, dignity, equality, justice and freedom for both to Palestinians and
Israelis, requires: (Bold is my emphasis)
·an end to the Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza
·release of the hostages
·release of Palestinian detainees
in Israeli gaols, many held without charge or trial
Brighton & Hove Trades Council Demonstration
Against the Silence of Brighton & Hove Council in the face of Israel’s Nazi
style murder campaign
The Genocidal 'Friendship Song' which Calls to Annihilate Everyone in Gaza
Two weeks ago, Brighton and Hove Trades Council held a demonstration
outside Hove Town Hall against the Council’s silence over the ongoing genocide
in Gaza.
So far 15,000 Palestinians including more than 6,000 children have been murdered in Gaza. Another 23,000 at least have been injured. This does not include those who are buried under the rubble. This is equivalent to one and a quarter million if it were Britain.
FULL GOING UNDERGROUND INTERVIEW⚡️
BOMBSHELL: @MaxBlumenthal Exposes Israel’s & Biden’s Lies & Deceit Over Gaza Bloodbath & October 7th
Not to be missed - Max Blumenthall Interview on Going Underground – What Really
Happened on October 7
The Guilty Ones - Not one of these 38 Labour Councillors Has Condemned Israel's Genocidal Attack on Gaza or its Ethnic Cleansing - You Can Contact Them By Email
In response the Labour Group issued a mealy
mouthed statement calling for a ‘humanitarian’ as opposed to a permanent
ceasefire. Whilst condemning the Palestinian attack on October 7th
the statement had nothing to say about Israel’s genocide in Gaza or the open declaration
of its leaders that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza was its
objective.
This is in contrast to the over 600 Labour
Councillors nationally who had written
to Starmer demanding that he call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
If anyone was in doubt about this then the article by Gila
Gamliel, Israel’s Intelligence Minister in the Jerusalem Post on 19 November, Victory is an
opportunity for Israel in the midst of crisis, should have laid any doubts to rest.
The statement had nothing to say about the calls
for extermination of Palestinians in Gaza such as the video on Israel’s main
broadcaster Kan by Israeli school girls that called for the annihilation of all
Palestinians in Gaza which included a host of Nazi themes such as love
sanctified by blood. There was Netanyahu’s comparison
of Palestinians with Amalek who god commanded should be wiped out to the last
child.
Despite the fact that large numbers of the Israelis
killed on October 7th were killed by their own military – see here,
here and here
– under the Hannibal
Directive, Israel has called the 1,200 Israelis killed as the largest
massacre since the Holocaust.
This deliberate weaponisation of the holocaust in
the service of ethnic cleansing defiles the memory of Jews who died in the holocaust,
not because they were ethnic cleansers or oppressed anyone but because they
were Jews.
Israelis who were the target of Hamas on October
were attacked because Israel has been in occupation of Gaza for 57 years and
has laid siege to the territory for 17 years.
It is also not true that October 7 was the biggest
death toll of Jews since the holocaust. 6,000 Israelis died in the 1948 War of
Independence or Nakba and more died in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. The holocaust
has been weaponised in order to justify genocide.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has refused to condemn
the genocide, quite the contrary, he supported
the blockade of food, water and fuel in his notorious interview with LBC.
This is why Brighton and Hove Trades Council are
organising a demonstration outside a full meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council
on Tuesday 28 November at 4 pm.
It Must Have Been Something I Said! Jo Wadsworth of
the Anti-Palestinian Brighton and Hove News
Threatens to Report Me to the Police!
The Met arrest stall holders selling a book with a Swastika and Zionist
Star of David Intertwined - Who the Hell are These Thick Bastards to
Decide What We Can and Cannot Read?
All I did was to send Jo Wadsworth of Brighton
and Hove News an email giving a link
to my blog. True I headed it ‘ENJOY RACIST SCUMBAG’ but that was no
reason to respond in the way she did:
Oh no, Tony "notorious
antisemite" Greenstein has called me a bad name. How will I ever recover?
To which I responded that this was a good question. I suggested that
the answer lay in Wadsworth ‘Probably (by) gorging on the blood of the children in
Gaza. I should think that would be good recipe for you to try’.
She had after all been perfectly
happy with a multitude of comments defending Israel’s bombardment of hospitals,
ambulances, homes and schools, its food, water and fuelblockade and the murder of over 6,000 children
and thousands of adults. In other words collective punishment, a flagrant
breach of international law.
Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews in Jerusalem's Mea Sharim Display the Palestinian Flag - If they had been Palestinians the Police would have opened fire
It appears however that Ms Wadsworth is a more sensitive soul than I had
given her credit for. She didn’t seem to take my comment that she was wallowing
in the blood of thousands of children at all well.
Okay Tony I usually find your insults entertaining
in a pathetic kind of way. But that's crossed a line. I'm now asking you not to
contact me again and if you persist I will report you to the police.
It seems to have become the latest fashion amongst Zionists to report
anything I say to the police. In fact I’m thinking of saving them the trouble and
time by designing a handy form which they can email to the Police explaining
why they have problems with freedom of speech.
First there was Heidi
Bachram and now Jo Wadsworth. Who will be next?
At the same time the Metropolitan Police have decided that they have the
right to decide what literature can be openly sold on Zionism at today’s
demonstration and what posters can be displayed. According
to the Met:
Images were shared on social
media showing literature being distributed which featured a swastika inside a
Star of David. Officers later spotted the same literature at a stall in
Whitehall and arrested four people on suspicion of distributing material likely
to stir up racial hatred.
The people
they arrested were from the Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist
Leninist[@cpgbml]
I wasn’t
aware that intertwining a Swastika and a Zionist Star of David graphically was
a criminal offence. As I wrote in my book, Zionism
During the Holocaust:
In
the spring of 1933, Baron Leopold von
Mildenstein, a member of the SS, and Kurt Tuchler of the ZVfD [German Zionist]
Executive and their wives, boarded a train at Berlin to travel to Palestine.
Tuchler had tried to persuade Mildenstein to write ‘something positive’ about
Palestine in the Nazi press. Mildenstein agreed, provided that he was able to
visit Palestine first. He stayed for six months and was clearly impressed by
the “new Jew”.
On his return, Mildenstein published a
series of 12 articles in Joseph Goebbels’ paper, Der Angriff, from 26
September to 9 October 1934 under the by-line ‘von Lim’ [Jacob Boas, ‘A Nazi Travels to Palestine’]. This trip was
the subject of an article in the eminently respectable History
TodayofJanuary 1980. Mildenstein served as
head of Abteilung 112/II,the Jewish department (Judenreferat) of the Sicherheitsdienst, [SD] from the summer
of 1935 to August 1936. Indeed so pleased were the Nazis with the trip that
they struck a medal to commemorate the trip.
It is perfectly legitimate to argue
that Zionist ideology and Nazi ideology share a lot in common. The Zionists
admitted this themselves. On 21 June 1933, the German Zionist Federation wrote
a letter to Hitler in which they explained that:
Zionism has no
illusion about the difficulty of the Jewish condition which consists above all
in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and
moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition… an answer to the Jewish
question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with
the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural and
moral renewal of Jewry… On the foundation of the new state, which has
established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is
possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity
of the Jewish group… The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by
resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda…
is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle
but to convince and to build.’
The full letter can be
found in Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust
Reader, pp. 150-153.Who the hell
are the Metropolitan Police to decide we can and cannot read? Of course it will
give offence to Zionists to be reminded of the times when they had close fraternal
relations with the Nazi State. However this is part of the historical record
and only in Police States do thick coppers decide what people can and cannot
read and see.
Young People in
Brighton Protesting Against the Murder of Children in Gaza had to Put Up With an
Attack by their Own Headteacher Shelly Baker
It is remarkable how age does not
confer wisdom. As Shelley Baker, Headteacher of Brighton’s Varndean
School demonstrated, sometimes people immature with age.
I came down at about 10.30 to
Jubilee Square in Brighton, where the Library is situated, to findabout 200 school students sitting in a square
listening to speakers talking about how children, 40% of Gaza’s population, had
died in their thousands because of Israel’s genocidal attack.
These youngsters had taken half a
day off school to express their solidarity with their compatriots in Gaza. The
strike had been organised by, amongst other groups, Parents4Palestine.
You might think that any
Headteacher worth their salt would have expressed their support and admiration
for the courage and integrity of these young people. Unfortunately this was not
the case.
Varndean School is a place
where all people matter…. A school where individuality is welcomed,
celebrated and shared amongst our whole school community…. Student leadership,
democracy and student voice are central to the way our school works. We believe
that developing leadership skills in all students will help us nurture young
adults who, in turn, will become respected, trusted and kind citizens.
Unfortunately these fine words were
just that – words. As Neil Young wrote they are ‘words between the lines of age’. Meaningless
interruptions of thought signifying nothing as is often the case with mission statements.
In
her letter addressed toVarndean families Baker paid tribute to
‘young people’s
involvement in democratic processes (but) we do
not support students leaving school to strike
Perhaps someone should explain to
Baker that striking is part of the democratic processes she refers to!
The rest of the letter went from
dismal to dire to execrable. A school students strike to protest against the
genocide of children in Gaza was turned into a ‘safeguarding’ issue. Who was to
be safeguarded? Jewish and Israeli school students apparently. Baker wittered
on:
We have been working hard in school to educate
students in being sensitive to all students and understand how this impacts Jewish
and Israeli students.
Shelley Baker - Head Teacher Varndean School
This is a classic example of anti-Palestinian
racism. Whenever colonial violence is mentioned or referred to then immediately
‘anti-Semitism’ is brought up. As if that is what Jews now stand for. Israel is
not a fucking Jew. It is an American sponsored Rottweiler in the Middle East. As
Joe Biden put
it, if Israel was not there it would have had to be invented. That is why
the United States supports Israel, whatever it does, through thick and thin.
Baker went on about ‘the significant rise in reported anti-Semitic
incidents.’ as if there is a connection between opposing genocide of Palestinian
children and anti-Semitism in Britain.
Indeed, unwittingly, Baker herself
was giving an excellent demonstration of the very anti-Semitism she was purportedly
opposing. Her letter assumed that opposition to the murder of Palestinian children
and anti-Semitism went together. In other words that Jews support the murder of
Palestinians.
If that was the case then so what? It
would be tragic that those who were the victims of extermination 80 years ago
had now become the supporters of genocide. But if Shelley Baker were to open
her eyes she would see that thousands of Jews worldwide have expressed their
opposition to what is being done in their name.
Jewish Voice
for Peace in the United States has led the sit-in and demonstrations of
thousands of Jews in Congress. In Britain there is a host of Jewish organisations
– from Jewish Network for Peace, Jewish Voices for Labour, Jews Against
Genocide etc. – who formed part of a thousand strong bloc on the last
demonstration in London.
What Shelley Baker along with her
New Labour/Starmerite friends is doing is repeating the racist tropes of the
now discredited Suella Braverman, the most racist Home Secretary that Britain
has ever had the misfortune to experience. It is of note that all the racist
schemes such as the Rwanda Project and the Public Order Act 2003 were supported
by Keir Starmer and his supporters.
What Baker was saying was that if
you oppose racist murders then you are a racist because the racists might take
offence! We should turn a blind eye for fear of offending the racists.
If there are Jewish people who
support what is happening in Gaza and unfortunately there are who go by the
name Zionists, then shame on them. They should not be pandered to but condemned
outright. However it is not anti-Semitic to oppose genocide.
I therefore wrote a letter to Shelly Baker asking her if she
ever considered that the ‘reported rise
in reported anti-Semitic incidents’ might have something to do with people
like her. I wrote:
Has
it never occurred to you that it is the association, by people like you, between
British Jews and what Israel does that is responsible for the increase in
anti-Semitism which you mention in your letter?
Are
you not aware that every single human rights organisation from Amnesty
International to Human
Rights Watch to Israel’s B’tselem
have described Israel as an apartheid state? How come someone so ignorant of the
world around her is head teacher of a major school in Brighton? …
Yes
Israel describes itself as a Jewish State. South Africa 40 years ago described
itself as a White State. Did that mean that every White person outside South
Africa was implicated in the crimes of Apartheid? So why do you associate
Jewish people in this country with what is a Jewish Supremacist state called
Israel?
In the 1930s the pro-Zionist Daily Mail campaigned vociferously against the 'bogus' Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany - today they attack other refugees and asylum seekers
You
mention the presence of Israeli students at your school. If you had had White
South African students studying at the school would that have been a reason for
keeping silent on apartheid? Would the presence of German students in British
schools in the 1930s have been a reason for keeping quiet about the Nazis’
anti-Semitism?
Large
parts of the British Establishment 90 years ago thought exactly like you do now
and refused to even mention the Nazis’ policies towards Jews.I refer to the BBC and The Times, to say nothing of the Daily Mail and Express which campaigned against the entry of Jewish
refugees from Germany.
I continued to explain that it was
people like Shelly Baker who were in part responsible for any increase in anti-Semitism.
It is ironic that a letter that talks about ‘sensitivity’ towards Jewish students
ends up repeating the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews are responsible for
Israeli war crimes.
I concluded my letter by saying
that
instead of pouring cold water on democratic
initiatives on the part of your students it might be better to welcome them as
a sign of their maturity. Would that the same could be said for some of their
elders.
I asked Baker to withdraw her
letter and apologise. There were by all accounts very many letters, not least from
parents, along similar lines.
Taken aback by these letters Shelley
Baker apologised, not for what she had written but for ‘giving offence’. In so
doing she compounded her original crime, writing that the letter was written in
haste but
It was important to address our immediate
safeguarding concerns about an event organised outside of our school
You can take a horse to water but
you can’t force it to drink. There were no safeguarding concerns. Certainly not
in respect of Jewish students and the insinuation that Jews wereput out by a strike against genocide was both
racist, anti-Semitic and insulting.
Yet Shelley did not seem to
understand, in her slow-witted, insensitive response. Instead of seeing her
role as one of encouraging participation and debate, she sees herself as a
controller and manager. An administrator reacting to the disruption of normal
rhythms and routines by finding Jews as a peg to hang her frustrations upon.
I therefore wrote back to her
tonight saying that the problem with her letter was not that it caused offence. This is the language of the enemies of freedom
of speech. As Sir Stephen Sedley ruled in Redmond Bate v DPP (2000)
“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but
the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome
and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only
to speak inoffensively is not worth having”.
I
pointed out to Baker that
sometimes it is necessary to give offence if
justice is to be done. If Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks hadn't offended
White racists in Alabama and the Deep South Black people would still be segregated
in cafes and buses.
If Palestinians don't stand up to the neo-Nazis in
Tel Aviv, the ones who march to the chant 'Death to the Arabs', in just
the same way as my grandparents faced mobs chanting 'death to the Jews' in
Poland, then the Palestinians will suffer a second Nakba… My grandparents were
lucky to escape Poland in 1912 and thus avoid the Holocaust. Thousands of
Palestinians are dying and have already died in Gaza and your students should
be praised, not admonished, for having stood up for them.
What I take exception to is the way it is assumed
that school students who have the courage and integrity to stand up against
genocide taking place today in Gaza are attacked, by their head teacher
no less, for posing a safeguarding threat to Jewish students. That is
intolerable….
you have no business equating opposition to
genocide, bombing of hospitals, medics, ambulances etc. with anti-Semitism. Are
you really saying that Jews bear a responsibility for the actions of the
Israeli state?
I finished by asking Baker to withdraw her letter
and apologise
‘not for the offence it caused
but (for) its contents. We all live and learn and I hope that you do so too.
The demonstration was also
reported in the on-line Starmerite Brighton
and Hove NewsScores
of children skip school to call for Gaza ceasefire. If the article was not
bad enough then the comments below it were vile. Despite being organised by Parents4Palestine one commenter wrote
that it was ‘Basically grooming children into taking one
side over another in a foreign religious conflict.’
Grooming children is not normally associated with their parents.
An even more vile comment, by Pink Mermaid asserted thatthe attack on 7 October included ‘The Israeli babies that Hamas roasted in
ovens. Or the 80% of children that were tortured 80% and beheaded.’
Needless to say this comment was also deleted
All of this atrocity propaganda has been disproven not least
by Israel’s own statistics. No child under 3 died. Very few under 18 died.
Compare this with the thousands of Palestinian children who Israel subsequently
murdered. Perhaps Palestinian babies are also Hamas ‘terrorists’? That was the
opinion of the vile commenters.
The paper is edited by an ardent Starmer supporter Genocide Jo Wadsworth who has supported
every American war going – from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and beyond.
Unfortunately Brighton’s local paper The
Argus doesn’t seem to cover local news anymore since it is produced mainly
from Portsmouth.
I submitted a few comments all of which were removed by Genocide Jo. Clearly the only comments
that are allowed are racist, bigoted and Islamaphobic ones. All in the cause of
fighting ‘anti-Semitism’.
When I came to Brighton half a century ago Brighton and Hove had
3 Tory MPs and a Council controlled by the Conservatives. Today theTories are a rare species Two MPs are Labour
(though Peter Kyle in Hove is to the right of most Tories) and the other is Britain’s
only Green MP Caroline Lucas. Brighton & Hove is a liberal city which is
known as Britain’s Gay Capital.
It would appear that all the racists and reactionaries that
we spent time evicting have found a home in Genocide Jo’s rag.
But we should be proud of the fact that though some of their
elders are crusty reactionaries, young Brightonians are carrying on the
tradition of radicalism which saw a 3,000 march for Palestine a couple of weeks
ago and a multiplicity of activities in support of the Palestinians and against
Genocide, including a sit in at the rail station and next Tuesday a picket of
the clones in the local Starmerite Labour Group who control the Council and who
have so far said nothing about the ongoing genocide.
Below is a story from a child in Gaza about what is
happening.
Tony Greenstein
Jo Wadsworth, Gaza, School Strike, Brighton & Hove News,
Shelley Baker, Varndean School, Suella Braverman, JNP, JVL, Jews
Against Genocide, Stephen Sedley, Starmer, Genocide
Noar
with her grandfather’s battery-operated radio. Photo provided by Noar Diab.
The windows are always open, to avoid the danger of shattered
glass. Every morning I am woken by an obnoxious fly buzzing around the room. It
gets louder the closer it is to my ear. Sleep is very precious because I get so
little. Therefore, it is annoying to be deprived of it by an insect.
I get up and feel irritated. I wonder how I managed to sleep
at all through the sound of my grandpa’s annoying radio. Every Gazan family has
the same battery-powered radio. It is our source of information when there is
no electricity or internet. I really hate that radio because of what it
represents. It makes me feel so tense, because we only use it during times like
these: when we are under attack and when people we love are dying.
I go to the bathroom. I wash my face using a Coca Cola bottle
that I filled with water. Then I go to the kitchen to make coffee with the
small amount of water I have left in the bottle. I sit there in the kitchen
alone and drink it with feelings of guilt — because water is very scarce and
some people are going days without drinking anything.
Next is the hardest part of my daily routine. I contact my
friends one by one to check if they are still alive. I have to prepare myself
mentally before I start messaging them. I do this out of habit, although I know
it is in vain. I feel very anxious wondering whether I will ever get a response
back.
I keep calling my best friend Maimana because I heard that
there had been a bombardment where she is staying. I try again for the
thirtieth time but her phone is still not ringing. She has no connection. I
feel afraid for her safety and my heart starts pounding. I repeatedly tell
myself that it will be okay and she will call me back when she has a
connection.
Eventually, the rest of my family wakes up. I am no longer
alone. We sit together and have our daily conversation about which
neighborhoods Israel bombed last night. It is our morning ritual to catch up on
what happened during those precious three hours of sleep.
There are 14 of us staying together in a relative’s house.
Each of us has a chore to perform in the morning. The men go to the bakery to
try and find some bread. Then they take the empty bottles and tanks to the well
to fill them with water. Meanwhile, the women start doing the dishes, cleaning
the floor, and preparing lunch.
Lunch depends on whether there is bread or not. Mostly there
is not. Our options are limited, but at least we have options. Some aren’t so
lucky and we hear about people suffering from malnutrition.
My mom calls and sounds like she has been crying. I ask if
she’s okay and she tells me that she is. I know she is lying to me. My uncle
takes the phone and goes into another room. I immediately know that something
is wrong. My heart feels heavy for the rest of the day. I have a feeling that
my family is acting weird and holding something back from me.
We receive internet connection just for limited periods
throughout the day. Each time we are reconnected, I rush to text my friends,
check the news online, and post on social media about what is happening to us.
We are bombarded with the same questions about Hamas and the seventh of
October. This shows a complete lack of understanding from the Western media
about what is happening to us.
The internet is disconnected again. So like every other
normal Palestinian family living through this struggle, we play cards while the
stupid radio tells us what is happening via news reports.
I have the urge to ask my family if they know something that
I should know about. But I hold back because I am scared that the news will
break my heart. Instead, I go to the balcony so that I can listen to my
favorite song. Hymn
to Gentrification by Faraj Suleiman. This song feels like talking to
someone who understands my agony.
My solitude is interrupted by a phone call from a friend. I
pick up but it doesn’t connect so I leave it. I kept listening to the song and
telling myself that everything is okay. I know that is a lie. I have a dreadful
feeling in my stomach.
Maimana and Noar. Photo
provided by Noar Diab.
My phone rings again. It is the same friend. I pick up and
this time we are connected. “Is it true that Maimana and her family have been
killed?” My heart falls and shatters into a million little pieces. “No, no. Who
said that?” I reply, while tears fill my eyes. “Everyone,” he said back to me.
I scream and the tears start falling from my eyes.
She was my very best friend. I loved no one like I loved her.
At that moment I feel like I have lost everything. It hurts how you can be
talking to someone and they get killed the next day. The memories we shared
start playing back in my mind. I can hear her laugh. I remember singing in the
car with her mum. It is all too much, and I break down.
This is the second time in as many weeks that I get the news
about losing a loved one. The first time was my dear friend Abraham. He was
unlike anyone else: funny, clever and with such a big heart. I can’t describe
the feeling when you get this type of news. It’s shattering – like when you
drop a plate and it breaks into many pieces.
It always gets worse at nighttime. That is when the horror
begins. We all sleep together in the same room, because it feels safer. I try
to sleep through the noises of heavy bombing sounds and news reports on the
radio. My eyes get heavier and heavier. And then my mind eventually gives up
and I drift off to sleep.
The next morning I wake up. But this time there is no
annoying buzzing around the room. The fly had been scared away by the bombing
overnight. And I get up to face another day of heartache and listening to my
grandfather’s radio.
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