Banners on Nakba Day

Here are posters and banners photographed at the Nakba Day March in London on Saturday 18th May. They are not mine and I do not necessarily endorse every sentiment. But these are heartfelt and impassioned. Please read and reflect.

A detailed poster carried through London.

So many homemade, heartfelt posters and banners.

All eyes on Rafah. The last refuge. The one everyone was sent to as a safe area. The one access point for aid. Now invaded, bombed, a killing field.

This poster features Handala, a cartoon figure created in 1969 by political cartoonist Naji al-Ali that has become an iconic symbol of Palestinian identity and defiance, “portraying war, resistance, and the Palestinian identity”

Safe behind defensive walls, an occupier knows no peace in their heart. An unjust peace contrasts with liberation, which is for everyone.

Gosh, the anger is palpable at the Labour Party’s leadership, which has failed to challenge genocide. Labour isn’t even in government, yet. Will this influence the general election I wonder?

Ask yourself … why the key as a symbol of Nakba Day?

I couldn’t work out the symbolism of the horse.

A change in mood here. At the side of the March route, pleas for liberation from oppression in Iran.

More than 100 press and journalists killed in Gaza since this escalation of the occupation began in October. This guy is present at each protest, cosplaying as press, his flag a tribute and memorial to those who would open our eyes.

A simple and clear demand. Behind is the UK war memorial dedicated to women on the home front.

Flying kites is a pastime in Gaza and a potent symbol of freedom.

The words on the kite say “If I must die, you must live to tell my story” the first lines of a poem by the late Refaat Alareer, professor of world literature and creative writing. He was murdered by occupation forces on 6th December 2023. He had written the poem for his eldest daughter, Shaimaa. On 26 April 2024, five months after Alareer’s death, Shaimaa, her husband Mohammed Siyam, and their newborn baby were killed by an airstrike on their home in Gaza City.

After the Nakba, the catastrophe, people still hold the keys to their ancestral homes from which they were driven out three generations ago.

A shrine by the roadside. Each small white bundle represents a child in a shroud killed on each day since October 2023.

It turns out that the International Criminal Court has its sights set on arresting those who, allegedly, instigated terrible crimes.

We passed a counter protest of a few dozen far right extremists. One of their banners is included here for comic effect.

Conversation as a gecko

This was a chance discussion. I grabbed the words because they seemed illustrative. If we identify as White, or are identified as White, or pass as White day to day, do we have a White culture?

We each have multiple overlapping shared cultures deriving from our family, history, geography, migrations, sexuality, friends, education, experiences, faith and active acquisition. However, if we are White, all of these are influenced, if not wholly owned, by a culture that we can call White.

The concept of White is only loosely linked to skin colour and has nothing to do with genetics: race is a wholly social fabrication. Rather, the essence of Whiteness is power sourced in violence. The Whiteness of culture is intrinsically bound up with the last five hundred years of European colonialism and expropriation, enslavement and genocide, and delusions of supremacy. Whiteness is tied to the chance development of capitalism in the coffee houses and markets of London and Amsterdam.

White culture is so pervasive that we can take it to be universal and normal across much of the world. Indeed, where it holds sway, it is intrinsic to the idea of White culture that it is normative and holds us all to arbitrary standards. As a White person it can be hard to see this, looking at our culture from within as it were, just as we cannot readily perceive the curvature of space-time though we and all things round us are affected by gravity. Moreover, our inability to see White culture is wilful: we corrupt our vision and obscure our history and thus reproduce our cultural memes.

Capitalism is a powerful cultural mechanism that alienates us from our heritages, commodifies our identities and stories, and sells these back to us as pared-down, corrupted, corporate-owned and controlled shared dreams.

Finding meaning

Toni Morrison speaks on a clip published on Instagram by @femalepoetssociety.

April 3rd 2024

The Israeli military said the investigation found that the officers mishandled critical information and violated the army’s rules of engagement.
“The strike on the aid vehicles is a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the standard operating procedures,” it said.
The army said it initially hit one car. As people scrambled away into a second car, it hit that vehicle as well. A third strike was launched as survivors scrambled into a third car.
Excerpts from The Guardian. 5th April 2024

Note that this targeted killing had the effect of turning back ships of much needed aid under conditions of purposeful and intended famine caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Furthermore, nearly 200 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since this catastrophic escalation in Israel’s occupation started in October.

Beware:
All too often, we say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we’re told that we think.
We see
What we’re permitted to see.
Worse! We see
What we’re told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see, even an obvious lie
Again and again and again
Maybe to say it, almost by reflex
Then to defend it, because we’ve said it
And at last to embrace it, because we’ve defended it
And because we cannot admit that we’ve embraced and defended an obvious lie.
Thus, without thought, without intent,
We make mere echoes of ourselves —
And we say
What we hear others say.

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

2nd April 2024

On 14th March, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove), laid before Parliament non statutory plans to identify individuals and groups as “extremist”, disengaging them from democratic involvement with central government.
He said:
“The proposed definition will hold that extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance that aims to: negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve those results. While the Government in no way intend to restrict freedom of expression, religion or belief, we cannot be in a position where, unwittingly or not, we sponsor, subsidise or support in any way organisations and individuals opposed to the freedoms that we hold dear.”

The press release attached to this measure offers as context “Since the 7 October Hamas terror attacks in Israel concerns have been raised about the wide-ranging risk of radicalisation.” In considering causes of polarisation of opinion, no mention is made of the actions of Israel that has killed more than 30000 Palestinians in 6 months and destroyed all infrastructure for survival and civic life in land it occupies, and that is now subject to two direct instructions from the international Court of Justice to stop genocidal actions and to ensure provision of humanitarian aid and food to the people. In Parliament, examples were given of organisations to be investigated as extremist that include those promoting democratic engagement by Muslim citizens.

In our society, it is mainstream and not at all extreme to give moral and material support to an allied nation that, systematically and at scale, murders civilians and creates severely injured and traumatized children without any surviving family. In the debate, as an example, holding aloft a model of a dead baby in protest against complicity in genocide was considered “extremist”.