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.

to sleep beside an olive tree

Oh, my occupier,
when you kill me
don’t forget to steal what is in my pocket.
There you will find humanity, justice and conscience.
Don’t throw them away.
Take them,
practice them.
Let my people find some hope.

Excerpt from a poem by Malak Hijazi, aged 19 years, October 1st 2019, Gaza.

We Are We Are Not Numbers (WANN) was exhibiting at the P21 gallery in London last weekend. WANN is a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in the Gaza Strip. It tells the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news and advocates for their human rights. 

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”.

I will not look away

I will not look away
To spare myself pain
Of witnessing grief
For the slain, slaughtered.
These were not warriors
Killed in combat,
But children, fenced in,
Shelled from afar,
Sighted by snipers,
Snares for rescuers.
Do not look away.

These sketches of Palestinian civilians mourning their children are to amplify the message of journalists working in Gaza.
These drawings are derived from images taken by Mahmoud Bassam, verified photographer in Gaza, published on Instagram.

In scrolling, I see new reports are coming out right now that the assault on the city of Rafah, that had been threatened to start in two weeks, is happening now. Rafah is the so called safe area designated by the occupying power, refuge for more than a million displaced people from the north of Gaza. No time has been given for the civilians to flee, and there was in any case nowhere left for them to go. They were already exhausted, starved and harried by the occupying army. I fear deaths may rise exponentially, from tens to hundreds of thousands in a very short time.

The following infographic comes from Euromedmonitor.

If you live in a democracy, and if you still believe in the rule of law, now is the time to be heard. Please do not look away.

Remembrance day

On 11th November, there was much hype from politicians of all hue that to march for a ceasefire and lifting of the siege in Gaza was in some way disrespectful to fallen and surviving soldiers. Very many of us, by contrast, felt Armistice or Remembrance Day to be the most important day on which to call for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and the denial of the very basics for survival to an entrapped population.

This is an unfolding genocide by Israel, supported by the western powers. As I write, the news from Gaza grows thin as telecommunications fail. The largest hospital no longer functions and is now described as a “death zone”, another is surrounded. The death count stopped days ago at just short of 12000 as no infrastructure remains to number or name the killed.

With the siege ongoing, I fear that infectious disease, injury, exhaustion, malnutrition and ultimately dehydration will result in the numbers killed escalating exponentially. What will be found when once again Gaza is opened? How many of the more than two million people will have survived?

It is my understanding that no nation can claim “self defense” as a legal argument for making war on people living within territory it controls and nor is collective punishment of civilians permitted under international law. As citizens of the nations complicit in this slaughter, we have to make our voices heard. Together, in civic life, in our trades unions and political parties, on the streets in peaceful protest, we have influence.

Although the march never went near the Cenotaph, London is so full of monuments to war, it is hard to avoid them. In some of these sketches can be seen the Wellington Arch, proclaiming Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon. A bronze on top of this depicts the Angel of Peace descending on the four-horsed chariot of War. 

I believe there will be another march in London this coming Saturday.

March for Gaza

Like countless others across the world, I mourn the many people brutally murdered by Hamas three weeks ago.

Yesterday, along with hundreds of thousands of others in London, I marched for Palestine, to desperately urge that our democratic leaders pressure Israel now for a ceasefire and lifting of the siege on Gaza.

With decades of isolation and deprivation, now under almost unprecedented bombardment, with civil infrastructure destroyed, with forced movement of populace and without fuel, food, and safe water, Palestinians in Gaza are imminently facing mass deaths. These are approaching 8000 in three weeks from munitions (40% of them children). However, without ceasefire and lifting of the siege, the killing, from infectious and water-borne disease, from starvation, from untreated injury and illness, and then finally from dehydration, will rise exponentially from tens to hundreds of thousands of people, or maybe more.

If this proceeds, what is unfolding amounts to genocide. Even now this can be stopped under pressure from democratic nations allied to Israel. This is on us to grieve with citizens of Israel and Gaza, and demand of our elected representatives clear-sightedness, moral leadership and urgency, that this imminent mass killing is averted.

In the UK we can write to our MP.
Email your MP: Take action to stop the assault on Gaza

History of Palestine and Israel
BBC Radio 4 – Understand

Links to donate and help
Major UK charities open Israel and Gaza fundraising appeals (civilsociety.co.uk)
How to help victims of the Israel-Hamas war : NPR