This is the reverse side of a political banner for the march for Palestine this weekend. I don’t know if its meaning is clear without words, but I am trying to convey a sense of hope. The olive tree is widely grown in Palestine, and has deep tough roots from which it can regrow and bear fruit.
Hope is much needed. Have you noticed that the official death toll in Gaza has been static at about 35000 since February, while the onslaught continues and substantial areas are subject to famine? As best I can tell from on-the-ground citizen journalists posting mainly on Instagram, uncounted people are buried beneath rubble and others lie exposed and eaten by animals. The toll of targeted killing, including on health care workers, means there are not enough people with civil authority to rescue, identify, verify, and bury the dead. Counting the dead stopped.
I have seen unofficial and unverified estimates that perhaps 200,000 people have been killed in this phase of the occupation. This is plausible.
I have not yet finished the front of the placard, but this is my initial idea. In the West, what can we do? We have democracies. Let’s use them.
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 RefaatAlareer, 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.
The bronze statue of Winston Churchill, with the Houses of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster behind.
The British Empire, for which Churchill fought and served, was founded fundamentally on violence, often of an extreme and punitive nature, serving the high ideal of “liberal imperialism”: that England “brought civilisation to the ignorant, and those not ready to govern themselves”. Britain held the mandate for Palestine following the First World War, and for part of this time Churchill was secretary of state for the colonies, as well as later prime minister. Lessons in brutality learned elsewhere in the empire, not least in Ireland, were applied in Palestine to suppress rebellion. This is documented in Legacy of Violence: A history of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins.
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.
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.
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 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.
“You need only ask yourself…where was I when genocidal acts were being committed in Gaza against the Palestinian people?”
When, in the Al Awda Hospital, the surgical case list whiteboard became useless because of the overwhelming number of people arriving severely injured by munitions and needing treatment, instead, these words were written: “Whoever stays Until the end Will tell the story We did what we could *remember us*
The case was presented by South Africa at the International Court of Justice for an end to “The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time”
“Some might say that the very reputation of international law, its ability and willingness to bind and to protect all people equally, hangs in the balance.”, (Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC).
The systematic destruction of the health care system in Gaza is a crime against humanity, a piece of the ongoing act of genocide as territories under occupation are made uninhabitable for the Palestinian people. I stand with other health care workers to protest against the UK government’s complicity.
Here are the designs for my banner for the health care workers’ march on Downing Street just before Christmas. Somehow making banners in the face of such horror feels childish. But what can we do? We have so little power or influence. I have asked myself before, what would I do if my country was complicit in genocide? Would I even recognize it as it unfolded? Though powerless, would I stand against the horror, or, instead, close my eyes and ears and heart, and comfort myself in the denial myths?
In Gaza we are witnessing the deprivation of means of sustenance, destruction of most housing and infrastructure needed for survival, displacement of most of the population from conflict zone to conflict zone, and the systematic and indiscriminate use of munitions against civilians. Today, the International Court of Justice began hearings in a case brought by South Africa seeking a provisional measure that would oblige the occupying power “not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”. The UK government meanwhile is carefully sidestepping the issue, seemingly avoiding legal opinions on any aspect of this (see the sequence from parliamentary committee from minute 20). My protest is against the UK government. I want it to wake up, do its duty and use its considerable influence to stop this genocide before it is too late.
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 hospitalno 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.
kestrelart 