Yasmin’s Eye on …. The UK is allowing Gaza to be forgotten NEWSLETTER (£) If Britain lived up to its own, much heralded democratic values, Gaza might yet be saved

It’s been a year since the Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200. Israel’s retaliatory military responses continue relentlessly. The land and air attacks are in danger of being normalised. It’s what happens when a war goes on and on. People move on, either because they can’t care anymore, or because another conflagration has caught their attention.

As the West turns its wrath on Iran, a sponsor of Hezbollah, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies must believe they can carry on terrorising, killing and maiming Palestinian civilians, stealing more of their lands and using their might to subdue Lebanon. And that their friends in high places will silence its critics. These Zionist leaders need to get out and about more. Powerful governments may be beholden to them, but globally, citizens are standing up for Gaza.

As Arundhati Roy, winner of the 2024 the PEN Pinter prize, said in her acceptance speech this week: “Not all the power and money, not all the weapons and propaganda on earth can any longer hide the wound that is Palestine. The wound through which the whole world, including Israel, bleeds.”

Resistance is everywhere

Resistance come from all faiths and ethnicities; marches go on and on and grow bigger. The more they censor us, the more we speak up, including many Jews appalled by what is done in their name.

This April, Jewish-British writer Naomi Klein radically disavowed Zionism: “[It] has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly – it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet. It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.”

Last week, former publisher Louise Adler penned a riposte to novelist Howard Jacobson’s column in the Observer, in which he wrote that accusing Israel of infanticide was akin to ancient “blood libel”: “I am surprised that ‘our’ tragedy has left you unable to recognise that the occupation has morally corrupted Israeli society, that successive Israeli governments have colluded to oppress Palestinians, destroy their lives, their homes, and ensured the impossibility of any prospect of justice or peace.”

In her speech, Roy asked: “which of us sitting in this hall would willingly submit to the indignity that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been subjected to for decades? What peaceful means have the Palestinian people not tried? What compromise have they not accepted – other than the one that requires them to crawl on their knees and eat dirt?”

Hunger used as a weapon

This week Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, claiming it was targeting a Hamas command centre. Displaced Palestinian people camped in its compound were burned alive. The UN’s humanitarian affairs agency called for the atrocities to end. Some IDF soldiers have proudly shared social media films showing them humiliating and violating Palestinian detainees. Hunger is being used as a weapon.

If the US stopped its unconditional military support for Israel, the violence would stop. If Britain and the EU lived up to their own, much heralded democratic values, Gaza might yet be saved. By unconditionally siding with Netanyahu, the West has not only betrayed Palestinians and Jewish people, and dismayed global citizens, it has also smashed its own moral timbers.

A poem to consider

I leave you with a poem, by the Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer:

• IF I MUST DIE
• If I must die,
• you must live
• to tell my story
• to sell my things
• to buy a piece of cloth
• and some strings,
• (make it white with a long tail)
• so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
• while looking heaven in the eye
• awaiting his dad who left in a blaze –
• and bid no one farewell
• not even to his flesh
• not even to himself –
• sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
• and thinks for a moment an angel is there
• bringing back love
• If I must die
• let it bring hope
• let it be a tale

He was killed last December, with members of his family. Through unspeakable suffering, they try to remain hopeful. This cause cannot be killed by bombs. But to keep the hope alive, we, who care, must carry on speaking out and defying those complicit in what some describe as genocide.