Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

If the intention of the occupying force has been unclear to you in the past 4 weeks, than I hope the above definition helps clarify matters. I won’t go into the history of the illegal occupation here, as I have other blog posts on it, and I won’t entertain the white supremist notion that the currant drive to turn Gaza into a “parking lot” or to “flatten it” started on October the 7th. If you still believe that settler colonialism is a valid course of action, than I urge you to start petitioning your government to give a large chunk of your native land over to Afghani refugees. Especially if your British, seeing how much our Prime Minister and Home Secretary believe “Israel has a right to exist”. Maybe we can handover Essex, or Norfolk? Or is it only acceptable to hand over land that doesn’t belong to you?

The people of Gaza have been living under a military blockade for 16 years now. That basically means that Israel, the occupying force, controls everything that goes into and out of Gaza. They control the land, the air and the sea, as well as the food, electricity, water, medical supplies and everything else that Palestinians need to survive. War crimes are not new to The Occupiers, in 2007 it decided to limit the food coming into Gaza. According to their ‘Red Line’ documents they calculated that each Palestinian needed 2,279 calories to survive and therefore restricted imports based on this “daily humanitarian portion”. Food essentials such as meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables became a luxury and a population of over 2 million people, over half of whom were already refugees and living under the poverty line, became increasingly food insecure. According to the United Nations General Assembly at the time “Gaza continues to suffer from severe restrictions on land, air and maritime movement, coupled with recurrent hostilities since July 2007. From the onset of the imposition of the closure and severe economic and movement restrictions from 2007 to 2018, the economic growth of Gaza fluctuated sharply and grew on average by just 0.8 per cent annually“ Although this policy of collective starvation ended after three years, in 2010, it shows that the occupiers are no strangers to collective punishment, which is a war crime under international law.

War crimes are the Occupations bread and butter. According to MEP Mick Wallace, in his speech to the UN on the 16th of October, he highlighted that in the first 10 days of the current genocide, the occupiers had killed over 1,000 children, had a complete siege of Gaza, which included turning off the electricity, water and the internet. The Apartheid (also illegal under international law) state have used collective punishment, forced expulsion, disproportionate ariel bombardment of densely populated areas and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructures such as schools, hospitals and press offices. This genocide, unlike previous one, has been televised. Thanks to the incredibly brave Palestinians in Gaza who have been documenting their lives and showing live footage of the incessant bombing as well as the incredible levels of destruction. We no longer need to rely on verifications from the UN and USA that conveniently take over 6 months and can be printed in tiny fonts, hidden amongst other news, we can see for ourselves. We saw the white phosphorus bombs, also illegal, being dropped on a civilian population. We have seen the deliberate targeting of ambulances, another war crime, and we have seen the occupiers “level the place” as endorsed by US senator  Lindsey Graham.

According to figures published by CNN on the 7th of November 2023, over 10,000 Palestinians have now been killed. I’m no fan of CNN, who claim that the “conflict began on the 7th of October” peddling a lie that overlooks settler colonialism and land theft that began with the British colonisation of Palestine in 1912, but I’m willing to overlook that to share information from sources that clearly don’t have a Palestinian bias in order to be as objective as possible. They claim that nearly half of all those killed are children. There are other statistics that claim more than half, up to 70% of all casualties are women and children, but I would hope that even the conservative estimate of 5,000 dead children would be enough to demand a ceasefire. “In the densely populated Gaza Strip, home to more than 2 million people, airstrikes have forced about 1.5 million people — about two-thirds of the population — to flee their homes, according to UN figures” Images on social media have shown, what is being described as Nakba 2023, mirroring the original Nakba from 1948, as the ethnic cleansing of Gaza intensifies. Yet another war crime.

Whilst I absolutely call for a ceasefire, I think the more important conversation has to be around liberation. Palestinians want their land back, the whole land, as it was before 1948. We’re not here asking for equality, or to go back to living in an open air concentration camp, where the Zionist control Palestinians movement, opportunities and essential supplies. This is also not about equal rights, its about liberation. So while we do want to dismantle the system of Apartheid, more importantly, we want a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. This isn’t a radical cry, it’s not a call for destruction or war, its simply saying that the entire land mass is Palestine and should be returned to the Palestinians from whom it was stolen in 1912 and 1948. Palestinians who are Muslim, Christian, Jewish and of every other faith or of no faith, but crucially, fundamentally Palestinian. The false narrative peddled by Zionists that the land is somehow historically theirs from over 3000 years ago, is farcical. Israel is an ethno-national state, which requires Jewish people from Europe and America to bolster its population. It’s racism runs so deeply that Jewish people who are black are discriminated against as well as some from Russia. Zionism is white supremacy and relies on settler colonialism to exist. It also wants us to believe that saying anything against Israel is antisemitic, to shut down legitimate conversations. Is it then Islamophobic to criticise the lack of free speech in Saudi Arabia? Is it anti-Hindu to criticise India and its Hindutva policies? Is it anti-Buddhism to call out Myanmar and its human rights abuses? Israel is not exceptional in any way other than it is a settler colonial state, existing on stolen land. Its not antisemitic to demand that the land be returned to its original inhabitants, in facts its racist to Palestinians to demand anything less.

I shouldn’t need to write this post. Nothing here is new. We are in the surreal position of being able to witness, first-hand, the current genocide in Gaza. At the same time we are being gaslighted into thinking any criticism of Israel’s settler colonialism is antisemitic. As the days go on, we are finding out more and more ministers and people supporting Israel have contracts or shares in arms and oil companies that benefit from this genocide. Yet more and more people are speaking up for Palestine. Even with the whole of western media’s propaganda machine supporting the occupiers, people are coming out in their hundreds and thousands, from all backgrounds and all faiths to support the Palestinian cause. Like the conscientious objectors before us, attempts will be made to silence us, to vilify us and even criminalise us. As Frederick Douglass declared “There Is No Progress Without Struggle” Show your solidarity this Saturday, for the Palestinian cause. Join (hopefully) millions of us as we take to the streets of London, peacefully demanding a ceasefire. This genocide is televised, and in the age of social media, your complicity or your support will also be recorded.