It’s despair isn’t it. You’ve hurt the creature so badly you’re hoping it’ll just die, and no-one will notice.
Or perhaps you’re a mere accomplice, or an accessory after the fact. “Grab a brick,” you say, closing your eyes tight. “Hit it, hit it, put it out of its misery.”
And in a panic rage, they do just that, and you turn away, all sad and safe.
But it’s not really an end-game, that’s an illusion. The television and the newspapers present you with snapshots, or potted history shorn of the hows and whys (they take too long, you wouldn’t understand) so it looks inevitable, impossible to solve.
It’s Palestine just now, but it could be any one of the places in the world where people have been dispossessed, penned in, othered, presented to the world as a problem. A problem with no visible solution.
It’s not impossible
But there is something we can do. It isn’t impossible to solve. It’d difficult, and it’ll take years but there are big, professional, experienced organisations who could get to work today, tomorrow – many of them are out there now – medicins sans frontieres for example, but they can’t do their best work while the imaginary end-game with its guns and bombs goes on.
Our job is to demand that our governments listen to the UN, acknowledge the war crimes – most urgently, acknowledge the war-crime that is about to happen – because that’s the one they most definitely could stop.
Let’s demand it. Loudly.
Hastings, midday today…
…and there will be gatherings near where you are, today and all week because there are lots of people who do know the background, who don’t buy the media’s shallow claim that there’s just two lots of people who keep fighting, and nothing we can do.
Take a look around, and please join the shout-out to stop the killing and maiming of two million people, mostly children. (Life expectancy in Gaza is very, very low).
If you can’t go out today, email your MP, or anyone else you can think of who might be willing to try.
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 