Every step of the way we’re shocked, horrified, looking around wildly for ways to stop it. Aching for the children of Gaza, we want to say we can’t believe humans could do this to other humans but, as we’re constantly reminded, the Holocaust happened. Other extensive mass killings have happened since. Humans wound up sufficiently tight do this.
It is happening. Following mainstream media makes you think you’re being silly if you go on about it. It gradually fades in your mind until you both do and don’t know it is happening.
In a similar mood, we’ve seen the ecological destruction building. We’ve researched, we’ve discussed, we’ve campaigned – we know the oil and the gas need to stay in the ground. We know the nightmare that’s being lined up for our grandchildren and, when we have the headspace to remember it, we know how every filthy ‘war’ they stage sends us spinning closer to irreversible toxicity.
It is happening.
We saw the videos long ago, we read the documents — if our memories are good, we can even remember the order of the list of countries read out by a USA General. With the help of its little allies he said, the USA intended to destroy them all. That’s why, when the Gaza genocide started, and the US ships headed out that way, we worried that it was Iran next, and couldn’t quite remember why.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Gaza… (That’s not all of them — it’s the ones that happen to be on top in my mind). We go out on the streets each time, we build movements, we desperately try and think of new ways of pushing back. In recent years, since we got used to Skype and Zoom, many of us have been busy building human links across the world to counter the dehumanization, to make it harder for them to sell the necessity of destroying another country.
Them.
One thing hardly anyone can doubt by now is that governments, corporations and other powerful organizations really are led by people who will happily kill anything and anyone who’s in the way of the corporate plan. Them. Politics and business are stitched up in such a way that only one type of person easily gets to the top, and education and the media are set up in such a way that there’s no real challenge to…
Them. The media and the politicians shape the message so that we think there’s nothing we can do about Them.
So when the theories started doing the rounds as to why the USA and its little allies, particularly the UK and France, were determined to aid and abet the total destruction of Gaza and the West Bank, there was no need to doubt that they could do it. The theories seemed perfectly viable. I was pretty convinced by the one about the Suez Canal, and we were all ready to believe the one about oil and gas – let’s face it, the last half dozen ‘wars’ (is it really a war, when a country that can’t lose decides to flatten one that can barely fight back?) – the US and its mates have insisted each time it’s because of some really, really nasty terrorist organization – but all those wars turned out to be about oil. I said it was a distraction. I said let’s stick to campaigning for a ceasefire – and we must do that, but nevertheless, now, I’m going to ask – not declaim a truth, but just ask. What do you think about this guy’s theory…?
… and more importantly, if the truth is something like this, what do we do? If that sounded like a too-big-for -your-head theory that just happens to fit the facts (that’s how it struck me, at first) try this shorter version from Yanis Varoufakis…
When 800 000 marched in London, the BBC called it 300 000. Now, they’re painting in the idea that it’s over, that it’s too late…
Please keep marching, writing, signing petitions, coming up with creative activism, trying to stay in touch with any links you have to Palestine — all of that might make our politicians get cold feet sooner, and so save some lives — but also, please be thinking – what do we do about Them, and their big, lethal plans – whether or not any particular theory is right, it’s going to be something like that, isn’t it.
We need to resist for our own sakes anyway, because if they don’t get any obstruction when they do it to others, they’ll do it to us when we’re in the way of whatever corporate plan they’re invested in.
What do we do about Them?
Have the media persuaded you there’s nothing we can do about Them?
It’s not too big for us. I wouldn’t risk saying all of this if I thought it was too big for us, if I thought it would seed despair.
You don’t have to do it on your own you just have to do something.
The way to avoid despair is to remember that no one person has the job of changing the world. All we need is to keep building the push-back until enough millions of people all round the world are thinking ‘what do we do about Them?’ and then doing whatever they can, each in their own way — let’s keep talking and keep thinking and keep trying things until between us, we are enough of a force to take the world back from Them.
I can’t do it, you can’t do it, but we can. So long as we all do something.
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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 
8 responses to “What do we do about Them?”
What do you mean when you hashtag “Free Palestine”? Free them from whom? “The fact that 5.6 million people are stateless after 75 years is, and should be, a horrible stain on the conscience of the modern world. But if you blame Israel for it, and only Israel, then (a) you are suggesting that Israel absorb 5.6 million people who have been taught for four generations that Jews are the spawn of Satan and deserve only torture and death; (b) you’re not paying attention to the role of the UN in keeping them stateless as they continue to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist; (c) you’re ignoring the role – as most of the world has – of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon in continuously refusing to help these refugees. Remember that between 1948 and 1967, Gaza was ruled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan, both of which opted to maintain the refugee camps and neither absorb them nor even allow citizenship rights to those who lived there; and that half a million of these 5.6 million Palestinians still live in refugee camps under Lebanese rule, without rights of citizenship even though they were born in Lebanon. Why not absorb the refugees? Because that would put an end to the largest, most effective, and most heart-wrenching pawn that all of these nations hold in their continued denial of legitimacy for Jewish statehood and self-determination in their ancestral homeland. Because the way they have positioned things, and the way that UNRWA has perpetuated and facilitated this positioning, means that ultimately, if you blame ONLY Israel for the Palestinian refugee crisis (d) you are effectively agreeing with the notion that Israel has no right to exist – “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” = judenrein.” https://sites.google.com/view/whyisrael/unrwa
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Ginny, I promise you I am a long way from blaming only Israel and that really is not what people mean when they say #FreePalestine – it’s a call to end the occupation. I have said elsewhere that the plight of the refugees in Jordan and Lebannon is that they left their original homes because they were being shot at, no-one else offered them citizenship and Israel would not let them return. If I were going to blame anyone, it would be the USA and the UK, who maintain the fictions the Balfour declaration set in train and have never, ever given thought to any peoples who get in the way of their grand plans. As I heard one Jewish woman say recently, “Israel wasn’t a gift, it was a trap.” It’s a nightmare situation but most of the time, it’s the Palestinians who are disregarded. Hence that emphasis. I was speaking only today to another Jewish woman who lives near me about how horrible all this is for Israeli people, how impossible it is for them to raise their voices for peace but for now, with what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank, ending the occupation has to be a priority and the #FreePalestine campaign is as good a way of any of saying that.
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The occupation of Gaza by Israel ended in 2007. Please describe what you mean by “ending the occupation.” What actions should Israel take, and what be the outcomes?
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Again, I promise you I don’t want anyone hurt. Gaza is under siege. No one gets to go in or out without Israeli say-so, no goods go in or out without Israeli say-so, as Israel has just demonstrated, it has control over their food, water and electricity. If they try to go fishing, Israeli forces shoot at their boats and every so often, they get bombed. Similarly, 225 people (last time I looked) have been shot in the West Bank since Oct 7th. Similarly, we’ve heard a heck of a lot about the Oct 7th hostages and I’m as delighted as anyone to see they are beginning to be released but, Israel releasing 150 of the people they have illegally detained for every 50 Israeli hostages they get back won’t make a dent in the number of Palestinians illegally held in Israeli jails – many of them children.
Palestine was a mixed community once before. What’s left of Palestine is a mixed community now. I know it seems difficult to imagine but it could be again. Whether that means dividing the territories anew or going back to the Oslo borders or being really ambitious and taking down the walls and putting away the tanks and starting again, I don’t know – people who know better than I well know which is least challenging but the current situation has to end, for everyone’s benefit, and Israel has the power to do that. It has to face the task. That’s what *I* mean by #FreePalestine.
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You didn’t answer my questions. The border controls with Gaza were loosening. A ceasefire was in place. Other Arab nations were brokering deals with Israel. Peace was in the wind. Why did Hamas launch their barbarous raid, torturing, raping and slaughtering defensless people just at this time? The first women killed were soldiers at the border crossings. Today has been designated as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. We saw what happened when Israel began to pull back on their defences. We know the way women are treated in Iran. In Gaza, it is perfectly legal for a husband to rape his wife. Israel has a Nordic Model for dealing with prostitution. Just imagine the impact on women when an Iran backed extremist version of the Muslim brotherhood expands their rule into Israel.
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Sorry Ginny, it does feel as though you and I have two totally different song-sheets and it’s hard to see how to make sense of it.
Your question was What actions should Israel take? My last paragraph there was my answer – it’s not for me to dictate, but something along those lines – basically, to make an attempt at resolving the situation. It’s clear that the borders were unguarded on 7th Oct where the attack happened, but I wasn’t aware that that was part of any plan. Personally, I would suggest that if it was part of a ‘loosening’ then they’re doing it in the wrong order. I’d say the reason for the Hamas attack was an opportunity, and if Israel wants to loosen up with a view to peace, rather than dreadful battles like that one, they need to stop the shootings in the West Bank and other places, stop the IDF doing things like tear gassing schools, spraying Palestinians’ streets with stink and bulldozing their homes, *then* talk to them about loosening up and resolving conflicts – they also need to release illegal detainees. One of the Palestinian hostages who was released this week had been in an Israeli jail for 8 years – that’s another trampling of international law right there. And all that is a part of the answer to why Hamas did what they did. I do not excuse it and I agree that people like that are going to be a problem – in the words of one young woman from Gaza which I read recently, “we have three enemies – Israel, Egypt and Hamas.”
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My take on this is that Israel is just a government. It’s doing appallingly badly at defending Israelis – Jews and Arabs alike. Long term security, like even the whites of South Africa realised, is democracy and equality. That’s what #FreePalestine means to me. Anything else is apartheid, pure and simple. The difference is that the world is finally walking up to what the seller-colonialist project called ‘Israel’ is all about.
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Here’s the best answer I’ve seen yet to what needs to happen next… https://www.zochrot.org/articles/view/56580/en?p_dirltrstrongUnpacking_the_October__events_A_persistent_Leftist_Position__Your_Queries_Our_Insightsstrongp
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