Today, I went to the last day of the Palestine exhibition at P21 gallery in Chalton Street, London. You can see quite a lot of it here…
Click here to watch the reel on Facebook
When I arrived, I recognized the face on the screen in the main hall. It was Wael Dahdouh, talking about the bombardment of Gaza City – about how sometimes, Israel would put out warnings – minutes before attacking a high-rise tower building, they’d put out a warning, then tell the world how hard they’d tried to avoid killing civilians.
I know Dahdouh from his reports from Gaza for Al Jazeera, but the film they were showing wasn’t from this year, it was from 2021, when Israel bombed the building Al Jazeera was operating from. It reminded me of the reporters in Baghdad, when Bush and Blair involved us all in wrecking Iraq, how they’d blown up the buildings Channel 4 were operating from – how we learned that governments know they have to stop accurate reporting of military actions, if they want people to support those actions.
The picture at the top of this article is from Gaza in 2012.
I most recently saw Wael Dahdouh reporting for al Jazeera this year, when Israel killed his family. You can see the report on that here…
Is he still alive? … I hope he is still alive. Last time I looked at al Jazeera, they seemed to be running out of reporters in Gaza.
Today was the last day of the exhibition at P21 but it was still full of people – people sitting or standing, quietly watching the documentaries, or contemplating the artworks and the textiles. Even the café was quieter than cafes normally are – packed out, but many people sitting talking quietly, or just thinking. It felt quite intense – not like the quietness of a church – the quietness of deep thought. I know what they were thinking because I was thinking it.
This time, despite the best attempts of our politicians and the media to confuse us, we’ve worked out what’s going on, and we’re trying to work out what to do about it. Social media are full of things like this…
We have noticed – but what do we do? All the former urgencies – to save our NHS, to save the disabled, the elderly and the poor from the cruelties of the DWP – to get some action on climate crisis before our children’s world is destroyed – so many urgencies have now all distilled themselves into this one – our politicians don’t care. They aren’t trying. How can we move them to action? If they won’t act, how do we get better ones — What do we do?
We have marched, we have campaigned, we have joined political parties and unions, we’ve stood behind street stalls and talked to more people, we’ve joined debates, raised funds, what else can we do.
It’s not that our politicians haven’t noticed. They have noticed, but all they have thought is ‘people are angry with us. That means they might hurt us. We want protection.’ Now, they are even trying to tell us that we – the majority of us – all of us who’ve come together to try to make them save Gaza – they are trying to tell us that all of us are ‘dangerous Islamic extremists’, and that they need to make our marches and demonstrations illegal, so we can’t hurt them.
What do we do?
We do use the ballot box, like they tell us to. Rochdale voted George Galloway in, many said because he’d promised to speak up for Gaza. Meanwhile, as Labour come away with less than 8% of the vote, Keir Starmer had the audacity to ‘apologise to the country for George Galloway’. They voted for him, Sir Keir, because he said he’d do what we want.
I keep going to talks and exhibitions and demonstrations about Palestine, and writing about them and talking about them, just like I see so many people doing whatever they can think of to help. And our Prime Minister responds by saying ‘we mustn’t let our government be influenced by extremists’.
This week, some people in my town tried to stop a local General Dynamics factory making weapons parts. They tried, and went on trying until they were dragged away by police.
Click here to see one of the arrests on a Facebook reel
Last week in the US, that poor man set fire to himself and died.
What do we do?
Samud
It’s the word they use in Gaza – ‘samud’ translates, broadly, as ‘resilience’. It comes after the bit where you’ve thrown yourself on the ground and cried in despair, then realised you’re still alive, so you have to keep trying.
We will keep trying.
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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 