I’ve been trying since last week to write a blog about the election but so far, it’s a mess. It’s a mess because I keep failing to sleep at bedtime and/or I wake at the very weird hour of four ay em. That’s not, actually, because of the latest horror story to come out of Israel.

That’s because I didn’t just hear about what Israel’s doing last week. It’s not a new idea, for many people, and it’s no surprise that it’s where Israel has got to. It’s not a new idea for anyone who read this book, back in 1986.

The author had the task of assembling a woman’s story, scribbled almost illegibly with the bendy, inner tubes of biros smuggled to her in the hems of clothing, scribbled on bits of scrap paper, scrunched up and smuggled back out into the world in the orifices of various people’s bodies.

So it was not just a fiddly, eye-straining task, it was also a very smelly one.

It’s one woman’s story of just how dreadful things could be in one of the countries that, back then, had fallen into the psychosis that overtakes places that fall victim to US interference.

I had read about the book. I understood how dreadful, how life-changing it would be to read it but I read it, and it was dreadful and it was life-changing.

The woman who spoke to Double Down News this week about the current horrors perpetrated by Israel said that you mainly hear men’s testimony, because Palestine is quite socially conservative, so women don’t feel able to say what is happening to them. Clearly, that was not so in Argentina.

Seeing how things are

So no, it was not that horror story that kept me awake, it was an apparently much smaller one, of a friend who spoke to me this week about being upset because an organisation that’s important to them had abandoned its principles (if indeed it had really held them) when the possibility of a bit of money came their way.

It kept me awake because I was worrying about how very, very few people will go on being what they believe is ‘good’ or ‘honest’ when they stand to lose out – or, from the other side, when dropping that vision of ‘good’ or ‘honest’ will earn them a few quid, or some more influential friends.

Working out the solution

When you start thinking about it, if you really think about it, you tend to first work your way to the top of the power-structures, and come to the conclusion that maybe if we limited how much power, money, property one person could have, then no-one would get the opportunity to be a part of such dreadful, institutionally sustained horrors as those the US/Israel is now presiding over.

If you go on thinking it through for long enough, you realise it’s probably more constructive to start from the other end, and build a society where everyone is confident that they can access housing, education, healthcare – all the things they need for a decent life, so they never need to tell themselves it’s okay to dump their principles for a few quid, or to avoid a spell of social discomfort.

You might then start working out whether you’ve become a socialist or a democrat or an anarchist or whatever your preferred view of politics suggests, or you could just get on with trying to make it happen.

It’s a bastard though, when you keep waking up at four ay em and worrying about the fact that so few people can face up to the first, nasty steps towards understanding the state we’re in, and what it’ll take to get out of it.

Why are the consequences of US and Israeli action almost uniquely dreadful? Because they’re both states founded entirely on settler-colonialism, a political and social system that requires its citizens to put aside their humanity, and contribute daily to a false narrative of who and what they are.

What we learned from the South Africa campaign was that once a state gets like that, it can’t get out of it on its own. It continues in its horror until enough people round the world say ‘right, I understand. I am going to speak out, and I am going to take action, even when the reluctance and fears of others cause me trouble and pain.’

Right, I’ll try and sort out that blog about the election, now.

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