Eyeless in Gaza - the Epilogue
A valediction
500,000 march for Palestine in London on Saturday, 18 May.
How did the media respond?
Here is the first page of results from a Startpage internet search,
World Socialist Website (2 listings)
Sky news. Tens (sic) of thousands join pro-Palestine march in London for Nakba
YouTube (2 listings)
Middle East Eye
Al Jazeera
Left Voice
Middle East Monitor
LBC. Thousands (sic) of pro-Palestine protestors march on Downing Street.
But it’s not news in the UK yellow press.
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Last Sunday I put up a plea for funds for Gaza.
The people there are desperately short of money for food, water, medicine, you name it.
I received no donations from over 700 reads. Not a cent.
Here are the latest stats this morning.
“Oral Sex” was a filler piece I put up while I worked on the more important Gaza issue.
It was meant to be a light humorous item with a darker anti-religious undercurrent.
It took off faster than any of the 30 or so I had written before.
The Gaza piece had dropped dead in two days in comparison.
The second payment I made to the Bank of Palestine has been frozen there. I have asked for an explanation but I don’t expect to get one. I don’t doubt that there is pressure behind the scenes to cut off not just food, water, and medicine, but funding too. I am in the pit of despair.
So I asked you for money, none came, and had I received any I would not have been able to pass it on. It seems all we can do is write articles and fill comment columns about the depths of evil of the Israeli state, but to actually do something for Gaza we are going to be ignored (marches) or blocked (donations) at every turn. This crushing control cannot be overcome, and Chris Hedges had coincidentally pre-empted my thoughts on that same day: you can read his piece “The New Dark Age” here:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-new-dark-age
Just one quote to give you the drift:
The genocide in Gaza is part of a pattern. It is the harbinger of genocides to come, especially as the climate breaks down and hundreds of millions are forced to flee to escape droughts, wildfires, flooding, declining crop yields, failed states and mass death. It is a blood-soaked message from us to the rest of the world: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you. Gaza puts to rest the lie of human progress, the myth that we are evolving morally. Only the tools change. Where once we clubbed victims to death, or chopped them to pieces with broadswords, today we drop 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, spray families with bullets from militarized drones or pulverize them with tank shells, heavy artillery and missiles.
Excepting only that from where I sit, it is not we. I reside in that Rest of the World, where we view you, your governments, and the powers behind them, with increasing alarm, dismay and disbelief. Jason Hickel, a professor of anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, made these cogent observations recently:
Palestine is the rock on which the West will break itself. Put yourself in the shoes of people in the global South. For nearly two years they have watched how Western leaders, who love to talk about human rights and the rule of law, are happy to shred all these values in the most spectacular displays of hypocrisy in order to prop up their military proxy-state as it openly conducts genocide and ethnic cleansing against an occupied people, even in the face of *overwhelming* international condemnation.’
What do you think people in the South are supposed to conclude from this? What would *you* conclude from this in their position? Decades of Western propaganda have been shattered, this time in full technicolour. Western governments have made it clear that they do not care about human rights and the rule of law when it comes to people of colour, the global majority.
But some good news. My article appeared on 18 May. It had an immediate effect on three Western governments. On 19 May Britain, France and Canada issued a statement which began:
We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles.
Only kidding.
But don’t believe a word of it. As with the articles and comments referred to above, that’s only words, yet more words, but in their case insincere, otiose words, they are starting to panic and are just covering their asses as the situation they helped to bring about lurches way beyond intolerable, but even so they still won’t do a damn thing about it. What they (the UK) will do is to continue to attempt to ban and prosecute Kneecap, an Irish band, for courageously broadcasting their support for Gaza and potentially to bring ludicrous “terrorism” charges against them. Kneecap are the terrorists? The world truly turned upside down. My God, how glad I am that I left that shithole country. I suppose I would have been taken in for questioning there by now, and maybe worse, for wearing my old Palestinian flag T shirt.
Having introduced God into the discourse, while having previously declared my atheism, nevertheless I commend to you the Serenity Prayer:
God, give me Grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which can be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
And so the appeal is closed. And this is to be my final article on Substack. I have thrown in the towel and have nothing more to say. Last word from Raghda.
Please don't stop writing, Walt. You are a good man and a good writer, and you are making an important contribution that touches people's lives and makes a difference. As for the reason why not one of your readers responded to your appeal, I cannot speak for others, but my reason for not giving was nothing to do with a lack of feeling, but because I doubt the wisdom of sending money to Gaza, when what is needed is food and raw materials. Sending one without the other will result in an inflationary spiral which only helps the lucky recipients of the cash...for a short while. The reality is that unless we are willing to put our bodies and lives on the line, by becoming martyrs, there is little of a practical nature that people can do other than keep the issue alive. In the long run, that will be more effective, as Israel is being irreparably damaged by its status as an international pariah. As for becoming some kind of martyr, that is only an option for those with no responsibilities to others. Even if we are inclined to sacrifice ourselves, the reality is that there are endless good causes in the world today, involving the suffering of the innocent. Who is to say which is the most important and most deserving? Your readers who fail to give may prefer to direct their energies to other causes. So please do not suppose that your writing is futile, or that people do not care about injustice - neither are the case.
I don't see this as a harbinger of more genocides.
I see this as the expected carnage inevitable when an empire crashes.
US is clearly on its way out, and there is no way Israel can survive without the US.
Therefore both must act quickly, if brainlessly, both are on the attack, striking out without a clue what they are trying to hit. Thrashing about as they drown.
The one sure way to end Israel is a genocide. A pretty good way to end USA is to weaponise their weakest point, the deficit with tarriffs. Likewise the one sure way for an influential power to destroy that influence is to bully other powers more than capable of standing up to them (Russia, china, but increasingly India, Brazil and even Yemen!!)
It is tragic that Gazans are the victims in all this. But the BRICS lead future looks much better.
(And new institutions to punish the criminals of USA, Israel and Ukraine will accelerate the changes for the better).