HYPOTHERMIA

Words shared by a supporter.

Struggling to live, tiny arms, legs and lips blue with cold
He knows nothing, blames no-one, just twenty days old.
He’ll never know: that what shines is daylight, dusk, sunset or dawn;
the milk of his mother’s breast; the warmth of her love for her newborn.

Peace, conflict, famine, genocide are words he cannot know
held hostage, starved of all those things he needs to grow.
He’ll never study maths, or languages that other children will need
he’s one more pointless victim of another’s greed.

This child, who should have been a doctor, a writer, a builder or vet
shall be just a statistic, a monument to his parent’s unremitting regret.
Mahmoud, Abdul, Mohammed, Wael; whatever was his name
this boy’s life was stolen, to our eternal shame.

Yet Israel would steal even his pure innocence, claiming
he would grow to be a terrorist: this poor child defaming.
In every act disdaining a Palestinian’s individual humanity
the “World’s most moral army” is a cynically constructed profanity!

But is freezing to death after twenty days of life in a tent
the experience of living that, for this child, was meant?
This has little to do with any great creator;
But more with the will of some genocidal perpetrator.

And does freezing to death as a baby in arms
provide merciful escape from far greater harms?
The children of Gaza have suffered such cruelties and deprivations
this mite’s death from hypothermia, is the final gift of western nations.

On 29 October 2023 I attended my first-ever protest. It began at St Luke’s bombed out church in Liverpool and ended (as such marches always now do) in Derby Square. The genocide of Gaza was in its infancy, Gallant having only a few days before declared that they, Israel, were fighting “human animals”, soon to be followed by Kier Starmer’s infamous endorsement on LBC’s Nick Ferrari show, that he believed that Israel had the right to deny food, water and medical aid to the people of an enclave Israel had, at that time besieged for more than 16 years after it demolished 21 Israeli settlements within the Gaza Strip in September 2005.

I was naturally nervous, not knowing what to expect. A man who was there from St Helens told me to stick to the middle of the marching group to avoid being targeted by any counter demonstrators. Of course there were none. The Socialist Workers’ placards, declaring “Freedom for Palestine” were pristine, newly minted for use in hundreds of future demonstrations during which they would become increasingly battered, increasingly care-worn, reflecting the hearts and expressions of those who would carry them. I believe that the key speaker at that first march of mine was Alexi Sayle. I recall his poem, about how Israelis lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie. This chimed with my own feelings, having long held the view that whatever it was that Israel was doing to the beleaguered Palestinians, imprisoning them in what David Cameron had previously called the world’s largest concentration camp, was wrong on so many levels.

At that time, I knew so little about the actual situation on the ground, about the collusion of western powers, about the history. Over the past two years I have learnt more and more about the history, the violence, oppression and the perfidy which have plagued the Palestinian people since 1920, when the British Mandate took control of the western trans Jordanian region.

There’s little good that has been seen over the months of the Gaza genocide. Perhaps if I can point to a single positive outcome then it would be the awakening of conscience amongst various segments of society (perhaps most notably amongst faith groups, as I know will be a focus of tomorrow's inter-faith walk) and the upswell of protest, legal, medical, journalistic, humanitarian and other specialist groups seeking justice for the victims of this outrage. I would point to a number of groups whose activities have had a particular impact on my awareness and that of so many:

Independent journalists have filled the void left by “reputed” media organisations. The BBC, ITN, Sky News, Reuters, the American broadcast media without exception and the press have surrendered their formerly-held ground (at least in my home) to Al Jazeera, Declassified, Middle East Eye, Frank Barat and the Electronic Intifada. I had listened to the BBC World Service for years after I lost faith in the UK-located BBC news output, but as that focussed unerringly on the conflict in Ukraine for a year and a half prior to the genocide and then sided with Israel on and following the Al Aqsa Flood attacks, I adopted breakfast television in the form of Al Jazeera’s Newshour and Inside Story for a closer approximation of the truth and validated its reporting with multiple other sources.

Forensic Architecture and Airwars are two, truly outstanding organisations in their field of the forensic study and documentation of acts of prejudice, domination, occupation, siege and massacre perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. A new term to me “ungrounding” was coined by Forensic Architecture to explain how the infrastructure and the very land beneath Palestinian feet in Gaza has been demonstrably stripped of all value; of how that land has been poisoned with rare metals used in the ordnance Israel has dropped on it and how the water courses are tainted beyond safe use. Only 13% of the Gaza Strip was once farmland; none of it would now produce viable, edible crops. Forensic Architecture and Airwars exploded the lies, spun by Israel, of command centres and tunnels beneath Gaza’s hospitals and analysed in minute detail, atrocities such as the flour massacre and the grotesque slaughter of Hind Rajab and those of her family and the Civil Defence crew who would have been her saviours.

The medical profession has acquitted itself with immense courage and compassion. Countless teams of Western clinicians have risked their lives whilst working in Gaza’s ravaged medical facilities and, in many cases, their careers when, on return they have fearlessly spoken truth to power and spoken out as to the cold, calculated cruelty of the harm inflicted on the patients they have treated; of the white phosphorus burns, the amputations without pain relief or anaesthesia made necessary by Israel’s denial of medical aid, the toddlers obviously terminated by snipers’ rifle shots. Many have also borne witness to the fact that the IDF has taken baby formula from them as they have entered the Strip. Their pain and survivors’ guilt must be unbearable, particularly given the efforts of the IDF to erase as many medics and members of the Civil Defence services, 1,841 killed to date, together with humanitarian workers amongst more than 11,100 still held hostage in Israeli prisons, who might have, alongside the 255 journalists killed to date, borne witness to the savagery and sadism of Israel’s crimes at any future national or international court hearings, once Israel and its military are called to account.

The legal community too has in parts stepped up to the plate. The ICJP and more recently created Hind Rajab Foundation are remorselessly and as we all hope, successfully pursuing the perpetrators of so many of the violations of human rights law that have taken place over the past two years, in the memory of Hind and thousands of innocent victims, whose only crime was to be born (in many cases to the right parents) in the wrong 237 sq mile strip of the earth. I read last week that the tank crew responsible for the slaughter of Hind Rajab and her family members has been identified. Now known, a successful prosecution should, by rights, be an inevitability; but this is Israel, whose impunity to date has been underwritten by our own government and several others.

Francesca Albanese cannot go unmentioned under this heading. Although she represents the largely toothless United Nations, as an unpaid legal expert her contribution to the gathering and expression of evidence against not only Israel, but also state and corporate actors globally, will in times we hope to come, be seen as pivotal and in the context of the opposition and opprobrium she has faced, heroic and historic.

Finally, I would note the part played by activists and protestors. Palestine Action perhaps stands out amongst us all, but we have all in our ways, been spurred into greater efforts or, like myself, been shocked into making some effort. You and I have attended a number of these protests, many of us have been to the Liverpool marches and travelled further afield to Manchester, Birmingham and London, or to the factories producing weapons for the IDF. I don’t think any of us could have envisaged still being frustrated, two years after the trigger event. Somehow I doubt any of us would have believed back then, the breadth of causes of protest which we now face and the extent of the injustices being committed against honourable protestors … as this desultory administration lines up legislation that could outlaw any repeated demonstration or protest march. 

This is not over friends … brothers and sisters. As those other groups of whom I have spoken have stuck to their guns (possibly not the right analogy) so must we go forward, unbowed. It may not be easy, we may have to keep relocating these events in future for instance; but we cannot permit a guilt-ridden government, complicit … well, engaged in genocide as it has been and still is, suppress our right of protest, of opposition. For as long as the genocide continues; for as long as the occupation persists, we will continue to oppose it and those who would maintain it.

FREE 🇵🇸

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