I am surely one of the last people anyone should accuse of being ‘antisemitic’.
I’m from the post-war generation, raised in burning awareness of the Holocaust. My first conscious act of anti-racism, when I was still in primary school, was to deliberately stop using anti-Jewish slurs. As an adult, I learned more about the Holocaust, to the point where I eventually had to stop reading, as it was making so angry and upset that I wished I could travel back in time and unalive a few Nazis.
Along the way, I absorbed, without even being aware of it, a lot of pro-Israeli attitudes. I never questioned that Jews ‘deserved’ their own homeland. And despite my experiences in the anti-racism movement, I never questioned the stereotypes about ‘violent’, ‘hostile’ Arabs/Palestinians, that they’d ‘voluntarily’ left because they ‘hated’ Jews, etc, etc.
And then 9/11 happened, and anti-Muslim attitudes increased. An unending stream of movies, TV programs, and even books that depict the stereotypical Muslim as the ‘Bad Guy’. I mean, can anyone think of a movie etc created in the last 20 years that features Muslims that doesn’t do this? And I got sucked into that mindset too, I must now shamefacedly admit.
But then something started to shift. Perhaps it was when I began to notice the uneven death toll of missile exchanges between Israel and Palestinians. It was always like ‘5 Israeli dead, 120 Palestinians’. If they were so weak an enemy, I thought, why the overkill? Or maybe it was after the Christchurch massacres of Muslims in 2019, when I witnessed the grief but also the kindness of the survivors. Or perhaps it was simply common sense re-asserting itself. Surely not all Muslims could be bad people?
Still, I dithered, undecided. When I first heard the words ‘from the mountains to the sea’, it sent a chill through me. I thought those saying this were advocating a new genocide. Now I understand they are trying to prevent one.
Because now it’s become all too obvious, glaring back at us from our screens, large and small, just what Israel intends for the Palestinians. The brazenness of genocide and obliteration has made so many of us suddenly awake to so much.
This is just a sample of what I have seen…
- Babies so emaciated that you know they are days if not hours away from death, because there is no baby formula and their mothers are too starved to breastfeed them. (And they do die, inevitably.)
- A boy of perhaps six or seven, crying that he wants to die so he can join his dead parents.
- Adults with skin taut over their thin bodies, some collapsing in the street.
- Amputees by the dozen, and others who are dying of totally preventable diseases.
- Western doctors coming out of Gaza, breaking down as they talk of the horrors they’ve seen.
- Palestinian journalists, and healthworkers, deliberately slaughtered for just doing their job.
- Gazan people trying their best to live despite all this, planting gardens, living in tents or crumbling ruins, searching for food and water and fuel, always knowing they might have to uproot and move yet again, or be bombed out. While those without even this simply sleep in the streets.
- The increasingly anguished pleas on social media videos, begging for anything, any help at all.
- The shattered remains of what were once bustling cities, everywhere reduced to rubble.
- And in the background of every video, the constant noise of drones and planes and bombing, on and on and on.
And more, and more…
Also things I’ve seen…
- Israel’s leader denying there is starvation in Gaza, or claiming that aid organisations are to blame, even as Israel has denied those same organisations entry to Gaza.
- Israeli politicians saying that there ‘is no such thing’ as an ‘innocent Palestinian’, that they’re all ‘jihadists’, or ‘human animals’ - even babies or children, or saying they’re all ‘Hamas’.
- Those same leaders now talking about a ‘Greater Israel’, which will swallow up not just Palestine but all or most of neighbouring countries like Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, with their current inhabitants presumably to be pushed out or killed like the Palestinians.
- Israeli settlers saying that the Palestinians should ‘all die, or just leave’, or standing on the borders planning where they’ll build their settlements when the ‘vermin’ is cleared.
- Israeli soldiers laughing ON CAMERA about shooting Gazans or destroying their homes.
- Israelis openly admitting that they are ‘taking lessons from the Nazis’ on how to eliminate unwanted people.
And more. And more. And more….
My eyes are fully open now, and there is no going back. I understand now how Israel, backed by Western nations, took over Palestine and violently pushed out the native Palestinians, a trauma they call the ‘Nakba’, and which in a very real sense is still ongoing. How, as well as what’s happening in Gaza, West Bank Palestinians are being steadily and violently being forced out of their homes by Israeli settlers. How Israel has brainwashed its own citizens for generations, through its schools and media and apartheid-style isolation, until they no longer see Palestinians as human. And how NO-ONE has heard much of ANY of this in the West, because the Israelis have created a huge propaganda machine which heavily influences Western foreign policy and media in their favour, that ensures a steady stream of money and weapons comes their way, and that Palestinian concerns are ignored. They have even managed to coerce, browbeat or silence other Arab nations.
But now? Now, Israel has gone too far, and the truth is finally coming out. Their influence and power is waning, the balance is finally tipping.
As I’ve said above, I have long empathised with Jews. But Israel? Israel is like the horribly abused child who then grows up to horribly abuse others, taking everything from them and destroying their lives – all the while convincing others that they are the ‘real victim’.
So to Israel, I say this – I see you now. The mask is gone. You are not so much a nation as an apartheid settler-state, the last gasp of European colonialism, an active oppressor and killer, propped up by Western money and arms. When those are gone, you will go too. And through your arrogance, you have guaranteed that will happen, sooner rather than later. It could have been so different. You could have lived alongside Palestinians peacefully, as Palestinian Jews did for centuries, but your Zionist beliefs wouldn’t allow it, and now you are doomed.
And to the Palestinians, I say this – I see you now. The mask is gone. You are simply human, not the devils they have tried to convince us of. You have a vibrant culture of your own, the capacity for love and laughter, joy and song, even now, as hard as they have tried to bomb it out of you. I see you. And my very soul is pierced by what is happening to you. I wish I could do more, but I’m too old, too poor and too disabled. I can’t even do protest marches anymore, let alone sail on flotillas and the like.
In fact this is the problem – not that no-one cares, but that pretty much all of us who do (and there are A LOT of us) are powerless to stop what’s happening. I myself have shared as many videos and posts as I can, have made what small donations I can, talked to people to raise awareness when I can, and now I write this post. Meanwhile, our leaders who could act are still held in Israel’s thrall, brainwashed to the point of indecision. That is slowly shifting, but not fast enough. A flotilla is on its way even as I write, but I don’t know if that will be enough either. I simply can’t even begin to guess your fate, and that alone causes me agony.
To the rest of the world, I say this – the truth is evident for anyone willing to see it. Please don’t turn your back. Do SOMETHING, even if it’s just a donation, talking to people, joining a march, signing a petition, writing to your politicians, whatever you can do. If you can do more, please, please, help them. They need us. And we need them, they are the keepers of our conscience. If we fail them, I believe it will haunt us forever.
In the name of simple decency, please, please someone stop this. Stop this horror playing out right in front of our eyes, on our very screens. What good does it do, even, recognising Palestine as a state, if there are hardly any Palestinians left alive, or the ones that are still living are squashed into some ghastly Israeli concentration camp, while Israel finishes its demolition job?
And please, let nobody go on about ‘but the hostages’ or ‘but Hamas’. It was never about the hostages or Hamas. If Israel really cared about the hostages they wouldn’t be bombing and starving them. Hamas has been cast as the villain, but that’s simply a distraction, a cover for what’s really happening. The real villains wear smart suits and talk at the UN. They do shady deals behind closed doors and get angry when their machinations are exposed, their power threatened.
Finally, let me be clear on one thing here – Jews and Zionists are not one and the same. Zionism as a political theory long predates the Holocaust, but was given impetus by it. Israel is a Zionist state, and its leaders embody its worst features. There are still many Jews, even within Israel itself, who are horrified by what is happening, who cry out ‘not in my name!’ I respect them for this. But Zionists – they’re the 21st-Century Nazis. Their own ancestors would, I suspect, be ashamed of them. Hitler would be laughing. It isn’t ‘anti-Semitic’ to say so (does anyone even remember that Palestinians are a Semitic people too?), but it is anti-Zionist. And I think this is an important distinction to make.
To end, I recently saw this line on a protest banner – ‘one genocide does not justify another’. I’ll say that again, louder for the people in the back –
ONE. GENOCIDE. DOES. NOT. JUSTIFY. ANOTHER.
ENOUGH. LET’S END THIS NOW.
