Here is the introduction I gave to Nottingham Friends of Standing Together’s weekly vigil for Gaza yesterday.
Today in Israel many businesses, institutions and workers have answered the call of hostage families to strike for an end to the war of extermination and for a deal to bring the remaining hostages home alive. This morning, the main Ayalon highway that runs through Tel Aviv was blocked for a while in both directions, as well as a main street in Jerusalem and other main roads throughout the country.
No to continuing the routine! The Smotrich and Ben Gviir government are dragging us all into the abyss, Jews and Palestinians. It is time to get out of Gaza, to stop abandoning the hostages, and to stop hurting the millions of innocents who are left to starve in Gaza. To the soldiers who are sent to die in vain for the fantasies of occupation and settlement – everyone deserves this war to stop. We can’t go on much longer. Bring everyone back to their homes, stop the war, and get out of Gaza now!
And yesterday, with a video showing a grandfather in tears in Gaza bidding farewell to his grandson Joseph, a four-year-old boy who was bombed to death by the army.
The story of Joseph and the children of Gaza, will not be told in the media. 20,000 children have been killed so far in Gaza. They were torn from those who saw them coming into the world. How much more grief? How much more blood? How many more parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers will cry? How many more hostages will be sacrificed? And for what? For a government that commits extermination and starvation of people just because they were born Palestinians, just to survive in power and fulfill dreams of an extremist minority.
There is only one way to stop the government of death: not to continue as usual! Normal life must be disrupted, as nothing is normal. We must get out onto the streets and disrupt the routine. We must refuse to be killed or kill for them. We have to stop the extermination and the abandonment of the hostages.”
Standing Together has disrupted the Israeli routine by invading the stage of Big Brother on live TV, by holding a sit-in protest at the airport with bags of the flour that is not getting through to the starving people of Gaza because of Israeli obstacles, by protesting on the beach at Tel Aviv as people swim and exercise, warning them that the situation isn’t safe.
Here’s what Inas, one of the protestors at the beach, said afterwards:
Today I remembered, again, how important it is to be part of a movement and to act together with people who are not only dear to me but who I fully trust. There were many people on the beach, most of them supported us, but there were also some very violent people who came over to physically hurt me. For a few moments it was scary and there was a point where I thought of stopping the announcements on the megaphone. But then I saw that my friends are protecting me and I trusted them that I can continue calling for a general strike, stopping the war of annihilation and the return of the hostages, to all those who were listening. One can’t do this alone, and this is why we organise, you should too.
We’ll now stand in silence for 15 minutes to mourn 4-year old Joseph, the 7 Gazans who have died of malnutrition in the last day, the 11 Gazans who have been killed this morning, up to 11 am, and the many thousands more who have died at the hands of the Israeli military and Hamas in the last 681 days of horror.
Picturing Peace 