Remembering the dead of former wars should motivate us to march to save the victims of the war in Gaza. That is particularly the case if you reflect that the intensity of the casualties there in the last four weeks have been five times as great on a per population basis as the total losses through aerial bombing in the UK throughout the Second World War, in a less than a seventieth of the time*.

This is the UN summary of casualties just for the last 24 hours in Gaza.

• Between 8 November (14:00) and 9 November (14:00), 243 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza. According to initial information, on 8 November at about 15:30, an airstrike hit a residential building in Gaza city, killing 19 people and injuring 45; another strike at 18:00 hit a house in Jabalia Refugee Camp, reportedly killing 15 Palestinians; on 9 November after midnight, a building in eastern of Khan Yunis was hit, reportedly killing six and injuring several others.
• The fatality toll reported by MoH in Gaza since the start of the hostilities stands at 10,818, of whom 68 per cent are said to be children and women. About 2,650 others, including some 1,400 children, have been reported missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble, awaiting rescue or recovery.
• The reported fatalities since 7 October include at least 192 medical staff, according to the MoH Gaza. Of them, at least 16 were on duty when killed, according to WHO. The fatalities further include 99 UNRWA staff, and 18 Palestinian Civil Defense personnel.

And on displacement

• On 9 November, for the sixth consecutive day, the Israeli military – which has called upon residents of the north to leave southwards – opened a “corridor” along the main traffic artery, Salah Ad Deen Road between 9:00 and 16:00. It is estimated that, over the course of these seven hours, more than 50,000 people fled.
• Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) reached the main junction next to Wadi Gaza on foot or donkey carts, as vehicles were reportedly stopped by the Israel military at about 4-5 kilometres away from that point. Most were able to carry only few personal belongings. UN monitors and NGOs distributed water and biscuits next to the junction. IDPs interviewed by OCHA monitors indicated that they did not know where they would stay overnight.
• Over 1.5 million people in Gaza are estimated to be internally displaced. To cope with the increased flow of IDPs, UNRWA opened two additional shelters in the Middle area, bringing the agency’s total number of shelters in the south to 92, sheltering 582,000 IDPs.
• Overcrowding remains a major concern. On average, 160 people sheltering in UNRWA schools facilities share a single toilet and there is one shower unit for every 700 people. The worsening sanitary conditions, along with the lack of privacy and space, generate health and safety hazards.

They have other sections dealing with Humanitarian access, Electricity, Hospitals and Health Care (including attacks), Water and sanitation, in which the statistics are similarly numbing. Right wing attack dogs like Jacob Grease Smug and Julia Fartly Brewer, who have tried to dismiss the human scale of these deaths this week by claiming that the numbers are “Hamas propaganda” should note that these are UN endorsed figures.

What they say about the West Bank, which is not run by Hamas, shows that this is a war between the Israeli state in all Palestinians.

• Israeli forces shot and killed 18 Palestinians, including one child, between the afternoon of 8 November and noontime on 9 November. The deadliest incident, which lasted for over 12 hours, took place in Jenin Refugee Camp and resulted in 13 Palestinians, including one child, killed. The operation involved armed clashes with Palestinians, and airstrikes, resulting in extensive infrastructure damage. Another five fatalities were recorded during confrontations in the course of search-and-arrest operations in Anin (Jenin), Bethlehem city, Balata Refugee Camp (Nablus), Al Am’ari Refugee Camp (Ramallah), and At Tabaqa (Hebron)
• Since 7 October, 167 Palestinians, including 45 children, have been killed by Israeli forces; and an additional eight, including one child, have been killed by Israeli settlers. Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.
• The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 7 October accounts for 42 per cent of all Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank in 2023 (415). About 59 per cent of the fatalities since 7 October occurred during confrontations that followed Israeli search-and-arrest operations, primarily in Jenin and Tulkarm governorates. Some 27 per cent were in the context of demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza; seven per cent were killed in settler attacks against Palestinians, and the remaining seven per cent were killed while attacking or allegedly attacking Israeli forces or settlers.
• Since 7 October, Israeli forces have injured 2,492 Palestinians, including at least 253 children, over half of them in the context of demonstrations. Sixty-six Palestinians have been injured by settlers. Some 32 per cent of those injuries have been caused by live ammunition.
• In the past 24 hours, six settler attacks resulting in damage or injuries were reported. These included raids in the villages of At Taybe (Hebron), Qusra (Nablus), Bruqin (Salfit), Khirbet Tana (Nablus), Al Mughayyir and Sinjil (the latter two in Ramallah) where settlers vandalized agricultural structures and crops. In two of these attacks, Israeli settlers physically assaulted and injured two Palestinians who were harvesting olives.
• Since 7 October, OCHA has recorded 230 settler attacks against Palestinians, resulting in Palestinian casualties (28 incidents), damage to Palestinian-owned property (167 incidents), or both casualties and damage to property (35 incidents). This reflects a daily average of seven incidents, compared with three since the beginning of the year. Over one-third of these incidents included threats with firearms, including shootings. In nearly half of all incidents, Israeli forces were either accompanying or actively supporting the attackers.
• Since 7 October, at least 111 Palestinian households comprising 905 people, including 356 children, have been displaced amid settler violence and access restrictions. The displaced households are from 15 herding/Bedouin communities.
• An additional 135 Palestinians, including 66 children, have been displaced since 7 October following demolitions in Area C and East Jerusalem, due to lack of permits, and another 27, including 15 children, following punitive demolitions.

The note that since Oct 7th there have been 7 daily attacks by settlers, but that before Oct 7th there were 3 a day, should bring home the reality of daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank. What its like when this is out of sight and out of mind of the news bulletins. Just as bad. But a bit slower.

Remembering the dead of past wars is used in this country as a way to ceremonially bind the present population to the institutions and power structures that fought those wars in the first place. People will remember in different ways.

As the years have gone by in early November, as the leaves fall from the trees and blood red paper poppies appear on the lapels of politicians and newsreaders, I have thought more and more about my grandfather, as a boy soldier at the Somme at 17, then a quarter of a century later as a veteran in the Home Guard, fire watching from the roof of the factory he worked in, my other grandfather, as a sergeant in the Royal Engineers “Dock lot” at Anzio in 1944; both of whom survived: and my Mum’s uncle, killed in Tunisia on the last day of the North Africa campaign in 1943 when he drove his lorry over a landmine at the age of 20, and my Dad’s cousin, not much older, killed when his co-pilot in the radar mosquito they were flying to track V1s in 1944 tried to take off in the wrong direction and ploughed into the side of a hangar… who didn’t. And my parents, both evacuated. And my grandmother, who worked for the Coop and was secretary of the local rationalisation committee, that divvied up delivery rounds for grocery companies so they didn’t duplicate and waste petrol.

Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak have tried to argue that demonstrating against this present war is some sort of dishonour to them. But, remembering what they and so many others went through should make us even more motivated to march to stop a military genocide happening now in front of our eyes.

The Home Secretary and Prime Minister are opposed to a ceasefire, so of course they want a pause in the pressure on them to call for one. They have given a nod and a wink to the sort of far right rabble – political descendants of the Nazis – who were standing by the Cenotaph last week “defending” it from people who have no intention of damaging it, one of them commenting that England was wonderful in the 1950s and we could get back there if we just “get rid of the riff raff”– to come out in greater numbers and cause disturbances that would allow them to ban future marches. And desperately mischaracterise them within their own communalist framework, in which conflicts cannot be conceived as anything other than one ethnic or religious community against another. The vibrant Jewish contingents deliberately erased from their account, and those in the right wing newspapers.

There is no doubt that the sheer scale of these marches, their cross community character and intense moral and human purpose, is shifting the terrain of politics across the board, not just here but internationally. Every bomb that Israel drops is blowing away the hegemony of the US “rules based order” for more and more people as the scales drop from their eyes. It is a terrible price to be paid for political clarity. A pause this week would make that price even higher.

See you on the march.

*UK population during WW2 around 50 million.

Gaza population: 2.3 million. So Gaza population is less than a twenty fifth of that number.

Total UK deaths from aerial bombing in WW2, after 292 weeks: 52,000.

Total Gaza deaths after 4 weeks: 10,000 (this is a conservative estimate that does not include people missing under rubble, assumed to be an additional 2,500).

So, as a proportion of the population the deaths in Gaza have been more than five times as heavy as those in the UK through the whole of WW2 after just a seventy eighth of the time.