Category: Uncategorized

The limits of dissent on Gaza in “The Observer”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

While claiming no entitlement to have letters published, I think its indicative of the ideological limits of the challenges The Observer is prepared to publish that neither of these, or anything like it, made it into print. The only response they put in to the Karen Pollock article, which was a way to package Suella Braverman’s accusation that demonstrations calling for a ceasefire are actually “hate marches” in a way that might be acceptable for readers who think of themselves as liberals, was a letter that followed her framing of the conflict as religious intolerance, nothing to do with occupation and oppression (and was pessimistic that anything could be done about it). Narrowing the range of challenge, and excluding challenge to ideological frameworks, is a sign of waning political self confidence. As the old order fades, it has no option but to shut people up.

Eyeless in Gaza

Karen Pollock uses some odd constructions in her article (Anti Semitism and Holocaust denial are rife, just look at Stephen Fry’s Twitter Feed Observer 24/12/23) stepping across the thin ice of distortion on the snow shoes of euphemism.

Conceding that you “can“ be “appalled by the scenes we are witnessing in Gaza and critical of the choices made by the Israeli government and not be an antisemite” is just as well. If you read the daily UN updates there is such utter horror there, expressed in the most dispassionate prose, that it becomes numbing to read it. That’s why a majority of people in this country want a ceasefire, almost every country in the world has voted for one at the UN, and why there have been such huge demonstrations, here and everywhere else.

Implying that  is driven by “hatred” rooted in “antisemitism”, not by the reality of a genocide unfolding in front of our eyes, inverts reality; and would even if there weren’t such large and vibrant Jewish contingents and speakers on all of the marches.

Her use of the word “scenes”, for the utter carnage we are all seeing, possibly indicates a shying away in her own mind from the consequences of seeing it for what it is, as the logic of racism leads to genocide, and no people are immune from following it.

In that spirit, I hope that the Holocaust Education Trust would agree that Israeli politicians have learned the wrong lessons from the Holocaust when they 

  • build their state on racially discriminatory laws, 
  • say “the Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be one sentence for everyone there—death”, 
  • or back settlers who terrorise villagers in the West Bank and chant “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn”? 

This one was written in the middle of October and calls out the fundamental imbalance in their editorial response to October 7th. The figure quoted in this letter understates the asymmetry in casualties since 2000, which is almost 7 Palestinians for every Israeli killed. And this has got far worse since then, with the casualty rate since October 7th being “at least” (in the UN’s words) 18 Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

In the last decade the casualty rate from the conflict in Israel Palestine has been five Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Given that the suffering on the Palestinian side is so much higher, just on that level and leaving aside everything else, it is therefore strange that your editorial finds calls for violence  from Israel “understandable”, while considering that violent actions from Palestinians “defy comprehension”. 

Perhaps you should write another editorial explaining the asymmetry of your empathy. 

Thurrock Miscellany

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Xmas is a time of contrasts.

In the market, a bloke is selling gift bags with four top of the range brand perfumes for a tenner. Ask no questions…

Outside the Eastern European Deli by Clarence Road a crowd of people gather round a man playing an accordion and sing the Rumanian version of Felice Navidad. Rumanian being a Latin language, the first word is the same. As is the tune. They seem to be having a good time. People passing by smile, even though they don’t understand the words. They can pick up on the good feeling.

Hurtling on a mobility scooter down George Street towards Morrisons at about 4 mph, a wild haired man with a rubbery twisted face mutters and gurns at passers by like Mick Jagger with Turettes.

Inside a tiny Rumanian owned finance shop on the riverward side of the level crossing by the station, a full scale service is going on. A priest in a cylindrical black hat, wearing an utterly gorgeous scarlet cloak covered with ornate gold embroidery with an icon like picture of the Virgin Mary on the reverse collar at the back of his neck, waves a heavy gold cross in one hand, while crossing himself with the other. Sometimes facing his small congregation of men with nylon suits and short haircuts, sometimes facing the wall behind him. This has an plaque celebrating the company’s Platinum award for HR successes, so it sometimes looks as though they are worshipping that. To his left, and facing the gawpers in the street through the plate glass windows, an attendant in an equally heavily gold embossed crimson robe stands guard with a serious look on his face. The overall effect is positively Byzantine in its mystical magnificence; humanised by the small table of snacks and orange squash along the wall.

At the bottom of Cromwell Road a tiny boy wearing one of those animal head hats that make him look like Max from “Where the Wild Things are”, is being pushed along by his Mum on a little purple plastic three wheel scooter which flashes lights as it trundles onwards. He is standing rigidly erect like a little Emperor, hands firmly on the handlebars, one of them grasping a sharpened pencil that he holds pointedly upwards like a staff of office.

Coming out of the Church of Christ Celestial, a young woman dressed all in white like a cross between a pastry chef and a woman from the Handmaiden’s tale, bustles off down the road on Godly business. The Church is installed above the St Luke’s Hospice shop in what used to be the Burton’s Snooker Hall. Burton’s was a popular off the peg suit emporium that ran a snooker hall above the shop in the middle of the last century. My Dad told me that this was considered something of a den of iniquity among respectable folk – as in The Music Man song:

Oh yes we’ve got trouble

Right here in River City

With a capital T

And that rhymes with P

And that stands for Pool.

The logo for the snooker club – a triangle of racked balls – can still be seen faded but legible on the most southerly window. Hopefully the Church won’t disapprove as much as my grandparents did, and will leave it in place.

Although my Dad was forbidden to go in there, he’d sometimes surreptitiously nip up the stairs, not because he wanted to be Thurrock’s answer to Fast Eddie Felton, but accompanying a mate who’s Mum ran the tea bar as an alternative to the London Road Cafe on a Saturday night; for a heavily stewed tea and slice of “yellow cake” (a late 40s austerity version of Madeira, and nothing to do with Uranium…so they said).

Down Hathaway Road marches a small, slow, stately procession of elderly black matrons, all in their best church hats and sombre business like handbags, led by one of their number carrying a museum piece of a tall vertical banner in dark red with something Biblical in black written on it that could be straight out of the Shankill Road circa 1887. The strong influence of Black Evangelicals on the local Conservative Party indicating that the Saints might not be marching in, but they are definitely marching on; resolutely in the wrong direction.

Outdoor household Xmas decs look a bit sad in daylight, even before the day itself. Lights at night are one thing, but shopworn bows and slightly deflated snowmen and Santas blowing a bit desperately in the wind, are something else. Especially as seen from the top of the 100 bus to Basildon hospital, trundling through Stanford le Hope and Corringham, on a local road for local people, running alongside the huge six lane A roads that slice through and coil around the old towns like Boa Constrictors, with most traffic passing them by, trucking mountains of containers from the docks at Tilbury and Thames Gateway on up to the M25 and across the country. The relatively small and discrete railway line from Southend to London probably carries as much, or could, and makes a far lower impact on the landscape. Blink and you might miss it. You can’t miss the roads, making Stanford and Corringham feel by passed by their by passes. Both have a slightly tired and accidental higgeldy piggeldy feel to them, with no real centre, or heart, just successive layers of improvised development, clustered beyond Stanford’s handsome old church, with matching pub across what might have been a village green once.

Along the river run a row of giant cranes and gantries and the containers pile up 6 storeys high looking like the Martian machines from War of the Worlds. The sort of job done by my grandfather and great uncle consigned by them to rapid oblivion in the early 70s. An old family friend drops in and tells me that her job as a copywriter has gone the same way. At the beginning of last year, she had a waiting list and steady work with regular clients. ChatGPT comes along this year and wipes her out. She hasn’t had work for two months.

My Mum had quite a few cousins. Two of them had rhyming nicknames. Donk and Bronc. “Donk” because he would donk people on the nose if they were getting on his nerves too much. Bronc because, as a child, he was always playing cowboys.

An aspect of US hegemony is the extent to which the films and TV series we have watched all our lives make people think of them as the good guys. This is despite everything we have lived though, from Vietnam to Chile to Central America and the 4.5 million people killed in the war on terror, with Abu Ghraib and the Fallujah Free Fire zone providing a model for the IDF now in Gaza and the West Bank, while the US supplies them with the bombs and bullets to do what they are doing. All played down and deflected in our media of course.

The cavalry charge bugle call that heralded the goodies (white soldiers) arriving at the gallop at the end of so many Westerns to deal with the “savages” (native Americans) to the cheers of the Saturday matinee crowds of children in the 50s and 60s was played in a way intended to be darkly ironic at the end of that decade in the Helicopter gunship scene in Apocalypse Now, where the music shifts to the Apache helicopters playing Ride of the Valkyries through loudspeakers as they swoop in to strafe the Vietnamese village, and their commander comments, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning”. Only the ironic intent and impact is inappropriate, because, think it back and project it forward, in the “war of civilisation against barbarism” (B. Netanyahu) its a call for the same armed forces to do the same damn thing over and over and over again.

A Tale of a Phoenix

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

You have to kill the poets

When they laugh at your lies.

You know there were no babies,

burned in an oven on the seventh of October.

Not one.

A baby killed in an oven has a dreadful resonance

In a culture haunted by the nightmare

Of so many of them in the forties

Too much so not to use the idea

Made hallucinogenic by past fears

Constantly stoked

To put a genocide beyond moral question.

Unbearable to have that exposed to ridicule

To have self deception stripped bare

By caustic words that cut to the nerve ends

So much better to pretend

That the poet was mocking the baby

As if it was as real

As all the babies killed by the Nazis

Than allow any self reflection

On why you need to make up a lie

As terrible as that.

Better by far to kill the poet

Before he expose you again.

But the explosion from the bomb you used

To kill him,

his sister,

his brother in law,

and their four children,

has blown his words

around the world

like a million kites

written in two hundred languages,

has thrown his pen

in your soldiers faces,

and a phoenix alights

in a billion hearts.

Somos todos…

Nous sommes tous…

We are all…

12/12/23

In homage to Refaat Alareer; Poet, teacher, Palestinian. 23/9/79 – 6/12/23

A small protest with big implications

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

In just over fifty years of political activity, I have given out a lot of leaflets, in all weathers, in a lot of places, in all sorts of situations and times of day. Hitherto, I have never had anyone take a leaflet, stop, and shake my hand for having given it to them. On Wednesday evening, that happened twice.

Not what a “hate mob” looks like.

This was our local Palestine Solidarity campaign lobby of PPC for Harrow East Primesh Patel’s Xmas fund raising dinner at Lezzet in Kingsbury High Street. At any given point there were 30 people there, but it was one of those fluid events where people come and go, new people come across it, stay for a while and sign up, buy a badge, join a chant.

There was very little overt hostility, one woman who stormed past yelling something inaudible, and one bloke at the bus stop who refused a leaflet with the words “they started it” – showing his limited grasp of history. Some people blanked a leaflet, but as many gave a smile and a nod and two stopped for a hand shake and chat.

A lot of passing cars sounded their horns, as did some buses.

The waiters at the restaurant brought us out trays of tea.

As the local PSC tweeted,

This evening, we gathered outside Lezzet Kitchen in #Kingsbury to urge

@PrimeshPatel +

@HarrowLabour to call for an urgent & permanent #CeasefireForGazaNOW. Thank you Lezzet for your solidarity & for keeping us warm with hot drinks! #Gaza_Genocide

@harrowonline

Even one of the police who turned up to make sure we didn’t obstruct the pavement wished us luck as he walked away.

Big political shift going on.

Reading the appeal by the UN Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for an immediate Ceasefire.

Questions for Education Ministers. Will you stop your complicity in genocide?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

FAO: Gillian Keegan, Nick Gibb, Robert Halfon.

On October 17th you sent a letter to school leaders advising them on how to deal with the war in Israel/Palestine.

The following statement was the basis of your position: “following the barbaric terrorist attacks in Israel, we are writing to provide advice for schools and colleges. The UK unequivocally condemns these terrorist attacks and stands in solidarity with Israel in its hour of need.”

The scale of the attack by Hamas on October 7th, is taken to be reason enough to give Israel a blank cheque in its response. But, if you look at the history, this is revealed to be blatantly one sided on your part.

You must be aware that the IDF invaded and bombed Gaza seven times between 2006 and 2022, and in two of these operations the Palestinian casualties were greater than the 1200 suffered in Israel on Oct 7th.

  • Operation Cast Lead (in 2008) killed 1400.
  • Operation Protective Edge (in 2014) killed 2,100.
  • The current attack has killed over 14,000. Why do none of these amount to an “hour of need” for the Palestinians, in your view?

If you want a lesson in barbarism, consider the punitive Israeli air strike on Gaza in 2008, which took place at 11:20 in the morning, just as the morning and afternoon shifts in schools changed over, ensuring the maximum number of children in the streets when the bombs were dropping.

But, even if you want to start the clock on October 7th, does the impact on children of this current offensive not register with you?

Before the bombing started again on Dec 1st, over six thousand children had been killed according to the UN. This is probably an underestimate. According to the official Israeli death list, thirty three children were killed in the Hamas raid on Oct 7th. If you work it out, that’s one hundred and eighty one Palestinian children killed, so far, for every Israeli child.

Why does this not yet weight heavier with you? We should note that 63 further children have been killed by settlers and the IDF in the West Bank since October 7th, where attacks have been running at an average of five a day, and thousands of olive trees have been uprooted.

To make these statistics more graspable for you. 6,000 dead children is equivalent to

  • fifty two Aberfan disasters,
  • or three hundred and seventy five Dunblane massacres.

How can you not grasp the horrific scale of this?

Seven to eight hundred children, two schools full, have had to have limbs amputated. Some of them multiple limbs. Many of them without anaesthetic. Imagine your child going through that.

61% of the population of Gaza is now displaced, about half of them children, with 46,000 homes totally destroyed and more than 243,000 damaged. Imagine that in your neighbourhood. Some of us can’t help but do so.

No children are going to school. They are too busy trying to survive.

51% of education facilities have been bombed.

Children have been writing their names on their arms or legs in case they are killed.

Doctors have had to write WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) on children’s case notes; where they have been able to treat them at all, as 26 hospitals and 55 health care facilities are out of service from bombing and lack of resources.

Children are being denied water, sanitation, health care. Lice are endemic. There have been more than 30,000 cases of diarrhea in children under five, the historic child killer in the Global South. Cholera, measles, chicken pox, typhus are all looming; and the WHO was warning that more would die from malnutrition and disease in the coming weeks even than in the bombing so far, even if it stopped, without a qualitative increase in aid starting now.

Instead, the bombing has started again, making the aid impossible, guaranteeing a horrific escalation in deaths even from what we’ve seen so far.

This is the consequence of standing with Israel.

So, for you, is this still Israel’s “hour of need”, are these attacks barbaric enough for you to condemn them, will you withdraw your advice to school leaders and stand with humanity and the global majority that is calling for a permanent ceasefire now?

BBC complicity in murder of its own journalists.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is my complaint about the report at the end of the World at One on Saturday lunchtime. I suspect that the arrest of the person concerned was choreographed with the police in order to get this snippet. Because placards of the sort referred to can be misinterpreted in this way, it is counterproductive to carry them in my view. It should also be noted that the police announced that they would be carrying out a very intense surveillance of the march looking for people to arrest for this sort of thing. Ben Jamal, Director of PSC noted: “So 18 arrests of which only 13 related to main protest. Of these 13, 6 were for failing to disperse. So 7 arrested in relation to hate speech out of a crowd of 300k, 4 of which were people from a fringe group selling a booklet. This after a mammoth ” robust” police operation.“

At the end of the broadcast there was a report on the demonstration calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza which focused on the police arresting a demonstrator for carrying “a Nazi symbol”. This associates marchers calling for peace with fascists, which is a smear.

I presume that the symbol concerned was a montage of the star of David with a swastika. This montage was originally developed by Jewish anti Zionists horrified at the extent to which Israel’s consolidation as an Apartheid state with increasingly genocidal policies and attitudes (demonstrations of settlers and others chanting “death to the Arabs”, “May your villages burn” etc) was imitating other racist states, South Africa, the US South under Jim Crow and, most traumatic, Nazi Germany.

The idea of this was to shock people into a recognition of what they were becoming. As such, it takes a Nazi symbol as the ultimate horror and is the complete opposite of parading support for it. On the last demo there was a very elderly Jewish lady who had home made placards making a similar analogy. She was arrested by the police. An antisemitic action on their part.

This matters because this sort of report is designed to inhibit support for the marches, by associating them with a politics that their participants oppose vehemently. In the context of the IDF threatening to “intensify” their attack after the current pause, and invade the South of Gaza, we are likely to be seeing a genocidal slaughter on an even greater scale than we already have.

The only thing that will hold them back is opposition from their traditional supporters. That requires mass mobilisation pulling the ground out from under the mainstream consensus that values Palestinian lives as less than a tenth valuable than Israeli lives. Your news snippet, in seeking to demobilise these marches, is complicit in allowing the sort of attacks that have killed 67 of your journalistic colleagues to find even more victims.

This is the moral challenge of our time.

“Israel-Hamas conflict”: (misleading and partisan) advice for schools from Ministers

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is an examination and critique of a letter sent by Government Ministers at the Department for Education to school leaders, applying pressure on them to adopt a shamelessly one sided and partisan approach to the war in Israel/Palestine that discards its own impartiality guidance. Their letter is in plain text. My comments are in italics.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, the Minister for Schools and the Minister for Skills have written to schools and colleges (17 October 2023) to provide advice on how to respond to the Israel-Hamas conflict in the classroom.

There are many ways to describe this conflict, and Israeli politicians have not been shy in doing so. Nakba 2 sums up their approach. We have seen the results on our TV screens. We know what is happening in Gaza. Journalists have had to die in unprecedented numbers (53 so far) to get these images and stories to us.

  • We know that Palestinian families are having discussions about whether to sleep in different rooms, so that if they are bombed, some might survive, or all together, so if a bomb drops, they will either all live, or all die together.
  • We know that Palestinian children are having their names written onto their legs or arms, so that if they are killed, and their family with them, the people who collect their bodies will at least know their names.
  • We know that hospitals in Gaza have had to write WCNSF on children’s notes (wounded child, no surviving family).
  • We know, if we read the daily UN reports, that 1.7 million people have been displaced from their homes, that half of those homes have been bombed flat, that health care has collapsed with almost every hospital bombed or shelled, that UN places of refuge, including schools, have been shelled, that people who have tried to find safety in the South have been shelled, that ambulances have been shelled, that water supplies have been cut off, desalination and sewage plants shelled and, overall, one in two hundred people in the Gaza strip have been killed in just five weeks; while far right settlers have carried out 6 attacks a day and, with IDF support killed 201 Palestinians in the West Bank.
  • This is called a genocide on Al Jazeera. The Pope calls it “terrorism”.
  • Calling it “the Israel:Hamas conflict” elides the Palestinian people from the narrative in way that is peculiarly grotesque, given that they are suffering the highest casualties, as they have done in every instance of this conflict since 1948.
  • The UN Secretary General points out that more children have been killed in this Israeli assault on Gaza and more quickly than in any other conflict during his tenure. This is also true of UN workers themselves and journalists.
  • With an attack on such a scale, with so many child casualties, you might think that Ministers of Education would notice and seek an end to it, as a majority of the world has in very clear votes at the UN. Or at least recognise harms on all sides. Not a bit of it. Off they go…

Dear school and college leaders,

Following the barbaric terrorist attacks in Israel, we are writing to provide advice for schools and colleges. The UK unequivocally condemns these terrorist attacks and stands in solidarity with Israel in its hour of need.

Palestinians have been in a continuous hour of need since 1948. Continuous, ongoing, racist oppression, with 50 discriminatory laws, constituting a system of apartheid every bit as repressive as that in South Africa or the Jim Crow US South, ongoing dispossession, settler and army violence and casual murder, house demolitions, olive grove uprootings, children arrested and detained without charge or tried in military courts, having their arms hit with rocks by adult soldiers until they break. No unequivocal condemnation of that, or solidarity with the victims of it from our Education Ministers.

Even when the IDF has invaded Gaza in the recent past and killed more people than Hamas killed in Israel on Oct 7th, 1,400 in 2008, 2,100 in 2014, this does not spark the same level of outrage. I think we are entitled to ask why not?

The response from people on the Right – which is where these Ministers sit politically – to the Black Lives Matter Movement was to deploy the phrase “ALL lives matter” as a self satisfied mantra to cover up the reality that, in the world they run, white lives matter more. Its therefore no contradiction that, as far as they are concerned, Palestinian lives don’t matter in the slightest; certainly not enough to generate solidarity with them or any, let alone unequivocal condemnation of the army and state that is killing them.

The Prime Minister has announced that £3 million of extra funding will be provided to the Community Security Trust to protect schools, colleges, nurseries and synagogues and other Jewish community buildings.

The presumption here is that the response here is a straight conflict between communities, but also that, in such a conflict, the protection of one of them has to be prioritised. On the first point, there have been large Jewish contingents calling for a ceasefire and just solution on the Palestine demonstrations. This poses a question about how free to express a contrary opinion Jewish students are in faith schools, which the Ministers don’t consider any more than they notice those contingents, or the independent actions led by Jewish organisations like Naamod. The Ministers seem to have the same surreal mindset as the US Anti Defamation league, that classes sit ins at Railway Stations called by Jewish organisations calling for peace, and attended wholly by Jewish demonstrators, as “antisemitic incidents”. On the second point, since Oct 7th Islamophobic hate crimes have increased by 600% across the country with a tenfold increase in schools and Universities according to ITV. Where is the funding to deal with that?

Schools and colleges offer children, young people and staff a safe environment in which to learn and work.

That applies to ALL students, many of whom will be being traumatised by what they are seeing on the news, and the affect that it is having on their parents and friends. The suppression of strong feelings and anxieties does active damage to mental health and is therefore a safeguarding failure. It is also exclusionary. Schools have to be a safe place for all students to get an accurate picture of what is going on and explore ideas and feelings about it without feeling under threat of being penalised or put on a watch list for doing so.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, and it is illegal to encourage support for them. This would also be contrary to the British values that schools and colleges should promote and embody.

Perhaps the Ministers would like to explain how denying food, medicine, fuel and water to a civilian population is consistent with “the British values that schools and colleges should promote and embody” or, for that matter, international law? While they are at it, they might like to have a go at explaining how blowing over 5,000 children to bits with shells, bombs and missiles is something other than terrorism? At most, on Oct 7th, Hamas killed 1,200 people. Since then, the IDF has killed more than ten times as many. The RAF has been flying arms supply flights into Israel from Cyprus to help them do it. Is this “British values” in action, as the Ministers see them?

To support senior leaders and teachers manage these discussions, there are several reputable organisations that offer resources to teach about this sensitive topic in a balanced way and challenge extreme and hateful narratives. The Department’s Educate Against Hate website provides a range of resources to support with challenging discrimination and intolerance. It also provides advice on how to respond where you have concerns.

This is the profoundly flawed Prevent approach, which is based on a false notion that people who commit violent acts of terror do so as a result of developing “extreme” ideas. The scope of what is “extreme” has been redefined under this current government to play down the growing threat from the far right – because their ideas are uncomfortably close to those of sections of the ruling Party, but, lets not dwell on that…

We know that recent events will result in teachers being put in difficult positions at school, as children understandably ask questions and share their opinions. In some cases, children may have been exposed to false or inappropriate information outside of school, making the role of the teacher in responding to children even harder.  As with other sensitive topics, teachers and staff will of course be using their judgement and expertise to navigate these discussions, in a way that maintains high standards of ethics and behaviour.

A very good guide to dealing with this objectively and in a genuinely non partisan way, not taking the diplomatic imperatives of the UK government’s complicity with Israel’s breaches of international law as a distorting framework, is provided by the National Education Union’s guidance. The NEU guidance is aimed at developing historical understanding, challenging misinformation and media bias, built around a concern for the inclusion and safeguarding of all students and communities; and provides a far more balanced and workable framework than the Ministers seem capable of.

We know that young people may have a strong personal interest in these issues, which could lead to political activity. Schools and colleges should ensure that any political expression is conducted sensitively, meaning that it is not disruptive and does not create an atmosphere of intimidation or fear for their peers and staff. This includes not only where behaviour appears to celebrate or glorify violence, but also any expression of views that feels targeted against specific groups or stigmatises others. The Department has published guidance to help schools navigate teaching about political issues.

It may be that a school decides to ban all symbols associated with the conflict, but this should not be applied in a partisan manner. The Government itself flying Israeli flags on public buildings set a very bad example if they genuinely wanted to reduce tensions. There was a demonstration in the United States last week in which people waving Israeli flags were chanting “no ceasefire”. We will see if the UK demonstration “supporting Israel” this Sunday does the same. That could be interpreted as “glorifying violence”. It certainly wants it to continue. As does the government. The formula “any expression of views that feels targeted against specific groups or stigmatises others” can be, and in some cases is, interpreted very broadly; with the result that students expressing a pro Palestinian view have been put through disciplinary procedures; which is creating “an atmosphere of intimidation or fear” for these students. Put bluntly, they are nervous of expressing their view, and so are many of their parents. How this is compatible with the “Fundamental British Values” of democracy, respect and mutual tolerance is another question that the Ministers might have to wrestle with. The next paragraph shows the mental and organisational mechanics of this atmosphere of fear.

In the past, we have seen how events in the Middle East are used as an excuse to stir up hatred against communities, including in schools and colleges. It is of the utmost importance that schools and colleges tackle this head on and ensure that where behaviour extends into antisemitism or other discriminatory bullying, it is responded to with all due seriousness. There is also support through the Prevent programme if teachers consider that abusive or discriminatory views indicate a wider vulnerability to radicalisation. There is guidance available on GOV.UK on how to assess risk of radicalisation and make a referral.

Such a creative use of language to obscure realities. Perhaps this letter could be used in an English lesson to examine how the manipulation of language can be used to create a desired impression that subverts the truth, with a special emphasis on the strategic deployment of the passive voice. “Events in the Middle East”. What a passive phrase for such active violence; “provides an excuse to stir up hatred against communities”. Which communities? Only antisemitism is mentioned. Islamophobia isn’t mentioned. Why not? All bullying should be dealt with seriously, especially that coming from the top. The way that the former Home Secretary described people marching for peace and a ceasefire – a demand supported by 76% of the population, the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd and 120 countries at the UN – as “hate marchers” indicates how out of step with most of the world this government is, but also how they want schools to become complicit in policing their own political view – that the IDF should be allowed to carry on this war until they have “rooted out Hamas”, which it is evident that they can’t do without a wholesale slaughter of the population in Gaza; as even a mass expulsion into Egypt or beyond would not prevent Hamas, or a formation like it, reemerging from the ashes with even more fuel for vengeance than they have had hitherto. This is a kind of insanity. You might even describe its stance as extreme and radicalised. It certainly isn’t mainstream.

There are trusted external bodies, which can provide support:

  • To assist, the Community Security Trust have published several educational resources, including those that support understanding and identifying antisemitism. For concerns regarding antisemitism, the Community Security Trust provide a national emergency number which should be used to report antisemitic attacks, alongside calling 999: 0800 032 3263.
  • For anti-Muslim hatred, Tell Mama provides a confidential support service, with their website providing a number of different ways to report anti-Muslim incidents.
  • The DfE has a Counter-Extremism online referral form, which allows for extremism concerns to be reported directly to the Department. Report Extremism in Education – Start.
  • For anyone in the UK who feels impacted by the ongoing conflict, Victim Support is available online on 0808 168 9111 (free and available 24/7).

Given that calling for peace has been interpreted by the former Home Secretary, and current prime Minister, as “hate”, it goes without saying here that the students that might be referred to Prevent are those that feel and express a solidarity with the Palestinians – constructively reinterpreted as “support for Hamas” as it so often is in our less scrupulous newspapers – but not students who express a desire for the IDF to “finish the job” in Gaza” or possibly sing songs like this. I double checked to see if this clip is real and, heart sinkingly enough, it is.

We ask that you do whatever you can to actively provide Jewish and all young people with the reassurance they need and respond swiftly to any incidents. We know that you will work to ensure that your schools and colleges remain calm, safe and supportive environments, where everyone can thrive in safety and respect.

If schools are proactive and allow a safe space for all students to express their views and feelings, in a “calm, safe and supporting environment” knowing that their school cares for them, and those that disagree with them, there will be fewer incidents where unexpressed and underexplored ideas come out under pressure of feeling suppressed and outlawed, not least through the partisan and deeply immoral promotion of state violence by our current Education Ministers who list themselves below.

The Rt Hon Gillian Keegan MP, Secretary of State for Education

The Rt Hon Nick Gibb MP, Minister for Schools

The Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP, Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education

Twelve Questions for Keir Starmer

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Outside Parliament calling for a ceasefire. November 14 2023

  1. Nearly three weeks ago you said that you were opposed to a ceasefire in Gaza because it would “freeze the conflict” at that point, leaving Hamas’s military infrastructure intact. That was on October 31st. At that point deaths in Gaza were just under 9,000 according to the UN. Because of the collapse of services and communications in the hospitals in Gaza no totals have been reported in the ten days since Nov 7th, by which time it had reached 11,078. It could now be approaching 20,000, as the Palestinian Red Crescent has reported that it is now no longer able even to pull people out from the rubble of their bombed out homes when they call for help. If you think these extra deaths are a necessary price to make people in Israel safer, why do they matter less?
  2. Given that most of the people killed have been civilians not fighters, how many civilians, how many more children do you think will have to die before the IDF thinks it has, in Ron DeSantis’s phrase, “finished the job”?
  3. If you don’t agree with the comment of Republican member of the Florida State Legislature Michelle Saltzman, who, when asked how many people in Gaza have to die for Israel’s security, replied “all of them” how many do you think should?
  4. Do you disagree with the families of the hostages held by Hamas that the IDFs current military campaign will put the lives of their loved ones at risk ?
  5. If so, why?
  6. Do you accept that the 1200 Palestinians currently detained without charge by Israel are also hostages?
  7. You often say that Israel has the right to defend itself, but do you also accept that, under Additional Article 1 of the Geneva Convention, an occupied people like the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, including by force of arms?
  8. As your argument is that no country could accept the scale of attack on Oct 7th this year without retaliation, and that the 1400 deaths suffered that day justifies whatever measures are necessary to remove the military threat posed by Hamas; do you think that the Palestinians have the right to retaliate for the Israeli invasions of Gaza in 2008, that killed 1400, or that of 2014, that killed 2100 and keep retaliating until the threat to their lives represented by the IDF is removed?
  9. If not, why not?
  10. Do you recognise that since 2000, eight Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli life lost, and the figures for children are thirty seven Palestinian children killed for every Israeli child?
  11. If you do, what explains your stance that retaliatory attacks from Hamas are terrorism, while retaliatory attacks from the IDF are justified?
  12. Given that you so firmly believe that the UK cannot take an independent line from its closest allies, now that EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, is arguing that “there is no military solution”, will you embrace this recognition; or are you waiting for Washington to say the same thing before you can feel safe to do so?

The shameless manipulation of Remembrance

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

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.

An Attenborough out take – and other stories of managed decline.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Now that we are back on Greenwich Meantime, and the nights start in the afternoon, I’m reminded of one of my grandmother’s phrases “Don’t half get late early doesn’t it?”

At the corner of the park there is an area of once ornamental plants that is now decidedly unkempt and casually rubbish strewn. It abuts an area with a few trees that provide cover to ground level and a dark and rather menacing glade alongside the path that everyone hurries past. This has become something of a haven for rats in the last few months.

They are definitely becoming a bit bolder. On Sunday morning last week several of them were frolicking in the sunlight a little away from a flock of pigeons. One of the pigeons, possibly curious (I don’t know how curious pigeons get) waddled over and got into one of the rat’s personal space, so it jumped up and snapped at its breast before getting back to moseying around on the grass with a mouth full of feather, as the pigeon, armed with no more than a corn pecking beak and an injured sense of dignity, backed off in a huff. Not quite the Serengeti, but could fit into the latest Attenborough series about urban wildness, given the right camera angle and magnification.

It doesn’t help that some people feed the pigeons, sometimes in a big way, which also feeds the rats; and others dump half eaten fast food near the bins instead of in them. Every night is take out night.

At the other end of the park near the Shisha lounge, another rather plump rat makes one of those bum bouncing runs they do when they are in a bit of a panic, heading for cover, as a fox, magnificently red in the early morning light, stands stock still and watches it with lordly indifference.

Where are the raptors when you need them?

A bit of guerilla gardening might be a good move if the council would agree to it. Put live plants into the scuzzy ornamental patch, having cleared it, and for volunteers to keep them up, along with clearing away the rubbish and undergrowth that gives the rats the cover they need.

The following Sunday morning, another sunny day in which colours in the park seemed to have been reimagined as a painting by David Hockney, there was no sign of the rats on their main territory. Perhaps they were having a lie in.

Most of the park is fine, busy, full of dog walkers, exercise classes, little parliaments of elderly men putting the world to rights, but these sad rodent ridden corners need sorting out.

Someone had vandalised and abandoned an electric hire bike near the shops. It could be a metaphor for what Rishi Sunak is doing to the government’s climate targets.

A bright green double decker arrives with a paint job on the side announcing it as the 1,000th London electric bus, which is good to know. Only 7,000 to go. In Shenzen they converted all 16,000 of their buses to electric in one year, but TFL is doing well by Western standards. The millionth Morris Minor was painted Lilac, which was quite daring for the time.

At the Health Centre in Alperton for my Covid jab and its a real industrial process. The waiting room packed out, the queue half way up the corridor to the entrance. All elderly. All looking for a seat and not always finding it. The space, excitement and bonhomie of the first wave replaced by a kind of unsettled grumpiness as everyone is jumbled too close together cheek by jowl. The bloke in charge of feeding in the queue has an air of can do enthusiasm that shall not be moved, and moves everyone through as quickly as possible. Overhead, possibly covering a camera, someone has placed a nitrite glove that looks like a shrunken blue udder, or an AI plasticated version of “The Beast with Five Fingers”. “Its the horrible hand, its operating again!”

After the rains, a dead slug lies on the pavement like a tiny beached whale.

The houses in Roe Green Village, built originally to house the workers for Airco, look as though they were purpose built for Xmas card scenes. All red brick and high pitched roofs with dense green hedges, just waiting for a thick snowfall, to be scattered with glitter and festooned with, tasteful, lights. Of course, the people who first lived in them built military aircraft in the First World War.

On the way back home, a group of ten middle aged adults, some with lanyards, walk along Roe Green in pairs like an extremely well behaved school crocodile.

On the way up the hill, I pass a man walking down who has some sort of palsy, has his head down a bit concentrating on walking and is shaking his arms like he’s having a bop. So I wish him a good morning as I pass, and he nods. Only connect.