The Earthquake Called Palestine

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Fault lines and Seismic Divisions

The fault lines were always there; Palestine, with the seismic events of the last 19 months, has widened them like a jackhammer ripping apart the earth; the pieces have been thrown up into the air and landed reconfigured. The world is not what it was.

Palestine – the pivot about which the world precariously rotates - has upended the world order, precipitated a tumult of global events - and exposed everybody’s true faces.

And as the factions have realigned, gathering up other prejudices into their folds, as they reconstitute themselves, new battle lines have been drawn, divisions hardened, binaries emphatically established.

Two opposing stances, each emerging more and more clearly through the chaos and violence, international law discarded by power gone mad as it daily tears apart the lives of innocents, murders with impunity, rips off children’s limbs, starves a population - and then arrests and deports those who speak up for justice. It calls up down, and right left - and the rest of the world nods mutely in agreement.

The post WWII global order has been demolished, the rule book ripped apart so that crooked politicians can support mass extermination, accept war criminals into their countries, negotiate weapons deals and subvert the established legal frameworks to accommodate a genocide.

Outside those two camps, are the ones who have remained comfortably numb, dumbed down with their banal diet of reality TV or whatever it is they feed themselves to stay inert to the suffering of people that don’t look like them or their own children. A whole grey area of them, who, if they had spoken up, could have helped create a different outcome.

Youth Demand doing what every young person of conscience and backbone should do. The streets should be gridlocked until the borders of Gaza are opened.

Masters of the Universe

What do you see these days, if you truly open your eyes and look beyond the mainstream media’s lies? What do you see in the streets of the cities? I see a sea of green and red, people screaming “We are all Palestinians”.

Young people of conscience disrupting arms conferences, eschewing hefty salaries to heckle fat cats and corrupt executives at Microsoft AI meetings; vandalising arms factories, being carted off by police; I see keffiyeh’s that I had never seen before in the unlikeliest of places. I see young people of conscience making personal sacrifices – professional, educational, reputational.

Zionists may be masters of the type of manipulation required to elevate their propaganda to international level, they may be masters of networking and self-promotion, of money and all things worldly – but the Palestinians have mastered our hearts.

Yes, for the unseeing – those people still looking away, still preoccupied with petty concerns and lacking a broader perspective on the world, all they see is people shouting in the streets, blocking their shopping routes, gridlocking traffic (well done Youth Demand – you are amazing) – thousands of tiny white shrouds stained with blood and mothers sifting bits of grain or bread through the dirt on floors to feed their starving children do not upset their fancy lunches nor make them look at their own well fed children with any less guilt, their easy privileges only make them complain that the person next door has more than them.

But for the rest of us, those who can’t look away - Palestinians taught us humanity. Every single person I have ever met, who has visited Palestine or interacted with Palestinians says they are the most gracious and dignified of people. But I don’t need to tell you this (unless you’re the fool who doesn’t look beyond simple propaganda) – you can see it for yourself.

And you can see also, the stark contrast with the people who smear them. Choose your side wisely – there will (hopefully) be no coming back from this, and I will for one make sure, that among people I know, I know their position now.

Your Position on Palestine is Who You Are

The differences run deep. It isn’t merely about nationalism or cultural differences, simple political opinions. No, it goes even deeper than that – it is about the very fabric of a person’s character, their ethics, their humanity.

Whether they are the type of person that will stand on the side of power and brute force and continue to support innocent people’s lives being ripped apart because they are a person driven by hate, and more specifically by racial hatred.

Right the way from the poisonous cradle of Zionism itself, “Israel” – and, through its motherland the US, spreading its tentacles across continents (via various concentrated nodules such as the Germany and institutions of power in the West) everywhere you find Zionists you will find people who are angry, violent, racist, virulent – and filled brim-full with hatred.

And then there are the ignorant ones, their education having done them no favours. For what is education, if you can’t use it to speak out against a genocide? What is education if it doesn’t make you a better person, cultivate your understanding of the world and translate to useful action? Especially if you learned about the “Holocaust” at school, if you have children yourself - shame on you.

So What Are You Going to Do?

Zionists therefore don’t count; neither do the people who make excuses for Zionists because they’re more concerned about their paymasters than the biggest atrocity of our lifetime, or several lifetimes; they’re more bothered about some confused sense of social etiquette around anti-semitism and the holocaust, or they just don’t care.

I’ve got a message for you. Open your fucking eyes – the holocaust is happening right now. The question is, what are you going to do? What role will you play, and how is your time here on this earth of any value within the bigger picture, if you cannot even take a side, if you cannot even speak out, if you cannot even be bothered to educate yourself?

The time to speak out, if ever there was a time, is now.