We Didn't Know

 

“Iran’s nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security” UK PM, Sir Keir Starmer

Meanwhile, Israel's nuclear programme includes possession of nuclear bombs with a wider programme which involves the genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people. For Starmer this is not a threat, but is to be supported. As I write this RAF surveillance planes are operating from Cyprus helping the Israelis with this war crime. Like many of you I am in despair, but that is not an option. I can’t do better than quote the following from William Hartung, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

“The U.S. is always getting in trouble when they think there’s this miracle solution. Iran’s not going to sit on its hands. They’ll respond possibly by killing U.S. troops in the region, then we’ll have escalation from there. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said, “It’s going to be a cakewalk. It’s not going to cost anything.” Couple trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of casualties, many U.S. veterans coming home with PTSD, a regime that was sectarian that paved the way for ISIS, it couldn’t have gone worse. And so, this is a different beginning, but the end is uncertain, and I don’t think we want to go there. It’s almost as if Benjamin Netanyahu is running U.S. foreign policy, and Trump is kind of following along. I think taking the stand is infectious ... the more of us that get involved, the better chance we have of turning this thing around. So, we should not let them discourage us. We need to build power to push back against all these horrible things.”

So do whatever you can. In my case, as former director of the Pavarotti Music Centre in war-torn Mostar, I am in contact with those involved with music in Gaza and Palestine. For those of you who don’t know what is happening and don’t know what to do here is Tom Paxton with ‘We didn’t know‘, recorded 60 years ago and sadly still relevant.

Left Field - Postscript

 The intervening years since Left Field's publication have been ones of personal and political hope and of personal and political despair. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary.

Not surprisingly for someone entering my eighth decade, these have been years when close friends have left this planet while I remain clinging to its edges, aware of Leonard Cohen’s words to Marianne Ihlen that, “I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”

My  operation for a subdural haematoma  which I wrote about in Left Field was followed two years later by a heart valve operation, then a stroke caused by a strepsis infection of my new valve. More recently I have had epileptic seizures and now write without a glass of wine or beer as my prompt!  I used my hospital stays to campaign for an NHS that has now saved my life three times.

 

I'm proud that the unfairly much-vilified Jeremy Corbyn visited me when I was in St Barts Hospital. The worst insult he has had to endure has been accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ when he has been at the forefront of anti-racism struggles for decades. I last saw him three years ago when I joined him in Cable Street at a demonstration to mark the 85th anniversary of the battle to stop fascism in this country.

With that in mind, I helped organise a letter in his support signed by Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Nigel Kennedy, Alexei Sayle and thousands of others, I consider Corbyn to be our El Pepe. 

His visit to my bedside was organised by Alice Kilroy whose death has left my grip on the planet more enfeebled. She was a wonderful friend and visited me in hospital more times  than anyone outside my immediate family. I miss her. Here she is with the banner she made for my 70th birthday. It says: "70 years young/ The cops have not caught me yet/ No point  braking now"

Before she died in February 2020, Alice asked me to take over her work as one of the contributors to People's Campaign for Corbyn Facebook.  You can view all these blogs on my website at www.davidwilson.org.uk

Thanks to Jan Woolf I have got to know Ken Livingstone, the other politician accused of anti-semitism because of his defence of Palestine. On 20th April 2024 Jan organised a 'Thanks Ken Livingstone' celebration. Family and friends gathered to honour his life and legacy as Mayor of London. We were treated to poetry, a piano recital from his granddaughter, Sky Hutchinson, and contributions acknowledging his many achievements as a good and effective politician. On sale was a pamphlet which included my conversation with him over a takeaway curry.

As I write this postscript genocide continues to flatten Palestine, confirming the continuing importance of all that Jeremy and Ken have said and done. Aided and abetted by our political leaders and the 'corporate media' it seems that all we are left with is Antonio Gramsci's - 'pessimism of the heart, optimism of the will.'  Jeremy and Ken, along with many of my friends, help me with that optimism. 

I have also found that optimism at  the heart of the genocidal suffering. Thanks to contact with the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Birzet, Palestine, I have been able to write about the survival of music in Gaza. And Haidar Eid, professor of literature at Gaza's Al-Aqsar University has kept me, and the wider world, informed about the situation there, but also about his own experience of loss and survival. 

My optimism is strengthened by my Jewish friends, most of whom are more regular participants at the Palestine demonstrations than I am. This should not surprise you as I have written about the strength of the Bundist tradition in judaism many times.

Plenty to keep me busy and angry, but I am also finding time to write new books.  My World Café  was published by Riversmeet in November 2023. It is a collaboration with the wonderfully gifted artist, Laura Davis. I am now writing My World Music which will be published by Riversmeet in 2026.

These years have been ones when my eldest son, Ben, lost and won back his disability benefits. Many haven’t and many have lost their lives in the process. I have written about him in Left Field, and he remains a constant force for good in my life. When I am depressed I reflect on his life and how he continues to overcome his hardships with positive determination and humour. 

But these have also been years of loss for me, not just of the dead, but of a living son who has ghosted me. I wrote about Jonny under a pseudonym for Stand Alone, a charity set up for people estranged from their families. I have a grandson, Rhys.  who is aged ten at time of writing, but who has never met me. Left Field is dedicated to him so I hope he will one day find his way to a copy. I have written him a letter which has been attached to my Will and which I also hope he will read, even if it is after my death. 

My past as co-founder of War Child still haunts me and hope it haunts those I write critically about here. I recently learned that the present War Child CEO receives an annual salary of £118,000. My critique of aid charities continued after two visits to the Calais ‘jungle’ refugee ‘camps’. 

More happily I visit Mostar to stay with my Bosnian family who I write about in Left Field. 

Here is my Mostar son, Oha Maslo, with his wife, Masa. They have taught me that 'family' is not just biological. Today Oha is Director of the Mostar Rock School, succesfully bringing together young people with music. I am lucky to have them in my life along with their daughters Luna, Zoe and Lejla, Teo and his family, woodcraft maestro, Esad Brkiċ, Nedžad Klepo, Elvis Ibragic, Nada Hendrix and many others.

Here in London I have been trying to play guitar again. My left hand was weakened by the stroke. My London music friends are at Camden Guitars and the owner, Deicola Neves, tells me off when I complain. "Didn't you know that Django Reinhardt only had three fingers? 

Deicola and his shop have become my London Pavarotti Centre. Here he is playing great jazz on bass guitar. He performed at my 80th birthday celebration, as he did twelve years ago at my father's funeral. 

And here is the Dubioza Kolektiv 'Cross the Line' track made with Manu Chao about borders that kill. They too visited me in hospital soon after Jeremy's visit. Listen to this great track and watch the video which is as politically powerful as their music. I dedicate this entry to them, to Oha and family, to Deicola and all those who have kept me connected to music and a life without borders., both physical and mental.

Finally  I am honoured that the following messages were sent me to mark my 80th year.

BEN WILSON: ‘Hey David and all of you that have turned up to celebrate this milestone birthday. I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. So bloody hell David you’ve done it! 80! I say this because, as you all know my dad had a lot of health issues, but has luckily got though them, Raise your glasses as I will tonight, but sadly David can’t, except with a soft drink’

OHA MASLO: ‘Dear father, Well, you are turning 80 now. I do not have any doubt that, at the moment, you are surrounded by people who are important to you and who love you. I'm not sure how you're going to get through such a beautiful day without having a drink, good luck with that, hahaha. You were 52 when we met, which means I have to run through 5 more years to reach that age :) And I have known you for 28 years now :) We, Maša, Zoe, Luna, Lejla, and I, your southern family, are very happy for all these years that we are sharing together with you. Knowing your father's case, there are going to be at least 20 more :) We will have a time to celebrate this round number with you in Mostar in about a month's time. I would like to ask everyone in the room now to help us from down south to deliver our celebrating energy to David. - Take the glass, make sure there is drink in there :) - Look at David's eyes - And repeat after me - Živio sto godina - U zdravlje - Have a drink, and enjoy the party :) Thank you everyone. Love from Mostar. Happy birthday Father xxx’

IRIAL & DARLA ENO: ‘Wishing you a very happy birthday. You have always been, and cntinue to be, such an inspiration to us both. Thank you for always speaking truth to power, and never giving up the fight for what is right. With love, admiration. Solidarity, and hopes for a brighter future’ Irial & Darla xxx

HENRIETTA SEEBOHM: ‘Happy Birthday! You are an inspiration, a legend and a community builder. Thank you for your welcome to the Pavarotti Centre in Mostar in the 90’s. Congratulations on your 80th birthday – you rock!’ Henri 

HAIFA ZANGANA: ‘My dearest friend. On your birthday let's celebrate friendship and solidarity. I and Mundher, will be with you though we are both in Tunis, and I will borrow a few lines from our friend Saadi Yousif, the iraqi poet who calls himself ‘The last communist’. To you " You are free. You pick a sky and name it, a sky to live in, a sky to refuse. A sky as vast as your heart. Your friendship’

CECILY BOMBERG:  ‘In all the many years I’ve known David, he has not just spoken or written about his anger and despair for the world’s injustices, but has put his all actively and daily into attempting to defeat them, never counting the cost or seeking fame or reward, and I love and bless him for it. Happy birthday David, may you live another 80 years. This old world needs you’

HIDETO AND CHAKO WATANABE: ‘Very happy 80th birthday, David! We wish we were there to celebrate this with you all. The time we were together doing Future Trust and Eclipse were one of the most exciting times of our life and remembered fondly always. Big thanks for the friendship!!!!’ Hideto and Chako.

And at the end of the 80th year celebration this poem was read by the person who is the reason why I am still here, Anne Aylor. She is my wife, lover, editor and muse. Without her I would never have written a word.  

WILD GEESE by Mary Oliver 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

 Read all of Left Field here.

 

There is music in Gaza

 

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” 

Bob Marley

This is a summary of the most recent information I have received from The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Ramallah about continuing music progammes taking place in Gaza.

“Despite the ongoing systematic aggression and the genocide by the Israeli occupation against our people in Gaza, the Conservatory has continued its music programs, including instrument training, choral singing, and community music. These efforts persist despite frequent interruptions due to the escalation of war crimes against Gazans and the deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions, especially in Gaza City, Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun, where activities were temporarily suspended at various times in the past few months since the ceasefire was broken by Israel. In the central Gaza Strip, the Conservatory team continued instrument and choral teaching programs in cooperation with community and shelter centers at UNRWA schools in Al-Nuseirat and Mawasi Khan Younis. The program has successfully expanded to include three new centers in Deir Al-Balah. In northern Gaza, the team managed to resume music teaching and group singing, organizing recreational activities for children despite non-stop exceptional conditions marked by heavy bombing, systematic destruction, and mass displacement of people.”

https://mailchi.mp/ncm/ve63b3l1tf-13842057?e=971bc80a20

Gaza and the sprit of the International Brigades

 

Guy Smallman posted great photos after the London  half a million strong Palestine march on 17 May and wrote this:

“Huge numbers on the streets of London Saturday protesting 77 years of racism, apartheid & ethnic cleansing which has now inevitably spiralled into full blown genocide. A genocide that is being live streamed to our phones and TV screens on a minute by minute basis. A genocide that has now added systematic starvation to its ever-expanding list of crimes ...they organisers really need to start thinking outside of their comfort zone. Marching from A to B to listen to the same of speakers repeating themselves is not enough. If the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is going to remain fit for purpose then it needs to up its game. It needs to be calling for nationwide graffiti campaigns and national days of peaceful disruption at the very least. Otherwise it will go down in history as doing little more than managing peoples anger on behalf of the British state. In the meantime the rest of us can proactively support the likes of Palestine Action, Youth Demand & PYM Britain (to name a but a few) as they take action without asking permission from anyone.”

I agree with him and his photos are powerful visual evidence to the strength of public feeling for the victims of this genocide. Even my own more amateur photos from the demonstration have reached more of you than anything I have posted in the past.

In his excellent book ‘We Shall Pass’, about the British volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, Clifford Thurlow tells the story of a Glaswegian, Robbie Gillan, who joined a hunger march to London and, after an altercatuon with the police, continued on to Spain where he joined the British Battalion in the fight against Franco and fascism. I have learned a lot about the international brigades gfrom his book and from my partner, Anne Aylor, who has been writing a historical novel set amongst the American volunteers. 

Am I alone in wondering where is the spirit of the International Brigades today? 23 years ago US citizen, Rachel Corrie, was brutally crushed by an IDF bulldozer when protesting as a member of the International Solidarity Movement. Ships attempting to carry aid into Gaza have been boarded, their crews murdered. Perhaps it is time to remember Robbie Gillan and Rachel Corrie, and at the very least, fix our attention and our marches on those who are engaging in direct action, whether it be attempting to ship in food to Gaza, obstrcting banks who fund the genocide  or occupying BAE arms factories.

The cellist of Sarajevo

 

On 6 May my friend, Elvis Ibragic, took me to visit Vijećnica, Sarajevo's City Hall and BiH National University Library. In 1992 the building was destroyed by mortar attacks from Serb forces and approximately 2 million books and a great number of its special collections and documents were consumed in the flames. 

Not long after, three grenades killed 26 people and wounded 108 while they were waiting for bread in Ferhadija street (Vaso Miskin). The spot is marked on the pavement by one of the Sarajevo 'roses' which have been engraved where these mortuary mortar shells landed. You have to take care to avoid walking on them.

Cellist Vedran Smajlović played in the destroyed Library and for 26 days played Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor in Ferhadija Street. I was pleased to see that  the library's museum has this montage photo of him playing in the ruins, with  a cello placed in front of it. 

When he arrived  in London I took him to perform the adagio at Watford Girls Grammar School and he helped War Child raise money for our music projects. 

You can listen to the adagio at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u99f9RAvwu4

We often hear the refrain ‘Never Again’, but sadly there is too much' again'. Here is someone who might, right now, if still alive, be playing the adagio in Gaza

From the Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza

 

Israel is starving Gaza, inflicting a ‘manmade and politically motivated’ famine (UNRWA) on its people. 3,000 trucks of food and medicine are blocked at the border. The WHO says its supplies are gone. Hospitals are running out of medicine. Children are dying. 

Israel has turned Gaza into a concentration camp and the response from political leaders in the so-called western democracies? Do and say nothing. In the case of my own UK government, say nothing while acting alongside the USA in support of the slaughter.

No change there.When there were concentration camps in Europe more than 80 years ago representatives of the British and US governments met in Bermuda in April, 1943, reluctantly responding to rising pressure to rescue European Jews.They decided to do nothing. Nothing. A UK Foreign Office memo prior to the conference stated that, “There is a possibility that the Germans or their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.” In plain Engish, the UK government feared that the Nazi regime might halt the genocide, and iexpel European Jewry ‘flooding’ the allied countries.

As the conference commenced, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began. The fighters made a final appeal to the world, “The last 35,000 Jews in the ghetto at Warsaw have been condemned to execution. Warsaw is again echoing to volleys of musketry. The people are being murdered. Women and children defend themselves with naked arms. Save us!”

Similar messages are reaching us from Gaza, and I choose here to quote this from Asma Salama Abu Mansi, children’s literature writer, “In the shadow of war and destruction, which has lasted for so long, we stand on the edge, nearly falling into an abyss without bottom, often plunging into a sea of despair from which survival seems impossible. Does hope remain a choice, or does it become something imposed on the people of Gaza? Perhaps hope here is neither a luxury nor a desire, but rather a form of resistance, known only to Gazans, who lack the luxury of choice. They cling to whatever hope remains, as if it were the last straw that could save them from drowning in a sea of ashes. It is a force that renews itself with every moment, not because Gazans choose to be optimistic, but because we are compelled to survive.”

If you are unable to see the parallels between the past and the present, I leave you with these words from one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who was addressing the leaders of the Palestinian resistance.

‘To all leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations; to all soldiers of Palestinian militant groups: My name is Marek Edelman. I am a former Deputy Commander of the Jewish Military Organization in Poland and one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the memorable year of 1943 we fought for the survival of the Jewish community in Warsaw. We fought for mere life, not for territory, nor for a national identity. We fought with hopeless determination, but our weapons were never directed against the defenceless civilian population, we never killed women and children. In the world devoid of principles and values, despite a constant danger of death, we did remain faithful to these values and moral principles. We were isolated in our fight, and yet the powerful opposing army was not able to destroy these barely armed boys and girls. Our fight in Warsaw lasted several weeks, and later we fought in the partisan groups and in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Yet nowhere in the world can urban guerrilla force bring a conclusive victory, but it cannot be defeated by well-armed armies either. And this war will not bring any resolution. Blood will be spilled in vain and lives will be lost on both sides. We were never careless with life. We never sent our soldiers to certain death. Life is one for eternity. Nobody has the right to mindlessly take it away. It is high time for everybody to understand that … to the State of Israel, you have to radically change your attitude. You have to want peace in order to save the lives of hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, and to create a better future for your loved ones, for your children. I know from my own experience that the current unfolding of events depends on you, the Military Leaders.’ Marek Edelman, August 2002

"The earth constricts around us. It squeezes us into the final corridor, forcing us to shed our limbs just to pass through. The ground crushes us; oh, if only we were its wheat, to die and live again. And if only it were our mother, to show us mercy. We wish to be the stones that our dream will carry."  Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish