A Dystopia Without Bread

 

I woke up this morning to read this from a doctor in Gaza. I then opened a film clip of a man falling dead as he held out a bowl for food. 

Two days ago I was at the London march for Palestine and witnessed four police officers arrest an elderly woman for supporting a ‘terrorist’ organisation. She was standing close to this electronic police notice so she had been warned!

I am sending this out on my Facebook, on my website, and on other social media, but for the first time, to all my email contacts. 

I know that many of you know me and will agree with my opinions and feelings, but I also know that some of you will think, ‘oh that’s David, that old lefty. Bless him’. 

But if just one of you who think this of me, read this and then take action, in however big or small a way, I have not wasted my time.

From: Dr. Ezzideen in Gaza

"I swear to you. Before God. Before this wretched century. Before whatever last flicker of humanity may still remain in me, what I saw today was not life.

It was the collapse of everything that ever claimed to be sacred.

Once, Fridays in Gaza were holy.

Not because of tradition, but because they were tender.

A father would come home with fish, or perhaps a piece of chicken, and for one hour, we would eat like people.

We were poor, but not degraded.

We would smile across the table, thank God for a small plate of meat, and feel alive. We felt worthy of breath.

Even the poorest among us knew this dignity.

They saved all week. They endured hunger not out of habit, but for hope. 

For that one day.

That one meal.

That illusion of a normal life.

But now?

Today is Friday.

And I walked through the streets of Gaza, not to celebrate, not even to feed, but to hunt for rice.

Rotten rice.

Gray grains that stick to your fingers and taste like nothing.

Anything. Anything at all to fool the stomach into silence.

My brother searched one market. I searched another.

We returned with crumbs.

We paid with the last coins we had.

They ask for gold in exchange for ash.

And we pay it, because the children must eat, and because we no longer dare to say what is fair.

But I have not come to speak about rice.

I have come to confess what I saw.

A truck passed by.

It was empty.

Its floor was covered in a thin layer of flour dust.

Just dust.

Not bags. Not bread. Only the trace of something that might once have saved a child.

And then I saw them.

Not rebels. Not criminals.

Children.

They ran, ran like hunted things, toward that truck. They climbed it with hands that have never held toys.

They fell to their knees as if before an altar.

And they began to scrape.

One had a broken lid.

Another, a piece of cardboard.

But the rest, the rest used their hands.

Their tongues.

They licked it.

Do you hear me?

They licked flour dust from rusted steel. From dirt. From the back of a truck that had already driven away.

One boy was laughing.

Not because he was happy, but because the body goes mad when it is starving.

Another was crying, quietly, like someone who no longer believes anyone is listening.

And I stood there.

With all my shame.

With my hands in my pockets, like a man waiting for a bus.

Like I wasn't watching the end of the world.

I wanted to scream.

But what scream can reach Heaven, when Heaven itself is deaf?

What words can I offer?

What words can explain the sound of a child's tongue scraping against rust for a taste of flour?

There are no metaphors left.

There is no beauty in this.

Only sin.

Only crime.

And we are all guilty.

You. Me.

The ones who sent the truck.

The ones who sent the planes.

And God?

If You are watching, then cry with us.

And if You are silent, then we are alone in this hell.

This is the twenty-first century.

But history has not moved forward.

It has swallowed its own children and called it progress.

I don't want to write this.

I want to unsee it.

I want to forget the boy who licked the floor.

But I can't.

Because I saw him.

Because he is real.

Because he is more real than all the words l've written.

And because if I forget him, then I am no longer human.'

Further posts for you.

We Dream of Bread

We Stitch Their Names

Culture & The New Imperialism

A Jewish holocaust survivor at Saturday’s march

Medical Aid for Palestine

www.davidwilson.org.uk

SOME RESPONSES to A DYSTOPIA WITHOUT BREAD

My cousin, whose mum was one of the first to be gassed, calls them (Zionists) “Hitler’s children”. 

***

I, for one, hear you, see you and feel the pain also. I'm grateful for you and we are not alone in our total horror at what is taking place in front of our eyes. I'm in my 70s and this has changed me forever

***

I am aged 69 have protested a lot in my time. This current situation has changed me too. I feel as though I should have done more. I am a great grandmother and have never felt so horrified by, and ashamed of my country nor so fearful for the younger generations.

***

Thanks so much for this. Do you know the book by Nathan Thrall "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama"? I think it is one of the best books about Palestinian you can read.

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Plenty of food for thought, if I can use the word "food." 28 countries actively criticizing the situation is such a small number that I genuinely wonder why there are not more. I'm wondering if the remaining countries are afraid to criticize Israel and therefore the US. I wrote to my MP about how ashamed I was that Canada wasn't doing more. He wrote back an extensive letter agreeing, but so what? The UN should have organized something by now, the EU the same ... it's all so medieval, I'm embarrassed to be alive ….. the world should hang its head.

***

Thank you. It has gone light years on from a living hell ...Bless you

***

It’s beyond terrifying. I’ve been sponsoring a family in Gaza for several months now. A husband & wife and three lovely little boys. Going through distilled, endless, grinding hell. A small bag of flour: $25. Same for a bag of carrots, chickpeas etc. Displaced at least 3 times in the last year. They’re all losing weight. And they’re still fucking smiling!! I am ashamed to be part of any ‘democracy’ that supports this. Am currently in Mostar. Remembering the war here, and thinking mostly how humans have everything, and appreciate nothing until they try to destroy others, only to find that the path of annihilation kills us all. Israel is committing pure fascist genocide. What else do we call it? The age of moral equivalence.

***

In case you haven’t seen it ….

Which line?

You say Bob Vylan crossed a line

Which line was that?

I saw some lines 

Inside mass graves

Blue rows of body bags

Beside the front loader

Red lines of blood and flesh

Between tracks in the sand

I don’t think you meant those.

Did you mean the lines

Of naked doctors

Kneeling in the dust

Before the tank?

I don’t recall you noticing.

Or the line of soldiers waiting

To rape a surgeon?

The thousands of lines

Of names of babies

Shredded and burned?

The lines of bullets

Hitting the car where Hind 

Was calling for help?

The line in the sky of F-35s

Dropping bombs on tents

That wasn’t what you meant.

The lines of starving people

Funnelled into cages

Like cattle at an abattoir

That was no cause for outrage.

So did you mean

The triple trillion bottom line

Of corporates making money

For the lords of war?

Is that what lines are for?

For you there are no lines

Before one day in October.

No lines on the map

Crossing out a country

No lines listing massacres 

No lines at checkpoints

No lines of stolen homes

No lines of olive trees.

Did you think you could ink a line

Under the Nakba

And the rest would die quietly?

Well sorry, you have crossed a line

Bob Vylan simply woke up

Your politely genocidal society.

Deborah Ewing

Culture & The New Imperialism

 

 "Israel's unbridled aggression is a similar continuation of what Columbus began: Western economic interests and a religion of the Book are being used to wipe out an indigenous population.” Michael Walling

Culture and The New Imperialism is a brilliant analysis of where our world finds itself right now. It is written by my friend, Michael Walling, artistic director of Border Crossings. This is a theatre company working successfully across borders between cultures and art forms, and between nations and peoples.

 Many years ago he directed my first play and I am pleased that I was  able to introduce him to Ken Livingstone. 

I returned last night from the London Palestine march where I had joined writer/playwright Jan Woolf; and very depressed after seeing the Met Police signs threatening our arrest for opposing genocide. (see photos below). Michael's article makes quite clear what is happening. 

"A few months ago, I had the chance to spend an evening chatting with Ken Livingstone. It was wonderful. Ken is 80 now, and his short-term memory isn't perfect, but his long-term memory absolutely is and his political understanding seems as sharp as ever. He also displayed a rare generosity of spirit, telling me how much he admired John Major, who had been his predecessor as Leader of Lambeth Council back in the 70s, and who "got things done". He was, it's fair to say, much less generous in his assessment of Boris Johnson, who "just didn't do the job" as Mayor of London (or anything else); but his only real bitterness was reserved for the tabloid press, who had caused him great personal pain and political turmoil by labelling him an anti-Semite. The same, of course, happened to Jeremy Corbyn. You've got to hand it to the Tory tabloids: only they could so manipulate the media as to convince the bulk of the population that men like these, who have dedicated much of their life to campaigning against racism, are actually themselves racists.

I've had some experience of this myself. Back in 2014, when we presented THIS FLESH IS MINE in a co-production with ASHTAR Theatre from Ramallah, I received quite a number of emails which accused me, and the company, of being anti-Semitic. There were no explicit references to Jewishness or Israel (or even Palestine) in the play, which deliberately used a mythological framing to distance its exploration of the cyclical nature of violence and its manipulation by global power blocs from the detailed specifics of the ongoing occupation. It seemed that the simple action of collaborating with Palestinian artists, which I absolutely agree in itself does come to constitute a political statement, was also regarded as inherently anti-Semitic. Where is the racism in that equation? In the artists who reach out to one another with the aim of furthering dialogue and understanding, or in the person who regards anything and anyone Palestinian as by definition expressing hatred towards Jewish people?

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has brought these issues to the fore again. Our online reading of THE GAZA MONOLOGUES in late 2023 attracted Zoom-bombers, who were determined that the stories of Gazan youth should not be heard. We did all we could to make sure they were heard, and to avoid making the Zoom-bombing itself into "the story". This is a real problem in the current debate (and I feel very conscious that in some ways this post is itself contributing to that problem). I have every sympathy with the people who have been calling on the media to stop making Bob Vylan's Glastonbury performance "the story", as this only distracts from the reality of what is happening in the Occupied Territories. Chanting “Death, death to the IDF” does not represent any sort of humanitarian or nuanced approach: but neither does the (nominally Labour) UK government's response, which has been to condemn the BBC for allowing its live stream of the concert to continue. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has been taking an ever-more aggressive stance towards the public broadcaster over its coverage of Gaza, most recently demanding "Why has nobody been fired?" in relation to the BBC's showing of the exceptional and very moving documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which was pulled from iPlayer when it emerged that the 13 year old narrator was the son of a Hamas official. 

Let's pause there for a moment. Does the identity of the boy's father actually make the film inherently biased or inaccurate? I don't think so. The statistics around casualties issued by the Gaza health ministry are actually lower than most estimates, and that's because they are carefully verified. The BBC always states that these statistics come from "the Hamas-run Health Ministry", which is the equivalent of saying that we have "the Labour-run Health Ministry". Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. Yes, the UK government (and many others) regards it as a terrorist organisation, but this is a matter of semantics and positionality. The activist group Palestine Action is also now a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, even though its actions could easily and more appropriately be prosecuted as criminal damage. South Africa's ANC was also a proscribed terrorist organisation before that narrative underwent a complete turnaround. The Hamas attack on Israel was undoubtedly brutal and indiscriminate: but is it really justified to describe this action by an elected government as a simple (and mindlessly evil) "terror attack", if the actions of the elected (if decidely insecure six-party coalition) government of Israel are always called acts of "war", or even of "self-defence"? Why do we not call the actions of Israel "terrorism", or the actions of Hamas "war"? Isn't the difference only in the viewpoint? The documentary was as objective (and as subjective) as any other film made by and about young people going through constant bombardment and daily trauma. The only justification for its effective banning is the sense that this is somehow the work of "the enemy": a sense that also implies a view of Israel as being on "our side", the "good guys" in a Manichean, black and white world. The language and the discourse, the cultural dimension, really matter; particularly in this conflict which has such huge implications for the entire world.

The kind of censorship and prejudice that Nandy is exercising is not confined to the UK. America has a long-standing commitment to stamping out any criticism of Israel: Trump's attacks on students who protest against the genocide are only a logical development of the unwavering support shown by the US towards what is essentially its client state in a geopolitically vital region. Mainland Europe, and particularly Germany, is moving ever further to the right, which includes increasing its support for Israel, both economically and culturally. To give a few examples:

- Last month my friend Elli Papakonstantinou was presenting her theatre piece Holy Bitch at the Neuköllner Oper in Berlin. It's an angry, feminist work, and at one point there was a brief reference to the genocide in Gaza. The management asked her to remove this from the show, and, when she did not, greatly reduced the publicity they gave to the work. Journalists refused to cover it. The subtitles went blank when the dreaded word "genocide" was spoken.

- Lina Majdalanie & Rabih Mroué are Lebanese artists living in Berlin, whose most recent work Four Walls and a Roof used Brecht's 1947 appearance before the "Un-American Activities Committee" of Congress to delve into questions of artistic freedom. At one point, they mention that when they first came to Germany, people used to ask them about censorship in Lebanon. Now people in Lebanon are asking them about censorship in Germany. 

- Back in 2022, before the latest overwhelming attacks on Palestinian populations, the great playwright Caryl Churchill had an award for her lifetime's achievement rescinded by a German-appointed jury because of her support for Palestinian causes. As Lina Majdalanie puts it: "Cancellation of invitations, awards, conferences, theatrical  pieces, exhibitions... Public accusation and condemnation of this writer or that artist, or anyone else... Dismissal of journalists, academics... Public funding subject to political obedience... The list goes on."

- In April 2020, the German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, decided that the Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe was "not suitable" to deliver the keynote at the Ruhrtriennale because of his supposed anti-Semitism. The root of this accusation turned out to be Mbembe's 2016 essay The Society of Enmity, in which he applies post-colonial ideas, examining Israel as a settler-colony, and pointing out how the treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories "recall the reviled model of apartheid". 

Mbembe's argument seems decidedly mild and understated in the light of what has happened since. It wasn't even a particularly unusual point to make. As long ago as 1951, Hannah Arendt had pointed out links between Germany's history as a colonial power and the development of the systematic murder machines of the Nazis' Holocaust against the Jews and other perceived "enemies". Mbembe's point was that European (and by extension, North American) societies have a need for a racialised "Other" - "a Negro, a Jew, an Arab, a foreigner" - to provide a justification for their acquisitive and rapacious colonisation of territories beyond their own. The "resettlement of the world" he explained, "often took the shape of innumerable atrocities and massacres, unprecedented instances of 'ethnic cleansing', expulsions, transfers, and concentrations of entire populations in camps, and indeed of genocides." The first genocide of the 20th century was not the Third Reich's Holocaust but the massacre of Herero and Nama people in Namibia by the German Second Reich. The mindless racism that it betrayed serves to underline Mbembe's point that Nazism cannot be regarded as uniquely evil, but should be understood as an extreme maifestation of the cultural mindset that underpinned imperialism, and continues to be present in neo-colonialism today. 

The reason Mbembe's argument was deemed anti-Semitic was not simply that he compared Israel's policy towards Palestine with settler colonialism and apartheid, but also that his placing of the Holocaust in an historical and cultural perspective undermined the prevailing belief that this event was uniquely evil in the history of the world. It suits the state of Israel to construct the Holocaust as exceptional and evil rather than historical, because that can be regarded as a justification for the total paranoia with which it segregates its populations, militarises its borders and attacks its neighbours. It also suits Germany, and the wider constructs of "Europe" and "the West" in which that state plays such a leading role. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", the "struggle of overcoming the past", has come over time to elide into a strangely self-congratulaory position, whereby unquestioning German support for Israel and a delusional imagining of anti-Semitism in every critique of Israeli policy represents a fundamental break with the past. Paradoxically, it also permits other forms of racism to take hold, as the current drift to the right bears witness. If something is "Evil" then it ceases to be historically and culturally explicable: it becomes simply an enemy to be fought perpetually and incessantly. This is how fascism comes to beget more fascism.

The moment we look at the Holocaust as an historical event, then both its deep roots in European culture and colonialism and its current repercussions in global geopolitics make much more sense. "Reich" means "Empire": Nazism was a logical development of the 1492 project - the process whereby a self-satisfiedly "Christian" and "civilised" Europe imposed its hegemony on much of the world, with racist ideology as its justification. Israel's unbridled aggression is a similar continuation of what Columbus began: Western economic interests and a religion of the Book are being used to wipe out an indigenous population. It is through a nation's relationship to colonial histories that its stance on Palestine can most clearly be understood. The United States is an Empire founded on genocide: of course it supports the state of Israel. Great Britain ran the largest Empire the world has ever seen: it too, supports Israel. Germany is in a weird space of denial about its Imperial past: and it supports Israel. On the other hand, a country like Ireland (which we are proud to call Border Crossings' second homebase) has a colonised people's understanding of land grabs, of the use of religion to mask political incursions, of hunger as a weapon, of partition and the militarization of the streets. Ireland has a strong affinity with the Palestinian cause: as this current exhibition in London attests. The vast majority of the Global South - the nations that understand what it is to be colonised - stand with the Palestinian people too. It is deeply depressing to see that humanity is still locked in to the colonial paradigm. 

We need to re-think how post-coloniality is applied. The "post-" doesn't just mean "after": it means "in relation to". Culture and the academy have made much of post-colonialism in relation to cultures and peoples that once were colonised, to the extent that the approach has come to seem a bit tired, and rather patronising, as if (say) Gikuyu society in Kenya can only be understood in relation to the former (and current) British presence there. But if we turn the post-colonial mirror back on the former colonisers, it becomes altogether more illuminating. Let us start to recognise that we still behave as we do on the world stage because of the deep-seated assumptions and prejudices that made our societies into colonial powers. Let us recognise that the crass sloganeering of the right ("Take Back Control", "Make America Great Again") evokes a colonial policy of agression, acquisition and oppression, grotesquely misrepresented as "greatness". Once we have dared to look properly at ourselves, perhaps then we will be able to stop supporting genocide, and cease to brand as racist the very people who are standing against the scourge of racism."

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We are all Palestine Action

 

" The British government clearly believes that the protection of war planes and drones and bombs is far more important than the protection of children and the people of Gaza. It literally places weaponry above human life in its scale of moral values — Sharing this video could get you 14 years in prison.”

George Monbiot

I am sharing it here. Will you?

Lawmakers in the United Kingdom have voted to proscribe campaign group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, raising fears about freedom of expression in the country. Parliament voted 385-26 in favour of the measure against the group on Wednesday, the move coming after its activists broke into a military base last month and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest at the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

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.