Feeding The Ducks

 

A close friend called me up the other day and asked me how I was doing. I answered that I had recently experienced epileptic seizures and that I thought these may be caused by stress in my life; a personal one which will remain just that, and the other which is affecting many of us - the ongoing genocide in Palestine. He kindly suggested the solution would be for me to leave London and head into the countryside to feed the ducks. 

I like ducks but that’s not an option. As an elderly man I still make it to the Palestine demonstrations and am inspired that there are people there even older than me prepared to be roughed up by the forces of law and order in defence of Gaza. They are not thinking of feeding the ducks.

Michael Rosen recently said he has been trying to “find words to make the events feel less overwhelming” and hopes words can “puncture the armour that surrounds our politicians as they engineer war, starvation and mass killing.” Words, he suggests, may be able to “bring us together to help us fight the nightmare and may give people hope and strength to get up in the morning and fight on”. 

So here are my words and the more powerful one from Michael Rosen

News from Gaza

News about Gaza

I'm worried that it won't hurt anymore.

I'm worried that the truth won't hurt

I'm worried that I'll read

75 people were killed today

and I will look away.

I'm worried

that pictures of a child 

wandering about on their own

in the rubble of the home

they lived in

will just be a page that I turn over

or that I click off.

I'm worried

that I won't feel in my bones

that 2 years have passed

and that I won't think

that this is an age 

a long, long age

for people being starved

and bombed.

I'm worried that

I'll see those words 'two years'

and think that two years 

is just the time

that the cafe on the corner

has been open

and that the two worlds

of the cafe

and the massacres

can live side by side

as easily

as when a starved person

drops dead on the ground.

(The photo above is of Alice Oswald, professor of poetry at Oxford University and arrested under the Terrorism Act.) 

Arresting terrorists

 I was in Parliament Square yesterday and witnessed the arrests of some of the 466 people the police said they had detained under The Terrorism Act 2000. When I arrived there at 12.30 pm, I gave up counting after 500 so I estimate there must have been at least a few hundred ‘terrorists’ and their supporters who left the square not ingered by the forces of law and order. 

‘Fingered’ is an inappropriate word to use as the police were extremely physical as each arrest involved a minimum of six police officers with the arrestees being physically dragged to a long line of police vans. These vehicles encircled Parliament Square. I was told they stretched all the way up the Charing Cross Road.

Perhaps the cops were doing the ‘terrorists’ a favour since many seemed too old to be able to walk very far. I saw a blind man with his white stick carried away as well as an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She was kindly, though not gently, picked up along with her chair. If there are any police cutbacks, some of these officers will no doubt be able to get employment as carers.

There were 50/60 Heddlu there––Welsh police––so clearly this task was too much for the Met to deal with alone, and they had to bring in support from the Celtic west. I had a short conversation with one of them. I said it must be nice to have a paid day out in London. He replied cheerfully, “Not just a day. We’re staying overnight.”

Mishandled by the forces of law and order, the afternoon was remarkably well organised by the opponents of genocide (sorry, ‘terrorists’). At exactly 15 minutes to 1PM (I know because Big Ben strikes the quarter hour), the many hundreds sitting on the grass placed their white placards on the ground, removed markers from their bags and pockets and wrote ‘ I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. At exactly 1PM they all held them above their heads, then lowered them to the ground and waited for their arrests.

The police moved quickly and started their anti-terrorism duties with enthusiasm. I’m old enough to remember the mass arrests of anti-nuclear CND and the Committee of 100 sit-down protestors in the 1960s. But in those long-gone days the police tapped the protestor on the shoulder and politely asked them if they would get up and walk with them to the police vans. Not yesterday. There were no polite requests, just a physical assault and a dragging away.

The most poignant memory I take away with me is the arrest of some Quakers with their banner and the doctor. I was tempted to talk with him after I took his photo, but didn't need to. If you have been in hospital as much as I have, you know that look. It’s the look of someone who has spent a lifetime staring at suffering and trying to do something about it.

As I walked up Whitehall through much of the 200K crowd at the main demonstration, I passed the Jewish Bloc, a reminder that Zionism and its genocide does not represent the Jewish community. Our government knows this to be the truth, which is why they must assault doctors and pensioners who so inconveniently remind us all of this fact

A few days later I met with an old friend who told me she kept quiet about being Jewish. I said nothing to her at the time, but lster wrote this to her. "I was a little shocked when you said you kept quiet about being Jewish. I think this the right time to celebrate the fact. I have been on most of the Gaza/Palestine marches and always get a lump in my throat when I pass the line of Holocaust survivors and their children/g.children who are always there and The Jewish Bloc - one of the largest and best organised 'contingents’. Then there are the Stamford Hill Hassidics who find walls to stand on and, because it’s usually a Saturday, walk all the way to and from the demo. The Jewish people always get the loudest applause from the crowd.  I’m not Jewish but all my heroes, living and dead,  in philosophy, arts, literature, theatre ,film, politics and humour are Jewish. I sm sure that’s the same for you as well. The only Jews’ who should hide are the Zionists.  Here is Stephen Kapos, aged 87 and who I marched beside on 18 January. He was then questioned by the Met under the terrorism act!."