Trump, a man without filters, says what he believes, no obfuscations, no wily word games. So, when he stated that he is sending a batch of 2000-pound bombs to Netanyahu and that Gazans should move to nearby Arab lands, he revealed Israel’s bad faith and US’s repugnant aspirations for that territory.
Let’s remember how we got here. On October 7th 2023, Hamas raided Israeli localities, IDF bases and a music festival. 1,200 Israelis, most civilians, were brutally killed, 251 taken hostage. For Hamas’s crimes, Isreal has unremittingly bombed Gaza, while its military and security wings have imprisoned, terrorised and slain Palestinian civilians. Just before and after the ‘ceasefire’ more have been culled. The current fatalities guesstimate is around 47,000. But those buried under bombed buildings are uncounted. A good number of them would have suffocated to death.
Lest I be accused again, of not caring about Israeli victims of Hamas, I say clearly and unequivocally, that I recognise the harm that was done and how unbearable that is for a people forever marked by memories the Holocaust.
As the west marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the symbol of the Nazi mission to exterminate Jews in Europe, the President of the US tells reporters, ‘ I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where [Palestinians] can, maybe live in peace for a change…You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we can just clean out that whole thing and say, “You know, it’s over”’ The population of Gaza was around 2,2 million before the place was pulverized.
On Monday, the Holocaust survivors, Stephen Kapos, 86 and Suzanne Weiss 83, expressed what many of us feel, that Never Again should mean Never Again for everyone.
Watching homeward bound Palestinians, the eyes of their children unbright and world- wary, I get panic attacks. What awaits them, and released Palestinian prisoners- some who were allegedly tortured- and those looking for the disappeared?
They will see dust and stones where many lived, dust and stones where their schools and hospitals were, stones and dust where the children played, settlers with guns in some of their homes and holdings. Palestinians know dispossession and pain. But this time, Israeli actions have cut deeper and harder.
I can’t unsee the Gazan child in Dr Seema Jilani’s searing account in The Guardian. The doctor saved her once, but couldn’t when the child returned, freshly wounded. And pictures of family members going to makeshift burial grounds, to pray for their dead. Some graves are marked with pitiful objects; the rest have done from dust to dust. Entire families were wiped out, some deliberately. Journalists, doctors and other healthcare workers were targeted. Gazans have to endure loss and personal injuries, mental collapse and emotional disintegration, whilst trying to rebuild lives, without resources or real security.
On Sunday Israel opened fire on returnees. Because it can, in defiance of international rules of engagement. Its absolute exceptionalism is backed by every western leader, making them complicit in war crimes. Meanwhile their citizens march, feel and weep for Palestine and are either criminalised or falsely accused of antisemitism. Many of them are Jewish.
We must not forget Israeli resistors who object strongly to Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing. I know academics, activists, a Knesset MP and artists, who stand up for Palestinians. One of them, a lecturer, told me ‘This is a betrayal of who we are. Palestinians are secondary victims of Britain and Europe’s guilt about the Holocaust and their racist schemes in the Middle east. Those Gazans going back look like the living dead, ghosts or angry. How can they carry on? ‘ I sent him this poem by a Gazan poet, Refaat Alareer:
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above …
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
Alareer was assassinated by the Israeli military December 6, 2023 along with his brother, his brother’s son, his sister and her three children.
The evil plans floated by Trump will be outnumbered by those tailed, white kites. Palestinians will survive. Because they are brave and their cause is just.
Published in the I paper, 29th January 2025