Palestine Protest Outside the Sub Rooms in Stroud

For those who couldn’t make it, here’s Jeremy Green’s speech from the Palestine protest outside the Sub Rooms today.

I’m a Jew, and I want to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people - in Gaza, in Jerusalem, and in Israel. I’m proud of Jewish groups like Yachad and Na’amod in the UK, who have done the same. I’m proud of organisations in Israel, like B’tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. It published an ad in Haaretz, the oldest and most respected newspaper in Israel, that said:

“The current violence throughout Israel/Palestine is an outcome of the apartheid regime that controls the entire area. Under this regime, about half of the people who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – Jews – are able to lead full lives and enjoy protection of their human rights, while the other half – Palestinians – cannot.

The appalling street violence we are seeing is heartbreaking, terrifying and must be forcefully condemned. Any violence against civilians is absolutely reprehensible. Yet the violence runs deeper than what can be captured on camera. The range of measures the Israeli regime employs to ensure Jewish supremacy throughout the area is inherently violent. Airstrikes, shooting and stun grenades are visible, while the laws, military orders, bureaucrats, policy makers and judges who uphold the system remain mostly invisible. “Restoring order” means that Jews will go back to their peaceful lives, while Palestinians continue to live under a boot: subjected to constant, relentless violence that is invisible to Jews.”

We are all entitled to live under a regime that ensures justice and quality for both peoples. A regime that allows all the human beings who live here to exercise their right to life, to security, and to the freedom to create, learn, dream and love.”

Like a lot of Jewish people, I have friends and family in Israel. I’m sure that some of them are frightened of Hamas’s homemade rockets. I know that some of them have kids, younger than my sons, who also feel frightened as they face crowds of rock-throwing young men, even as my friends’ kids retaliate with tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Because this is not a fight between two equal sides, where calling for ‘an end to violence’ or urging restraint is somehow neutral and fair. One side has rocks and rockets made out of irrigation pipes and fertilizer, and the other side has all the military resources of a modern state - tanks, and armoured cars, and fighter planes, and laser guided weapons and smart bombs, and helicopter gunships. Some of that weaponry came from the countries now calling for restraint - lots of it from the UK

So calling on both sides to stop the violence - like our representatives in Government, and the BBC, do - isn’t being neutral, it’s taking sides, with the oppressor and against the oppressed.

And this violence didn’t start yesterday. One of the things that’s important to understand about the present events is that they bring together all the different fragments of the Palestinian people, under all the different aspects of Israeli oppression.

● Palestinian citizens of Israel, formally equal citizens but actually subject to institutional racism, structural racism, legal discrimination, and now mob violence.

● Palestinians in Jerusalem, who are ‘residents’ in Israel and subject to its laws but are not citizens.

● Palestinians in Gaza, a territory from which Israel has nominally withdrawn, but where it still controls the airspace, the coastline, and - together with the western-backed military regime in Egypt, the borders, so that it’s been under economic blockade for 16 years. Where two million people live in an area one tenth the size of Gloucestershire, many of them refugees or the descendants of refugees from 1948.

And the fact that all of these people are subject, in different ways, to the power of the Israeli state, tells you everything that you need to know about ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’.

One last thing. Some of us will be told that we are antisemitic. Jewish critics of Israel will be called ‘self-haters’ and traitors. But we should also be aware that there are real Jew-haters out there, and in our town, who regard this as an opportunity. Like some of the people that spoke at last year’s so-called Freedom Rally, who trade in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. And we need to be clear, and say to these people, the Palestinians don’t need your support. Take your shitty racist ideas somewhere else. We want to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and also against antisemitism everywhere.

Post by Eleanor Polly Healey, founder or Stroud Against Racism.