Christmas, it's a busy time. Family and stuff 'n' all that. All those formerly empty slots fill up with various commitments. Some of them enjoyable, others less so, more dutiful. It's frequently said, loudest by the most disingenuous, that this is the season of goodwill to our fellow human beings. And, with that thought in mind...
I have not properly opened a book for several days, already eaten way too many mince pies, watched rather more TV than is usual. Although I have managed mostly not to drink alcohol- keeps me from falling asleep at inopportune moments. Key amongst any stumbling blocks towards the goal of 'goodwill etc. etc. there is, of course, a Genocide being undertaken, to which we in the UK are culpable. Not 'you' and 'me' specifically; you and me 'collectively,' by virtue of our Government. A Genocide, now that's going to keep many of us awake at night, especially if we care about humanity, children, their futures, the development of the planet in so far as human interactions are concerned. That means also 'interactions' with other species, dependencies etc. so mighty significant!
In amongst the minutiae of Christmas domesticity there is this Genocide which refuses to cease, not for seasonal niceties- no goodwill on earth where Genocide is concerned! Focuses the mind does a Genocide! Especially when one cannot ever shake the thing from one's consciousness. So, one of the few seemingly helplessly small things that I have done is to write to the nation's Foreign Secretary, one Right Honourable David Lammy- twice, with a third letter in likely tow. The two thus far have elicited nothing from the 'great' man, not a whisper. Not so much as an automatic reply acknowledgement. Nothing!
We expect he is far too busy to bother with such a thing as a Genocide. Probably too busy cosying up to Saudi Arabia, what with another sportswashed World Cup looming (ish- 203?). We just cannot wait for all those sparkling info-adverts to grace the screens. Wonder if Beckham will be taking the Saudi coin this time around? Integrity, what? Haven't listened to the official FIFA statement yet... might not bother. Wonder if Israel will qualify? Sincerely hope not! Almost certainly won't bother, too many red flags already!
Anyway: the letter!
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Dear Mr David Lammy
I write to you with a most sincere urgency yet, sadly, with very little in terms of expectation. I am a 66-year-old grandparent and never before have I experienced such a hopeless sense of urgency, not on this scale. The sense of dread seems almost never to depart for more than the briefest of moments. I find that I am truly haunted! Haunted with the knowledge that not a day passes when the dire needs of Palestinians will not have deteriorated yet further into a hell upon this earth! Thousands of Gazans continue to experience the ever-present terrors of injury, loss of family, malnutrition, amputation, disease, torture and/or death, all manufactured care of Israeli Government, and more besides. For the Palestinians hope is barely a memory. So to listen to the nation's Labour Party Foreign Secretary make time to caution against the use of the term 'Genocide,' horrifies and astounds me beyond reason. For you, we are to believe, it is a numbers game- have you not even read the relevant documentation?- how is it possible that I feel better informed? If only this were the case.
I am not hoping to learn quite what your definition of the international crime of Genocide might be. I do not wish to see the jumbled mathematics that enables you to still express doubt as to the intentions of Israel or its IDF. I am not asking you to differentiate for me between Russia's unjust invasion and land-grab in Ukraine and Israel's occupation and absolute annihilation of the Palestinian populations. I do not need to learn that a death toll climbing into (what now seems inevitable) the hundreds of thousands may still be ring-fenced by some as 'self defence.' All this I have already heard, repeatedly and repeatedly.
The great worry I harbour, Mr Lammy, is that your reluctance to intervene will see Northern Gaza, eventually also the West Bank and more, its children and parents, its hospitals, universities, mosques and churches, homes, olive groves and communities all wiped from the face of the globe. Should this happen it will be impossible then to deny that Ethnic Cleansing and a Genocide has occurred. No amount of obfuscation will be able to reanimate those lost children, women and non-combatant Palestinian men, nor pretend that Israel has merely peacefully expanded into unoccupied lands. Nor will it be able to shield those who have enabled this Genocide.
Whichever way we look at it, it becomes daily clearer that Israel has become a rogue state. Maybe, their government is beyond reason- it certainly seems so. Maybe the never-accountable USA will continue to arm Israel, right up until the death of Gaza's last child and baby. But maybe, also, it is past time that the UK repositioned itself, over to the right side of history!
Maybe, in some minds, the UK feels too weak to stand up to the US but we both know US provided 2,000 pound bombs are incapable of executing 'targeted strikes' upon civilian populations, especially so in a field of tents! It may be eternally repeated that Western journalists are forbidden to enter Gaza without the IDF's insincere messaging and ‘protection,’ that our 'truth' driven BBC insists that the most horrific Palestinian phone footage escaping Gaza remains unverified. Maybe, maybe and maybe. But, not really! Both you and I have learned more than enough about what is really happening. You know and you know that I know you know!
All we need do is listen to the words and the intentions of Israeli government ministers and spokespeople. We do not need to continually circumnavigate the veracity of Palestinian claims and other evidence because, unchecked, Israel has grown outrageously boastful of its intentions and it widely shares video evidence amongst its citizens of what it has done and what it hopes to continue to do; what it expects certain Western nations to provide cover for. Pretending that our UK PM did not say Israel has UK support in 'cutting off water, cutting off everything,' even though we all watched him utter the words, merely further shames our nation. Israeli actions every day echo his thoughts and words, much as his inaction in opposing Israel’s War Crimes better enables its ongoing acts of Genocide. Whatever has happened in Occupied Palestine or adjacent to, Israel confects the lie (no matter how abhorrent), MSM and certain figures echo the noise. The echo circles the globe ‘before the truth has got its boots on, far too late in correcting that the President of the USA did not see those images. Too late, the lie has taken root! What do you believe really happened, Mr Lammy, were there really pictures? Much of Israel thinks not!
We can readily view the 'celebratory' images of IDF troops filming themselves levelling hospitals, whole villages, smashing homes and possessions, often set to music. We can watch Israeli crowds dancing wildly to the chant, "May your village burn!" In recent days I watched footage of IDF troops humming, ‘The Final Countdown,’ as they annihilated yet more civilians- filmed and shared by the perpetrators! And, in this context there remains the stance and obfuscation of the UK's Foreign Secretary. The evidence continues to accumulate, hour after hour, image upon image, action after action, international crime upon international crime! So much so that it has become impossible to believe that the UK cannot, does not, know, that it knows yet more and yet worse! How can it not? As Foreign Secretary your name becomes daily more firmly affixed to those crimes.
I no longer recognise the man you formerly claimed to be; I once witnessed you stand and rage against the withholding of reparations for the UK's part in the slave trade, before you changed sides- I watched it first time round- I watched your updated and modified rage levelled, more recently, against Russia- some very tricky manoeuvres there- and have listened to you jump through alternate hoops whilst blindfold, in continuing to stand alongside Israeli Genocide and I increasingly sense that the UK's long, long wait for a more just and honest country has been in vain all along.
Historical evidence surely highlights for the world that Israel has recognised the globe's most colonial nations, that it understands their historical crimes, their consequent manoeuvrings, that it has now elected to bite the bullet- perhaps there will be just a few that have not been snipered into the skulls and necks of Palestinian children- and opted to embrace years of global outrage and condemnation in the hope that nations such as the US and the UK have retained just enough guilt to feign a blind eye on behalf of the latest pariah state. When Israel has completed its live-streamed Genocide and Ethnically Cleansed the Gaza Strip, likely also the West Bank and the Golan Heights, when it has ceased targeting also doctors, international aid workers, journalists, when the bombs and the bullets have ceased shredding children's bodies, Britain will be standing alongside a minority of former and current colonial nations, very much on the wrong side of history. Far too late to mumble confected misgivings whilst others are scrabbling through the dust, rubble, skin and bone! Perhaps, even then, assisting Israel with its planned real estate along The Gaza Strip. One day perhaps hoping to more openly sup with the orchestrators, perpetrators and the generals?
Perhaps it will be said that British arms- if our role in gathering reconnaissance (via Akrotiri on Cyprus) for the bombing of the innocents can be suitably suppressed- did not play such a major role, as did those of Dodgy Uncle Sam. Perhaps numbers will not be crunched, such that specific nation's £millions provided can be made to equate to a specific child death toll. Perhaps ministers and others will be sent forth to argue that the UK's role was a minimal one- numbers not attributed. Perhaps our Government will be able to argue that Israel's claims to be 'investigating' the most widely shared atrocities was taken at face value, that Britain's ministers and journalists actually believed the word 'targeted' to mean targeted, although never convincingly so. Not really, not to those who were paying attention.
When I witnessed Israeli Maccabi football ‘fans’ in Amsterdam, tearing down flags, chanting “Fuck all Arabs!” on their storm-troop to the match, then watched them interrupt a minute’s silence for those killed in Spanish floods, with chants of “There are no schools in Gaza ‘cos we killed all the kids!” I wondered quite how you and your captain would spin it. I did not really consider that you would have the integrity to speak truth to power- you now represent so much more of the latter than the former. Even so, to compare Sky’s two contrasting and contradictory reports, then to listen to the UK’s new government as if the former had not even happened, was a marvel to behold. Did you not first hear the racism, Mr Lammy? Did your ears pick up only on the silence and not the celebrating of Infanticide from the Israeli fans, many who were former and current IDF troops? Shame on you, Mr Lammy!
I recognise you as a ‘busy’ man, Mr Lammy, Foreign Secretary- the United Nations’ Francesca Albenese would wish you less so- yet I have still taken the trouble to provide several links for you to pretend to sneer at. Sneer as you may, or may not, all these sites continue to post. The sites are not like those of the Daily Mail, the Jewish Chronicle, the Telegraph, the Spectator, as I am confident you understand, they are more meticulous regarding veracity of information, they need to be. On these sites, we can watch hooded and armed Maccabi fans hunting for locals to beat up in Amsterdam, then compare the evidence that news channels, truth-seeking BBC included, reverse or misrepresent, confections that see your captain and yourself trigger-happy to re-invoke the ‘threat’ of anti-Semitism and other emotive terminology. We can listen to the words of the reporters who actually filmed events and had their footage misappropriated. How is it that you can be so slow to acknowledge what is actually happening, yet lightning quick to provide the cover! The truth will out but MSM will have moved on, as is routinely the drill. More compliant with the UK’s project Legacy, an issue which you appear to have studied from either side.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/a-deep-dive-into-media-misreporting-from-amsterdam/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=today-on-the-jvl-blog-newsletter-total-articles-for-you_1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=pTFovHpft5M https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/11/13/ynet-maccabi-tel-aviv/ https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/more-media-misreporting-from-amsterdam/
Maybe even you- likely future Lord Lammy- will be able to pretend that your role was of a different nature to the one you are actually enacting and living. It is said is it not, that history is written by the victors? But, not all history, not actual lived history. Perhaps your stance upon the veracity of statues of former slavers will continue to morph? Perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. But still hundreds of thousands will have been murdered, many care of UK monies and actions, many of them on your watch. From the wrong side, you cannot ever be certain that the words you chose to use, the actions you chose to take, did not make a difference, perhaps a significant one. But, from which side? As a grandparent I fear that I may never again be able to watch children play, listen to them talk and to laugh, without dredging up feelings of dread and immense sadness that I was not able to do more, that it happened in my lifetime, under the watch of a government I may have helped to elect. If you possess a tiny fraction of the integrity you would hope to have sprayed onto the pages of any future biography, more likely autobiography, if nature is just, then you will hold your share in that dread.
In so far as Israel's democratic pretentions stand, going forward, I find that I am no longer able to live with the guilt of pretending the history I am watching did not happen. I find myself shackled with sorting through daily shopping lest I should accidentally, in any small measure, tie myself to the Genocide. I cannot watch that nation play football nor partake in any other international sporting or other events. I have not shunned them, they have shunned all decency and me alongside. I will continue to endeavour to argue from the right side of history and worry less that this finds my memories diverging from the story the United Kingdom increasingly wishes to fabricate. On both sides this is a choice and, in a better world, choices can be differently chosen. Your choices also, Mr Lammy!
Yours in perpetual sadness,
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Don't suppose he'll give it much (any) consideration. The Right Honourable David Lammy is far too grand an individual! But, he should. Only the other day the Right Honourable David Lammy was able to select another international tyrant to condemn, from the David Lammy 'Pick and Mix' selection of global tyrants. So, safe to assume he recognises War Crimes when he sees them. Today, I saw a short film of a child- perhaps four-years-old- moving about rubble and dust, by virtue of a set of wheels attached to where his right hand should have been. He had no legs, just stumps, just his left hand remained. I wondered whether the amputations had been undertaken with or without anaesthetic. At least he was alive; all other children and babies in the film were dead, one possibly scorched unrecognisable by white phosphorus- certainly Israel has used this chemical upon the civilians trapped inside Gaza.
Both Sir Keir Rodney Starmer and the Right Honourable David Lammy seem to like to bathe in the warm faux halo of 'human rights.' I think, though I am not prepared to waste time searching, Lammy has even described himself as a 'human rights' lawyer. I know that Big Cheese Starmer has boasted of his time 'defending people's human rights.' We would laugh if not for the bloodshed! Check the record of his time in office... an awful lot that's not actual human righty stuff.
Here's the thing. Human Rights are only ever really 'human rights' if they're afforded to all humans, otherwise they're being relegated to a far lower category. If they're only afforded to the select few then they're nothing to do with 'humanity.' If they're only there for those who can pay then they're not even 'rights.' They become something far more to do with wealth- a world in which wealth is right, or worse, where might is right? Imagine that! Where would we be? Might might well conquer weaker opposition, doesn't make it right.
What both Sir Keir Rodney Starmer and the Right Honourable David Lammy have elected to do, in so far as Israel's Genocide upon Palestine (and growing) is concerned, is to pick a side. They haven't picked a side according to suffering, or death-toll, or the size of (say) the infanticide. Rather, like the worst kind of playground bully, they've picked the side of (a country they 'think' might be) an ally. They've picked 'might!' They haven't investigated where the divide between human rights and brutality lies. They haven't searched for truth, as opposed to (Israeli) lies, instead they've given platform to the side (Israel) conducting this Genocide, chosen a side (and further armed them) who are not only murdering thousands upon thousands of babies, children, women and non-combatant men- doctors, teachers, journalists, aid-workers, nurses, farmers, proffessors- they are also trashing the entire concept of international law and justice. If there is no international sense of right here then why should we expect it to exist anywhere?
Many around the world may/should be recognising, if they haven't already done so, that any idea of international law- maybe the refugee convention- it now appears, was drawn up with the idea that certain Western Nations would always be right, that the ICC and the ICJ were only ever intended to exist as tools with which to keep 'those others' in check. 'Those others?'
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer and the Right Honourable David Lammy have picked a side. All the horror we've seen, they've likely seen worse, still they've picked a side! And they've picked the wrong side, the side of Genocide, over that of humanity! The UK has, thus, further enabled the trashing of international law, in favour of picking a side. This time, the wrong one! It seems, they've picked 'culpable in the Genocide' over 'Human Rights.'
A jolly ugly legacy for the UK to bear! One Christmas wish of mine is that those culpable in this Genocide will be held to account.
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