Gaza – What Can We Do?
What can one do, so far away? We see the pictures in the papers, on the internet, on the television, baffled as to how a people who suffered so much can then do the same to another.
One theory floating the rounds is that where Gaza is, there is boundless supplies of gas. Could Israel be so cynical as to start a war for that? My heart sinks as I hope not, but suspect yes.
What can we do? The Israeli produce boycott is one good idea… look for 729 on the barcode, and dont buy it. It worked with South Africa and Apartheid, it will take time, but enough effort and time put into it, it will have effect.
Today, there was a protest in Tullamore…. and Galway… and Dublin. Being in the city since the day before, I attended the Dublin march, with a motley crew of the usual suspects. To spite the call for not party and trade union banners, both TEEU and Mandate broke the request, and the SWP and SP used it as a hunting ground for new recruits, while a dude was selling newspapers, the “Workers Hammer / Workers Vanguard”
A chat with him about Trotskyism brought up my troubles with the AAA a few months back, and he faulted them for being tolerant of folk of the life position, but getting an explanation of his position brought out his problem was with the Catholic church, and he bases the fact we are all conditioned to be catholic, from rearing and schooling. He hasnt met Precious Life from the North of Ireland so… or Secular Pro Life…
If he was an Orangeman ranting in such a way, he’d be done for hate crimes.
Ill say fuck the pope with the best of them where its due – in particular in their treatment of single mothers, gays, and the child abuse issue, but I have no need to oppress an entire religion because of it.
Im sure he does not be aware that his pro choice position is closer to Israels than to Hamas, Fatah or Hizbollah, but as they are not Catholic, its permissible, I guess.
Back to the protest, and the issues behind it.
Gaza, we are told by the speakers at the rally, is the size of the Greater Dublin Area. It is being hounded by the best arms America can supply, Hamas is NOT being affected, and the innocents are dying in a way not seen since America wiped out the Native Americans.
All in the name of self defense, and from a nation who suffered so much at the hands of the Germans.
Perhaps, the creation of the State of Israel was the ideal policy for Hitler: install the Jewish peoples into a state where they will never know peace, where they cannot carve for themselves a place without dispossessing a people and cleaving them as enemies for ever.
I don’t believe that. Its much much simpler when seen as a diagram of land ownership.
Its colonialism and plantation, just as Ireland suffered, all over again.
Poor Palestine.
As a poet, as I call myself, I have been writing on it… my latest verses “Distant City, Close Experience” on the topic compares the intent of the Black and Tans in the burning of Cork and Granard and other towns is the same as the attack on Gaza, only our troubles were on far, far, less of a scale. And in a little village of Ballinalee, they were stopped in their tracks!
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