Not Giving Up

I know I've written blogs about the plight of Palestine and the current Gaza conflict twice before (October 2023 and November 2024) but I'm going to do so again today. Please bear with me. It feels like a moral imperative.

Regardless of how we got to this dire situation, with nearly two million displaced Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom are at imminent risk of starvation, international pressure must surely force the Israelis to halt their policy of 'enforced scarcity', release the stranglehold on Gaza, and allow the aid trucks to roll in in huge numbers so the international humanitarian organisations - not the US/Israeli GHF - can resume their efforts to distribute water, food and medicines to alleviate the inhumane suffering being deliberately inflicted on the people of the Strip.

As Leila Sansour, the Middle Eastern film director, has written, "Experts remind us that famine does not descend like wildfire; it must be built, engineered over time. Starvation is not an accident but a decision, an architecture of cruelty. To bring an entire people to such an end requires not neglect but intention: borders sealed, aid choked, infrastructure destroyed. And hunger, once it matures, does not merely gnaw at the body; it devours the very fabric of society, leaving chaos where human purpose once lived. This is Gaza today – and no one any longer doubts whose hand shaped this monstrosity."

I am of the opinion that what we are witnessing is genocide, that ordinary Israelis are in denial of what is being done, that the international community cannot be effective in condemnation as long as Trump and the US are backing Netanyahu, and that a large faction of the coalition Israeli government would dearly like to annex the Strip as Israeli territory and force the relocation of the Palestinians elsewhere (to Egypt? to Jordan?) The Israeli cabinet has even voted in principle to proceed with a formal annexation of the West Bank, territory they have held illegally since 1967. But first and foremost must be aid relief for the starving  in Gaza, or the world doesn't have a conscience anymore.

What is equally troubling is that in the wake of the decision by the UK government to declare Palestine Action a proscribed "terrorist" organisation, any member of the public peacefully demonstrating against the actions of the Israeli IDF or the illegal Israeli settlers, and in favour of action towards recognition of a Palestinian state, could face arrest and imprisonment if they appear to be sympathetic towards Palestine Action. It's as though 1984 has arrived here forty years late, and it's scary.   

Gaza graffiti, London July 2025

I am in favour of an immediate ceasefire. Hamas appears willing. After that can come negotiations to end the war, and I believe it is vital that western nations formally recognise the State of Palestine as part of an eventual 'two state' solution in the middle east. That to my way of thinking will require the giving up of territory by Israel, at least back to pre-1967 boundaries.

Of course it should never be forgotten that it was an Israeli terrorist organisation that first commenced a civil war in Palestine after WWII and unilaterally annexed part of the region, expelling nearly a million Palestinians from their homeland, to create the State of Israel in 1948. The UN and western powers failed Palestine's Arab population then, under pressure from the United States. We must not fail again.

I find it difficult to write a poem to order about something as monstrous as what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza, but I hope this hits the mark. I must also warn you that because it's a 'concrete' poem approximately in she shape of the Gaza Strip (see above), it may look completely jumbled up unless viewed in landscape mode. Anyway, here goes...

                                                                                                                                                                        Gaza Stripped

                                                                                                                                                         From north to south,

                                                                                                                                                  neither living nor dead

                                                                                                                                          but breathing corpses,

                                                                                                                                   nil by mouth. Dr Josef 

                                                                                                                        Mengele could hardly

                                                                                                                 have managed it better

                                                                                                          this inhumane suffering

                                                                                                   imposed on a population.

                                                                                             Hungry on waking,

                                                                                      walking like sticks

                                                                                their thin shadows 

                                                                         pointing seawards 

                                                                  where Israeli warships

                                                             block aid. Constantly

                                                        defiled. Hungry on

                                                 sleeping, emaciated ribs

                                           encaging hopeless hearts,

                                     huddled into rubble, their

                               shadows at dusk lengthening 

                          eastward across what was once

                     their homeland, before the Nakba.

                    Israeli soldiers fence them in, block aid,

                     shoot down men, women, children, babies

                       desperate for food. The IDF are razing the

                        Gaza Strip, hoping it will be theirs some

                         day, this riviera death camp ripe for

                           redevelopment. Lots are being 

                            reserved already as we view

                             skin and bone newsreels

                               nightly, wringing our

                                 complicit hands

                                     again.                                                            

                                                                               

Those previous blogs on topic are linked here. I invite you to read them too:

Glittering Prize?  (the detailed historical background - part one)

Injustice (the detailed historical background - part two)

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Outsider - why are we like this?

I have been following the news carefully over the past few weeks. I have a fondness for Spain, speak the language fairly well and have worked and holidayed on the mainland as well as  the Canaries. The current political unrest in Catalonia is of particular interest because Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo in Barcelona, the Catalonian capital, are still on my to visit list.

  

 
 
The peaceful attempt by this distinct group in Spain to become independent has been met with a level of state brutality not experienced in Europe for decades. There are 1.6 million people living in the Catalonian municipality and they have always had a distinct culture and identity from their Spanish rulers. Spain has a very bloody past. During the Civil War, many British men (including poet WH Auden) went to fight against General Franco. The Catalan people experienced the terror of aerial bombardment by Franco's fascist allies - Hitler's Nazi regime.  
The massacre of the people of Guernica has been catalogued by in books, film and by Pablo Picasso, who was exiled from his beloved homeland. The painting 'Guernica' is a scene of horror. Unarmed innocents mown down by Luftwaffe attack. They, like the Jewish population in the rest of mainland Europe, were singled out because they were different.

This is a familiar tale. I was on honeymoon in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, only weeks before the divided Bosnians and Serbs began their bloody war. The news reports coined the phrase 'Ethnic Cleansing', a term merely serving to damp down the truth of the genocide that was unfolding. This was one group of human beings, systematically trying to eliminate another. They were different from each other and eventually the differences became a badge, a symbol that led to acts of extreme violence.

This type of violence and hatred towards outsiders is nothing new. History tells us that the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians. Every powerful group that emerged in the evolution of humanity, (a laughable word in this context) has either enslaved and subjugated, expelled or massacred those who it views as different or weak. In my own lifetime there has been ethnic expulsion of Asians from Kenya and Uganda and ethnic slaughter in many other African nations.

Human beings naturally group together because of their similarities. We like people who share our views. We bond with workmates; form associations with like-minded individuals; we identify with others at our schools or Universities. This tribal instinct extends to faith, gender, sexual orientation but why does this kind of behaviour lead to discrimination. Why do people learn to hate and sometimes try to completely obliterate an another group.

Psychologist Henri Tajfel researched and developed social identity theory. Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world. In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong.  We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudice views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to). We divide the world into “them” and “us” based through a process of social categorization (i.e. we put people into social groups).

This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them).  Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image. The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image. Prejudiced views between cultures may result in racism; in its extreme forms, racism may result in genocide, such as occurred in Germany with the Jews, in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis: there are unfortunately many modern examples. 

Henri Tajfel proposed that stereotyping is based on a normal cognitive process: the tendency to group things together. In doing so we tend to exaggerate:  
1. the differences between groups
2. the similarities of things in the same group.

We categorize people in the same way. We see the group to which we belong (the in-group) as being different from the others (the out-group), and members of the same group as being more similar than they are. Social categorization is one explanation for prejudice attitudes (i.e. “them” and “us” mentality) which leads to in-groups and out-groups. 

Tajfel and Turner (1979) proposed that there are three mental processes involved in evaluating others as “us” or “them” (i.e. “in-group” and “out-group”. These take place in a particular order.

The first is categorization. We categorize objects in order to understand them and identify them. In a very similar way we categorize people (including ourselves) in order to understand the social environment.  We use social categories like black, white, Christian, Muslim, student and bus driver because they are useful. If we can assign people to a category then that tells us things about those people. We couldn't function in a normal manner without using these categories; i.e. in the context of the bus. Similarly, we find out things about ourselves by knowing what categories we belong to.  We define appropriate behaviour by reference to the norms of groups we belong to. You can only do this if you can tell who belongs to your group. An individual can belong to many different groups.

In the second stage, social identification, we adopt the identity of the group we have categorized ourselves as belonging to.  If for example you have categorized yourself as a student, the chances are you will adopt the identity of a student and begin to act in the ways you believe students act (and conform to the norms of the group).  There will be an emotional significance to your identification with a group and your self-esteem will become bound up with group membership.

The final stage is social comparison.  Once we have categorized ourselves as part of a group and have identified with that group we then tend to compare that group with other groups. If our self-esteem is to be maintained our group needs to compare favourably with other groups. This is critical to understanding prejudice, because once two groups identify themselves as rivals, they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem. Competition and hostility between groups is not only a matter of competing for resources like jobs but also the result of competing identities.

In Social identity theory the group membership is not something foreign or artificial which is attached onto the person, it is a real, true and vital part of the person. I don't believe that there is anything to be gained by trying to instil a different ideology or social identity on another group. In the end Moses asked of the Egyptian Pharaoh simply, "Let my people go." The bible story expounds the plagues that struck down the oppressor and the 'Passover' of their homes by the angel of death is one of the festivals central to their faith. 

But isn't that just a just a blame game? Don't we blame the 'out group' for all the problems that we may experience? Don't we blame them, exclude them and even try to expel them?  And doesn't that growing feeling of animosity lead some among us to commit hate crimes and acts of violence towards them? And them towards us? 

Hate is self-perpetuating but so is love. 

Me and Ma

They don't like us here,
We are not like them,
They killed my brother and my Pa.
We are leaving here - me and Ma.

Our home was built by my Great Grandpa,
We lived our lives,
We did no harm.
We are leaving here - me and Ma.

They burned our home,
Burned our village down,
All our crops destroyed.
We are leaving here  - me and Ma.

Through the hills we walk,
Through trails of mud,
As we walk - we cry.
We are leaving here - me and Ma.

This was our home,
Now we flee in fear.
We are not like them,
We are Rohingya.

We are not like them,
They don't want us here,
We are stateless now - me and Ma.
We are leaving here - leaving Myanmar.


Thank you for reading. Adele

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