Undermining Israel
Yesterday, I attempted to enter Palestine to support a grassroots, humanitarian organisation, administered in the UK by Amos Trust. Unfortunately, I did not succeed, because the 'only democracy in the Middle East’, after interrogating me, denied me entry. Why? Because I apparently "undermined Israel" & "caused problems for the soldiers" and stopped them doing their job! How did I, an ordinary, middle-aged woman achieve this?
In 2018, I served as a Human Rights Monitor (EA) with EAPPI. The role involved providing protective presence to the community, including children, as they walked to school, who were frequently attacked by settlers with little to no intervention by the occupying forces, many of whom are settlers themselves. When our presence failed, which it too often did, our role turned to recording and monitoring human rights violations, which fed into reports written by international human rights organisations and the UN. This was the crime for which I was made to sign a document stating that I had broken the law, and for which I was informed that I had been banned from a land, not theirs, in 2018, unbeknown to me.
There is a great and tragic irony in this; that Israel, rather then confronting itself, once again projects its own crimes and issues, in casting me and people like me as the problem. NOT the current genocide we are all witnessing, a monstrous evil, I doubt we will ever truly recover from as a species, at least not for many decades. NOT the 8 decades of violent settler colonialism preceding it, the 100s of massacres, such as Tantura and Deir Yassin. NOT the brutal occupation and apartheid it subjects the indigenous Palestinians to. NOT the undermining of the democratic systems of our countries in order to protect the now pariah state. NOT the funding of far-right groups by Israel supporters, that right now, attempt to undertake pogroms of our Muslim and brown and black neighbours in our communities, which, we can be assured will ultimately endanger our Jewish community. Yes, it is me, a working class, 49year old woman, from a tiny island called Jersey, in the English Channel. An island that many have not even heard of, except maybe as a territory that serves the City of London, by hiding the money of the 1%. It is ME that is a threat to Israel! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, because as much as I wish it were true that I had this much power, it is clearly a ridiculous accusation on so many levels. However, it is very revealing as it tells you everything you need to know about Israel’s fragility, as well as the racist, criminal enterprise that it is.
My heart is broken, not because I am banned from visiting the community and land where I left my heart 6years ago, although this hurts immensely, but because I feel that once again, I have failed the Palestinian people, as we ALL have, because we have not succeeded in stopping this great crime of our century.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was due to be a participant on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's attempt to break the blockade in Gaza, but we were prevented by Turkey from sailing. Activists in Israel have been attempting, with little success to get aid into Gaza, international organisations are likewise failing, but most significantly the institutions that we were told, and assured, were created to prevent genocides and similar crimes taking place, have all been exposed for what they are, toothless, empty vessels with nice words and shiny posters, who are used as tools by empire against their designated 'enemies'.
My words of course are not written to hurt the many, many, people of conscience, who are trying, not without risk to themselves, to stop this and hold Israel and its sponsors accountable, these individuals still holding the light remain the hope. However, they are just a statement of the reality we can all see.
I want, though, to end on a positive note, so I will reflect back on my words just above: "Israel's fragility". Israel, by its own hands, has undermined itself and is cracking, so let each one of us as ordinary individuals become thorns in their side and pick up our figurative 'sledgehammers', whether through protest, through direct action, through blocking boats, boycotting, divesting and sanctions, through writing, art or informative comedy, and ensure we bring this whole, morally bankrupt entity down! We must dismantle Zionism as we did Nazism, because it is clear that they are bedfellows, and for those who are offended by these words, be more offended by the crimes being perpetrated and the suffering they have brought.
Humanity is resting upon our ability to stop Israel and hold it and its chief sponsors to account, only through achieving this, will we save the soul of our species!
UPDATED to anonymise local organisation for fear of targeting.
