Free Palestine Now

Mike Small looks to the historical precedents of anti-imperialist struggles for lessons in resisting Israeli atrocities.

On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet saying: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed more than ten million times.

Now, his prophecy, from the title of his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” is coming true.

This week saw the Financial Times coming out with an excoriating editorial titled ‘The West’s shameful silence on Gaza’. It read: “After 19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and drawn accusations of war crimes against Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is once more preparing to escalate Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The latest plan puts Israel on course for full occupation of the Palestinian territory and would drive Gazans into ever-narrowing pockets of the shattered strip. It would lead to more intensive bombing and Israeli forces clearing and holding territory, while destroying what few structures remain in Gaza. This would be a disaster for 2.2mn Gazans who have already endured unfathomable suffering. Each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land. For two months, Israel has blocked delivery of all aid into the strip. Child malnutrition rates are rising, the few functioning hospitals are running out of medicine, and warnings of starvation and disease are growing louder.”

Speaking in front of the House of Commons on Tuesday, Conservative MP Mark Pritchard condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. “I have supported Israel, pretty much at all costs,” said Pritchard. “But today, I want to say that I got it wrong”. Edward Leigh (Tory MP) said: “I’ve been a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel for over 40 years… but you cannot starve a whole people. Many of us are asking when is a genocide not a genocide?” Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart made another podcast, this time saying what was happening was “Utterly unacceptable and beyond the pale”. Even David Cameron’s former national security adviser Lord Peter Ricketts is publicly calling for a full arms embargo.

It’s easy to understand these conversions as disgracefully, shamelessly late in the day, and they are. The human death toll is a stain on humanity, and nothing has been salvaged by these words which are empty and ring hollow next to the moral abyss we are witnessing.

But people have vested interests, fixed views of the world, people are old and tired and stupid. Even when presented with ‘facts’ over and over and over they resist accepting reality. We know this. We live in a world where people would rather pretend that climate change wasn’t happening than do something about it. George Tsakraklides calls it the ‘joy of self destruction’:

“Sometimes we choose self-sabotage over fighting a battle we can’t win. Giving up is a desperate but effective attempt to convince ourselves that we still have full control: we lost the battle not because we lost it, but because we chose not to fight it. Or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Defeatism is incredibly convenient: no more exertion, expectation, procrastination, guilt or regret for not having done enough. Surrender has the sweet taste of finality, and reaching rock bottom offers the bizarre reassurance that you can’t possibly fall any lower. So why make an effort when you will probably be disappointed? Ultimate defeat can be just as addictive as victory. In both cases the struggle is over: there is no more nail-biting anticipation, obligation or expectation.”

This is not true in the case of Israel where we (‘we’ the West) has known what should be done for a long time but has chosen not to.

It is true that events and breakdown are overwhelming, as Naomi Klein puts it: “It is difficult to understand the nature of a true rupture while it is still tearing through the fabric of our world.” But now even the institutions of the establishment media, the placid, reassuringly dumb voices of Campbell and Stewart and even Conservative ‘Friends of Israel’ are so appalled by what they are witnessing as to be speaking out.

We are now in a situation such as we had in the 1980s with opposition to apartheid in South Africa and at the beginning of the century when opposition to the Iraq war became huge (the Glasgow anti-Iraq march was 2003). Each of these are situations where opposition to British Foreign policy is so deep and entrenched it has become a significant factor in the politics of the country.

For all the lobbying and policy capture, for all the paid trips to Israel and the media bias, the awful reality has seeped through and been realised by the mass of the people. The imagery is relentless, the scale of the barbarity unquestionable. Last night Israel’s air force killed at least 58 Palestinians in new attacks on Gaza reports Reuters.

United Nations secretary general António Guterres called on Saturday for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in Gaza after Israel announced early stages of an intensified operation on the Palestinian territory.

“We need a permanent ceasefire, now,” Guterres told leaders gathered in Baghdad for an Arab League summit. “I am alarmed by reported plans by Israel to expand ground operations and more.”

Guterres has been one of the few world leaders to show any conviction in this period, Spain‘s Pedro Sánchez being another exception. Asked about Israel in the Spanish parliament, he responds: “We do not trade with a genocidal state.” An inflection point has been passed: World leaders increasingly admit that Israel is committing genocide.

If witnessing such atrocities make you feel impotent, it is worth resisting such a feeling of disempowerment. While world leaders such as Trump are captured by a fusion of Christian Zionism and imbecility, others such as our own Prime Minister, are not. Incredibly this week, the National, which has been consistently good in its coverage of the assault on Gaza reported that “Labour licensed exports of more military equipment to Israel in the final three months of 2024 than the Tories did for all of 2020-2023, new figures have revealed.”

Labour’s complicity in these atrocities may come to haunt them, electorally, morally and perhaps legally. The extent of their political isolation can be measured by the fact they are to the right even of Tory peers on this issue.

Cutting through the feeling of reflexive impotence the Conservative Baroness Warsi told Good Morning Britain: “There are four clear things we could do today. We could stop all arms. We should recognise the state of Palestine now. We should impose sanctions. We should support the accountability process.”

Of course we should have done all of these things a very long time ago, as well as sent in UN Peacekeepers and international aid flights many many months ago.

The conversion of even establishment figures to oppose Israel is only symbolic. Acts of direct solidarity are in our own hands, as are acts of direct action – already being widened by Palestine Action – and mass boycott. If we look for successful models of resistance we can look to the anti-apartheid movement for inspiration.

In the 1980s the Conservative Government under Thatcher maintained support for Botha’s apartheid regime despite mass protest and boycott. The anti-apartheid movement had built over decades with action intensified after the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, when 69 unarmed protesters were shot dead by the South African police. The protest movement reached its zenith in 1988 organising around Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday.  Glasgow had given Mandela the Freedom of the City in 1981, and a further eight cities and councils including Aberdeen, Dundee, and Sheffield followed this lead during the 1980s. There were four elements to “Freedom at 70”: the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert held at Wembley Stadium on 11 June; a rally in Glasgow to launch the Nelson Mandela Freedom March on 12 June; and the five-week long Freedom March from Glasgow to London, which finished with a rally in Hyde Park on 17 July 1988. These events attracted an unprecedented level of interest in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the struggle against apartheid. For example, the Wembley Stadium concert was attended by about 100,000 people and an estimated 600 million people in more than 60 countries watched the event.

There is no unifying figurehead in Palestine similar to Mandela, and the dark irony is that although media gave reports on conditions and state violence from South Africa, we know more than we ever did then about Palestine. In some senses we know too much, but there are still no official media allowed on the ground in Gaza, and, as we know, what journalists there are have been targetted and killed in unprecedented numbers.

Before the high-point of the protests around Mandela’s freedom march had come decades of resistance, isolation and solidarity.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement forced South Africa to leave the Commonwealth in 1961. In 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on all member states to impose a trade boycott against South Africa. In 1963, the UN Security Council called for a partial arms ban against South Africa. South Africa was expelled from the Olympics in 1970.

South Africa became a pariah state, but only through the strategic efforts of a mass movement and internationally coordinated action.

Today, Israel faces no such isolation. Israel’s Eurovision entrant Yuval Raphael will appear at the competition in Basel. Israel takes part in football competition and its leaders are met in Washington, London and Edinburgh. The point is that state actors such as Keir Starmer may refuse to halt arms sales or military support, and issue D notices against journalists, but mass anti-imperialist movements, such as the anti-apartheid movement and the Free Palestine movement do have agency and power.

Culturally, whether it’s the poetry of the likes of Mohammed Moussa and the Gaza Poets Society, or the magnificent Falastin Film Festival which brings Palestinian cinema, culture, and art to Scotland, raising awareness of Zionist colonization and strives to highlight Palestinian resistance, cultural pride, stories of love, and, in the words of poet Rafeef Ziadah, “teachings of life.”

As individuals we have agency too, to speak out like the actions of Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s who spoke out: “I told Congress they’re killing poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and they’re paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the US”, or the brave young student Logan Rozos speaking out at NYU’s graduation ceremony, these all have collective impact.

Israel’s actions, like South Africa’s before it, are radicalising a generation and exposing Western imperialism and militarism. Ben Cohen is fond of quoting Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Tutu is right and as the European states continue their tacit support or active complicity in genocide the movement is growing and intensifying. As resistance grows the British state’s response is more and more repressive; all efforts must be made to intensify protest on all fronts and remember that ultimately apartheid was defeated and Nelson Mandela walked to freedom. Culture resistance alone is not enough but it is known to be a crucial part of movement-building and the assertion of what is being denied, Palestinian’s humanity and the rights and needs and desires that come with that.

Image Credit: Art Workers for Palestine Scotland