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[Jan. 11th, 2009|11:40 am] |
Yes, I was out there yesterday with 100,000+ yesterday. Will it change anything? Probably not. Not while the western economies continue to support a strange little country called Israel.
Oddly enough the policing of yesterday's march was similar to the whole political situation - a very heavy-handed over-reaction can only continually escalate aggression - without the settlers & the israeli tanks trashing villages, we wouldn't have Hamas, we might even have two very similar peoples & cultures ('semetic' refers to arabs & jews alike) sharing a space with no problems. If only. I personally saw more violence on Friday night as part of a critical mass that happened to end up in Kensington, there's demonstrations there every evening. I have playing Dabka music from the PA speakers I juast happened to have with me, and the police admitted they couldn't legally stop us, but tried anyway.
Please don't be put off by the reports of violence, police vs demonstratos - it happens, but to those who put themselves at the front line. Most of us - that's nmearly all of us, in fact, tootled along with our flasks of tea and union banners, and largely left once we got to Kensington, getting past the embassy and back into the park was neigh on impossible. Once again, be the peaceful majority.
A few links:
some streaming palestinian dabka music
Indymedia reporting on yesterday
a blog from an aid worker inside Gaza - please read this one if nothing else
And yes, that's a new icon up there. Feel free to nick it - in fact please do. The day after the tanks went in, the Sun's headline was about Gazza, not Gaza. It's not that difficult to be aware of the world out there.
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I always like to read your posts like this. Like you, I don't know that it will change anything until there is a MAJOR shift in international policy strategy, but it's heartening to see people at least CARING. I heard an Israeli official on the radio the other day talking about how they just want the destruction of Hamas, and I was thinking weeell, maybe Hamas wouldn't exist and peoplw wouldn't have such a chip on their shoulder if their land wasn't divided up with little to no regard for the present population's, you know, presence. Egads.
And the Gazza/Gaza is funny in such a depressing way, ameliorated for me only by the fact that for once, it wasn't some Americans showing their woeful lack of global awareness.
From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mzdt
2009-01-15 05:21 pm (UTC)
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I post in a an almost willful, arrogant way, as I know people won't comment, a lot of people wring their hands and say 'there's nothing we can do', and generally don't want to be faced with things. But it's my blog, and I do care, and I believe we can do something, and and i'm going to continue doing so, even if I'm proved to be wrong... ;-(
Our fundamental problem is the ongoing western unquestioning support of isreal, or rather of the government, I've nothing against the people. No-one will do a thing; it's like an indulged bully within a peer group, indulged because they had a bad childhood. We can blame history for too much, we need to live now, in the moment.
They've just announced they're going to go ahead with the third runway. It'll keep me in things to shout about for a while yet. ;-) | |
