One year on is there still reason to hope?

Pushing against the prevailing narrative...

Oct 07, 2024

If you read any mainstream media today, an anniversary will be in the news. This is the way all of the reporting will go: “Today marks one year since Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack against Israel”. Or maybe it will say something like, ‘one year from the horrific invasion and attack on Israel by Hamas, hostages are still being held by Hamas”.

They might not even say “Palestinians” - it’ll all just be “Hamas”.

However it’s written, make no mistake - the lives of Israelis will always be centered and the lives of Palestinians will always be ignored. This is as it has been since 1948.

If we are lucky, a journalist may acknowledge that Israel’s attack on “Hamas” is really an attack on Palestinians. They might include one throwaway line of a Palestinian death toll that is woefully undercounted. They’ll preface it by saying the number is from “Hamas” with the inference that it cannot be trusted.

Israel will never be the Zionist government, Palestine will always be called Hamas. The message will always be: Israeli lives matter, Palestinian lives do not.

After 365 of the mass slaughter of Palestinians, including more than 18,000 children, there is little left to say. Our government is still ignoring mass protests every week. They are still refusing to sanction Israel. They are still refusing to grant humanitarian visas for Palestinians. They could not be clearer in their resolve to ignore genocide.

Is there any reason to hope?

Yes.

In the last year, I have seen people who had previously never been to a protest show up every week to protest this genocide and show solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The first protest for a ceasefire I went to was on October 10th, 2023. Those of us who understood the history of the so-called “conflict”, knew what was coming. We knew that genocide, starvation, mass destruction was on its way. That is the way of Israel. It always has been. It was a small protest then - the movement has only grown every week.

just4pal

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I first posted on 18 October, 2023 - ways to ‘stop the genocide’. The demands we had had then, have not changed:

Call for an immediate ceasefire by the Israeli Government.
Call for the Israeli Government to provide safe and secure passage for humanitarian aid and medical support and supply.
Officially recognise Palestine as a sovereign country.
To expel the Israeli ambassador to NZ if ceasefire does not occur.
Condemn the targeting of civilians and collective punishment and declare that there can be no justification for blocking civilian access to water, power and humanitarian aid.

The Government has weakly called for a ceasefire without addressing the fact that Netanyahu will not agree to a ceasefire and Israel is currently bombing three countries at once.

Other than that, no progress on those demands.

But - In 2007, when Israel turned the Gaza Strip into an open air prison, few people in Aotearoa and the world knew about it. We didn’t have social media to show what Israel was doing to Palestinians. The torture, the starvation, the endless amputations - using Palestinian children as target practice - as a journalist I knew about it, but it was hard to get other people to understand it.

wearthepeace

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When Israel invaded Gaza in 2008–2009 thousands were killed as they targeted hospitals and schools. Again, without footage on social media, it was easy for people to only see the Western propaganda.

It’s only in the past year that people have begun to question what they’ve been told. They have repeatedly been told not to believe their eyes and ears when they see footage directly from Gaza on their social media feeds.

When people saw child after child after child after child blown apart, children with bullet wounds to the head - so many babies dead, starving and maimed - they started to ask questions. They became educated. They found out that this is the 16th time since 1948 that Israel has attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since more than 200,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes to settle there as refugees.

As they have been told that 7 October justifies bombing hospitals and blowing apart babies in their beds - they have asked themselves if that’s something they can still believe. They have been called to find their humanity.

When they’ve been told they’re antisemitic simply for calling for a ceasefire - they’ve been forced to look at the ways occupiers and colonisers silence anyone who won’t turn away from genocide.

eye.on.palestine

A post shared by @eye.on.palestine

Calls to “just release the hostages and all of this will be over” have led people to ask - “Why do they think there are hostages in Yemen? Or Lebanon?” They have asked why there is no updated information on the Palestinian hostages Israel holds. As of April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons – including 160 children, 32 women, and over 1,000 "administrative detainees" who are held indefinitely incarcerated without charge.

wearthepeace

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In September, Israel broke the 30-year record for the number of Palestinians it had unlawfully imprisoned under administrative detention (1,264).

Folks who haven’t before been called to look at what is happening “on the other side of the world” because yeah, it’s easy to look away, have suddenly been unable to think of anything but the 137 journalists, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA, killed by Israel in cold blood.

One woman I spoke to last week had previously never emailed an MP. She told me she has personally sent more than 280 emails to this government demanding action against Israel this year.

So yes, I feel hopeful despite it all.

I know when you see every day, another family killed, it feels hopeless but we must know that despair is another bullet in an Israeli gun fired at a child. Despair makes us believe that there can never be freedom for Palestinians so why bother? Despair makes us think that Netanyahu and the Génocidaires cannot be stopped, so why ever stand against it?

I have said before, we owe Palestinians our endurance. Today and every day.

If you started your journey of understanding one year ago today or yesterday - what matters is that you never stop seeking justice for those who have spent decades being brutalised.

Hope is painful but necessary. If we don’t have hope, our children have no future. If we accept that the lives of Palestinian children do not matter - then no children matter.

kaleidoscopenews

A post shared by @kaleidoscopenews

I will repeat what I’ve said time and time again:

I refuse to believe Palestinian babies will “grow up to be Hamas” so they should be killed “at the root” and the awful lie if you stand against genocide you support a “second Holocaust”.

I refuse to believe that even if Hamas was hiding in a child’s bed, the logical reaction is to kill every child in every bed in that village, and slaughter every mother and father and sister and brother and cousin and aunty and uncle and nana and grandpa who has ever knelt by that bed and read a bedtime story or offered a prayer.

I do not believe that killing a child’s parents in front of their eyes and leaving them to fend for themselves in a war zone, starving, unable to sleep or drink even a cup of water, will end Hamas as a terror group or a concept.

If that child survives, what is the likelihood in their endless trauma that they will one day choose peace?

I will leave you with this beautiful video from Gaza.

Palestinians are hope. Today, every day, and tomorrow too.

If you feel hopeless - look to them. Please, don’t look away.

Scroll to the bottom of this email for actions to take + more reading.

m7md_vo

A post shared by @m7md_vo

Actions to take

Email our Prime Minister and deputies - Again.

I have set a reminder on my phone to email daily. The main demands you should include in your emails are:

Call for an immediate ceasefire by the Israeli Government.
Call for the Israeli Government to provide safe and secure passage for humanitarian aid and medical support and supply.
Officially recognise Palestine as a sovereign country.
To expel the Israeli ambassador to NZ if ceasefire does not occur.
Condemn the targeting of civilians and collective punishment and declare that there can be no justification for blocking civilian access to water, power and humanitarian aid.

Emails (you can just cut and paste this):

c.hipkins@ministers.govt.nz, c.sepuloni@ministers.govt.nz, n.mahuta@ministers.govt.nz, christopher.luxon@parliament.govt.nz, christopher.luxon@parliament.govt.nz, winston.peters@parliament.govt.nz, Marama.Davidson@parliament.govt.nz, James.shaw@parliament.govt.nz, Debbie.Ngarewa-Packer@parliament.govt.nz, Rawiri.Waititi@parliament.gov