(Something I knocked together the other morning after not being able to sleep. I might torture it into rhyming couplets and a verse/chorus format at some point. At the moment it's mainly in lines because that's the space allowed by my notebook. I may have mis-remembered some of the numbers - corrections welcome, as well as any other suggestions.)
*****
Where are the flags for Palestine?
Travelled the country North to South Where yellows and blues have fluttered for over a year From window and doors, even no.10 People and institutions all over the land So quick in Solidarity for ‘people like us’ The ‘relatively civilised’ Witty t-shirts with ‘Puck Futin’, ‘Slava Ukraini’ (a fascist slogan) comes so easy To every mouth, but ‘Free Palestine’ is Legitimate Cause For Concern to the Jewish Community And ‘from the river to the sea’ a call to genocide threatening those... Who are committing genocide.
Ten thousand killed in a month, four thousand children More than in the whole of Evil Putin’s war No justification for targeting civilians, we are told But if you call them ‘barbarians’ or ‘animals’ I guess that’s just fine. Ukraine was free to retaliate against its aggressor With armed force. It was applauded for doing so And funded to the tune of billions In fact the money was rolling in well before: 6bn to destabilise and fix an election where ‘Yats is our guy’ And Russian speakers in the Donbass and elsewhere Faced discrimination and.. bombs A trade union building burned with 40 dead, An atrocity committed by western-backed neo-nazis Against pro-Russia demonstrators in Odessa Was this not terrorism - Designed to affect a political response Through extreme violence? Yet they weren’t depicted as butchers, Rapists, beheaders of babies, ‘worse than ISIS’. Nor the bombers of Nordstream Nor the killers of pro-Russian journalists in crowded cafes Nor the drone attacks on Moscow Nor the destruction of the Khakovka dam (If Russia did it, then why not Israel Gunning down those kids – human kids – At that music festival? You know, with Hellfire from above, Helicopters, tanks, the Hannibal doctrine and all that. No? Okay then.) I guess when the victims are ‘Orcs’, 'terrorists', ‘animals,’ or rather: Troops in an occupying army, You can start to forgive, right?
All down the length of the country, On road and rail – many yellows and blues still flutter Though solidarity has waned Since the military failures And the endless stream of money Going to Zelensky and co To stave off the inevitable While people at home shiver in the dark And decide between heating and eating. Where is the money for Gaza and the West Bank? Calls for No Fly Zones and F-16s No expense spared to protect Democracy (Hamas is an elected government) Territorial integrity and the Rules Based Order? Not when they are brown people, Not when they are Arabs, Muslims, Not when they’re in the way of oil and gas extraction And redevelopment contracts For neighbourhoods of blood-drenched rubble.
But, but… they bombed their own hospital! The paid liars come on screen And humiliate with the screaming falsehoods They force us to treat credibly With nary a retort from all those 100K/year ‘journalists’ Suddenly unable to prepare a defense Or have any contrary facts to hand. (No such hesitation when demanding We condemn condemn condemn… A resistance organistation Opposing genocidal violence. Do you condemn the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? Do you condemn the partisans of Occupied Europe in WW2? Of course we mustn’t make such comparisons. (The Zionists can, invoking Dresden – not the Blitz – But we can’t, or doing so be labelled antisemites) It’s the West’s victims we must condemn When they have the nerve, the brass front, The ingratitude to fight back. The Indian Mutiny (rapists, murderers!) The Haiti slave uprising (OMG they want us all dead!) The ANC (Mandela the terrorist) The Vietcong (how dare they not fight us in the open? Human shields!) The Native American resistance (Ok, we’ll name our weapons after you 100 years later) Of course, they are the ones we must condemn. They are the ones committing atrocities, Despite verifiable evidence, Never the ones responding to them. How could they have the right to respond in kind?
Evil Putin bombed that maternity hospital in Melitopol, Bombed that school with ‘children’ Written outside on the pavement We know this. The ‘journalists’ and politicians say it With immediate certainty, And to doubt it is evidence of your collusion With Russian depravity. You’re not even allowed to ask for proof. But Al-Shifa explodes, Days after the IDF ‘taps on the roof’ With ordinance of the kind Hamas fighters could only dream of, A direct hit from the only group in the area That has targeted munitions with that kind of power, The one with a history of destroying Schools, UN buildings, Mosques, Refugee camps, And numerous medical facilities. But no, we need to hear Israel’s side of the story And give airtime to their Barefaced lies and victim-blaming. Of course, they did it to themselves, Those stupid Arabs. They probably did it on purpose to get the sympathy. This is what you get when ‘children of light’ Take it upon themselves to rid the world of ‘Darkness’, the uncivilised, ‘Amelakites’ (There goes the religious justification) And the propaganda-addled Just go along with all of it.
The length of the country And not one flag for Palestine. All I saw was one little girl At Kings Cross Station with ‘Palestine: now and forever’ On her t-shirt. She had slightly amber-tinted skin And big brown eyes. To be honest, it made me feel a little unsafe.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Well put. Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I stick to the narrative that perpetrators need to be named and shamed in a direct manner. Perhaps I am stuck in the groove of the protest songs of the 60's .
Re: I was going for self-evident absurdity... (nm)
Point taken, though there's a fair amount of attacking perpetrators & their enablers in the rest of the piece. I was trying to come up with something pithy to say to the Ukraine flag wavers to get them to question their hypocrisy and implicit racism when they're not similarly outraged about Palestinians facing 10x worse of a situation than Ukrainians, but couldn't come up with anything. All-too easily dismissed as whataboutery too - it needs to stick.
there's a fair amount of attacking perpetrators & their enablers in the rest of the piece
I re-read it in the light of the day and tbh I was being very unfair and concentrating on the last 3 lines. Perhaps because these were so descriptive .. and poignant? Totally agree there was plenty of naming and shaming in the rest of the piece. Apologies if I appeared too harsh and micro-focussed : /