Blog 3 – Calling for a ceasefire on international stage at grassroots
14.11.2023
I spoke via Zoom at a Palestine solidarity Forum being held live at the popular annual Jozi Book Fair in Johannesburg. It was Sunday 12 November. I was speaking as a novelist and also Lalit member, while Mike van Graan was speaking as a playwright and Jimi Matthews spoke about his exhibition of photographs, “Existence in Palestine”. I can’t report, unfortunately, on what the other speakers or the chair, Maria van Driel, said, because my network connection broke into smithereens, so all I can do is give an idea of what I said on screen in Johannesburg in my five-minute introduction, which kicked off the forum and which I believe people heard and saw. Technology worked, but only to a point. Anyway, I can give readers the knowledge that there are international events world-wide, like this small one organized by Khanya College that runs the Jozi Book Fair, doing their bit to get an Israeli CEASEFIRE to stop its genocide of Palestinians as a people. Today a US constitutional law association has entered a case in the US Supreme Court against Biden and his top brass for breaking international law by not preventing genocide, and breaking national US law for the siege, the bombing and the forcible displacements being done with US public money.
So, for the record, here is what I said Sunday, taken from my notes, and the middle portion is what I had noted down to say in the follow-up debate, given a chance:
Just as, at the beginning of western colonialism, there was occupation, genocide, pillage and slaughter, so at its bitter end over 400 years later, we live to see the same occupation, genocide, pillage and slaughter. I refer to the bitter end of Western colonization in the form of three examples that link us all together today. One, the end of South Africa’s Apartheid. Two, the beginning of the end of the UK-USA’s military occupation of part of Mauritius, Diego Garcia and the whole of Chagos, from which the population was forcibly removed from 1965 to 1973. And three, what we are here to address today, the Palestinians being tortured and killed during the intensification of Israel’s siege and of Gaza, and its bombardment and starving to death, while colonization and occupation continue in all of Palestine. These three struggles were linked and are linked – by Western imperialism, in its dying throes.
These crimes against humanity are performed only with impunity granted by the total support of Western imperialist countries – until, that is, we challenge them, from within and from outside, and turn the tide. The USA literally runs Israel’s militarized state. It arms it. It funds it. It justifies its unjustifiable carnage.
Since we are in the midst of Israeli crimes against humanity, a Medieval siege to the death in Gaza, forced displacement by the Israeli Defense Force of over a million Palestinians in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, schools, family homes, roads, ambulances, killing of medical staff and over 100 UN staff, and slaughter of 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half children, and over a 175 in the West Bank (46 children) since 7 October, in short a “genocide” – this extreme word was already used by top UN human rights director who has resigned from his post, Craig Mokhiber, and even before by Israeli academic, Raz Segal expert in the Holocaust and genocide at Stockton University USA – since that is where we are today, we must have one unifying loud call for an immediate and unconditional CEASEFIRE.
STOP the bombing. And stop it now!
The way to do this is different for all of us. You have enough political pressure to make your South African government recall its Ambassador to Israel. In Mauritius, we have not yet succeeded in getting this done. In 2009, we did succeed. Saturday half a million people marched in London, despite the Government warning them not to. Over a million marched last week in Turkey. 120 countries called for a ceasefire at the General Assembly. Israel only got 13 miserable states to oppose a ceasefire – the US, four right-wing European governments, two dictatorships in Latin America and 6 bullied Pacific Island states, one has a population of 10,000. Workers world wide mobilize to block ships, ports, arms factory gates. Sit-ins have been held at the New York Grand Central station by Jewish Voices for Peace. Staffers who work at Congress in the USA have had walk-outs.
So, what makes the bombing continue? How can a genocide go on, even when we are watching it. Even when we protest, world-wide, against it?
The short answer is the USA funds and runs Israel. So, the USA is responsible for the genocide.
It is Joe Biden who is responsible.
And his pathetic Secretary of State Blinken, and the head of the military, Austin.
They are the ones that arm Israel, fund Israel, egg Israel on.
They are the immediate reason.
They refuse to stop arming Israel. Instead the US sends more arms. Fuelling the US arms-bosses’ profits that bulge from their pockets, day by bloodied day, dead baby by bloodied dead baby. Even as incubators go dead, without the electricity the USA-Israel tandem cut off on purpose, leaving the babies, in turn like the incubators, to die.
USA-Israel defies international law. They just slaughter, live on TV.
They lock Gazans in, then bombard, shell, burn them alive. Grannies, babies, the sick and the injured, the wise and the playful, the skilled craftsmen and fishers, the seamstresses and factory workers, the lawyers and the artists, the planters, the doctors and the nurses, the telecom workers and the transport workers, now with mules drawing carts with the lame and the old and the infirm and the newborn, and the full-term pregnant, sitting atop the odd bunch of clothing.
Then, if the Palestinians live, the Israeli army starves them, plunges them in to terrifying darkness. And bombards them even more. If they go to the edge of the Mediterranean to escape, they get shelled from the sea. Two US gunboats, lie in the Mediterranean. Israel’s guarantors during the genocide. Just, the US says, in case, things get out of hand. Killing 11,000 Palestinian mothers, fathers, children, grannies, is not out of hand? Injuring and maiming 30,000 people going about their daily business is not out of hand?
Every action we take, affects our own Governments. So, take action. The Cabinet gets reports on all our actions via their spies. Our Governments are sensitive to our accusations that they are not doing enough to stop a genocide. They worry. Every action we take is pressure on the political parties in power in our countries.
At the same time, our actions get reported by the US Embassy staff in our countries to the Blinken State Department in the USA, where there is already a rebellion against him for supporting crimes against humanity in Gaza. His top civil servant publicly resigned – Josh Paul. These cables our Ambassadors send Blinken are what the “cables” of “Wikileaks Cables” fame. The State Department workers read the reports on every action we take, every statement we make, every article of political note we write. And they, too, some of them, rebel against Biden. So, we must not underestimate our effect.
The US Ambassador in Oman’s cable, leaked Sunday read, “we are badly losing the diplomatic battle,” he said.
So what do we call for:
CEASEFIRE!
End the Siege!
End the Occupation and colonization!
End the Israeli state’s Apartheid!
The right of return of all Palestinian refugees!
Free up the Mediterranean sea to Palestine!
Free all Palestinian captives the Israeli State holds! Over 6,000, with 2,000 amongst them children! As well as the 239 Israeli captives.
A blockade on arms to Israel! Total arms embargo!
Israel must pay full reparations to Palestine!
Try the Israeli leaders before the International Criminal Court.
All this, even as we fight, in the long run and now, as in South Africa, for full democracy for all in Israel-Palestine and equality for all!
Long live internationalism!
Lindsey Collen, for LALIT
