Ragini Kistnasamy - I was part of an international protective presence in Palestine
30.11.2024
Everyone present at Ragini Kistnasamy’s public Report Back at the Municipal Chamber of Port Louis yesterday was riveted by her speech. It was passionate, as befits the historic moment of the genocide that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians as she spoke, and also sober, knowing that it is only through knowledge of the geopolitical reality and its history, and carefully planned actions that we, here in Mauritius, can, together with people all over the world, help to put an end to the massacre.
Ragini carefully chose incidents she had witnessed in the villages of Tuwani and Susya in Musafir Yatta, in the district of Hebron and in the olive groves of Qusra in the West Bank so as to make vivid the daily reality of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine that has existed for over 50 years, and of the Western colonial enterprise that has been banishing Palestinians from their own land for over 76 years. Her speech was, throughout, a vibrant homage to the people of Palestine – the farmers, the shepherds, the planters, and the olive orchard keepers, even the little children trying to get through military check-points just to get to and from school each day – for their immense struggle for liberation, over generations.
As she spoke, more and more people arrived, until the Chamber had not a single seat left empty. The gathering, organized by LALIT for the World Day of Solidarity with the People of Palestine, was warm with collective conviction, and no-one seemed to want to go home afterwards. The audience, predominantly women and a good proportion of young people, had half an hour for questions, comments and proposals, which we can come back to briefly at the end.
The session began with a 5-minute video clip of the beautiful song-poem “Child of Gaza” created and rendered by Tania Haberland and Melanie Peres, recorded and video-accompanied by accomplished volunteers. A heart-rendering interpretation of the lullaby “Larivyer Tannye” in Kreol was interwoven with a poem in English dedicated to live Palestinian children trying to go to sleep and in memory of those killed.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=child+of+gaza+by+tania+haberland#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:5a0c4c79,vid:zQkC_C1Xztc,st:0
Then, there was an introductory talk in the name of LALIT by Alain Ah Vee, who has himself been to the West Bank to participate in the international action, a march from Jenin to Jerusalem, against the Apartheid Wall that Israel has constructed so as to enforce its continued colonial genocide in Palestine. That was in 2004. He situated yesterday’s gathering in the long, international struggle to build up enough international pressure – direct and through our respective States – to free Palestine. He reminded us that in 2020 LALIT had held, on this very date, a night vigil at GRNW in support of the people of Palestine. Before that, in 2015, LALIT together with others called on the then Prime Minister to “isolate Israel”, propose an “arms embargo” and “boycott Israel”. And since the 1970’s, we have been acting to end the occupation. All this gives context to the moment in history right now when Israel is going all out to force the Palestinians to flee their land or face genocide. Alain accurately called it an “acceleration” of the on-going genocide.
Ragini Kistnasamy then gave her hands-on experience of the daily violence of Israeli settlers against ordinary families in Palestine, and of the way the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) assist in this process of expulsion. She situated this as the reality Palestinians are opposing every day in the West Bank – itself divided by Israel into Area A, Area B and Area C, under different degrees of military occupation – compared with the well-nigh annexation in recent years of East Jerusalem, which has a special international status and is supposed to be Palestinian, and the present total siege by Israel of the part of Palestine called Gaza. She said it is Israel’s aim to divide Palestine, which used to be one big country. It was first divided, she said, by the UN in 1947-8, as a way for the West to atone for its treatment of Jewish people during Hitler’s reign in Germany: Half of Palestine was called Israel. The other half was to become a Palestinian State. Then in 1967, Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian half. Since then, it has continued to push Palestinians into smaller and smaller isolated bits of Palestine. None of this, she and Alain said, could have been possible without the total support the West, particularly the UK and USA, gave to Israel, as part of their imperialist plan for world domination, or “full spectrum dominance” as they call it. Kisna drew attention to the shared history Mauritius has with Palestine: we, too, are militarily occupied by the UK-USA until today in their “full spectrum dominance” strategic aim. And the military base on our territory must, therefore, urgently be closed down altogether. This base is clearly part of the genocide perpetrating machinery.
Audience participation was active. Almost everyone began with an expression of appreciation of Ragini Kistnasamy’s “courage” to just go there and be witness, and then report back to us in person. Ragini replies that the courage that needs salutation is that of the Palestinian families. We have to keep at it, until we end the genocide, the occupation, the Apartheid. Everyone applauded calls for an immediate arms embargo, and for the new Government to support the South African case against Israel for its genocide.
At the end, as the Municipality workers were trying to get us out of the Chamber so as to respect our closing time, there were hands up everywhere, and suggestions for actions against Israel. A meeting was thus fixed to share ideas on this.
Alain, as chair, gave the last word to a group of Palestinians living in Mauritius and who were present for the event. A woman said, on their behalf, that their hearts were warmed by the gathering support for their ongoing struggle. They will inform their respective families in Palestine. They know all the villages that Ragini was referring to in her talk, even if the rest of us were learning about them for the first time.
So, lalit kontinye! Even stronger, even with more focus and perspicacity, and ever-broadening support for the people of Palestine’s long struggle.
