Some days it doesn’t feel right to publish silly posts about sex, or self-pitying navelgazing about whatever sadness is swirling round in my head. Today is one of those days. In fact, at the moment, every day feels like one of those days. Every single day we wake up to more appalling images from Gaza, of children being deliberately starved. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I can’t comprehend how it is possible to see what’s going on and conclude it is anything but. The aid trucks queuing outside the border, refused entry, and the people inside clamouring for food and being met with bullets instead. We are watching a genocide play out on our screens, and our governments are locking people up for stating this obvious fact.
Some of you probably come here to escape the darkness, but I don’t think this is a darkness we can escape. There are people watching their children die, begging for food and medical help, and those people are relying on us to not turn away. They need us to talk about this. It is urgent that we do. And we need to name it: genocide.
The obvious thing for me to do in this post is recommend you donate to charities who are trying to get aid into Gaza, so here you are: UNICEF, Palestine Red Crescent, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). But so many of us have donated money already, and the aid we’ve helped to pay for sits in trucks outside the borders, not far from where hungry children starve. The problem is not and has never been a lack of food, the problem is that the food doesn’t get to the people who need it. Why? Because the IDF are standing guard, ready to shoot starving civilians who run gauntlets of danger just to get a few scraps. It’s merciless and utterly dehumanising: genocide.
Maybe I should tell you to write to your MP, or other political representative if you’re outside the UK. But, again, we’ve done that right? So many of us. People have marched and campaigned and shouted and objected and used their platforms to say ‘not in my name’, and yet our taxes still go towards paying the salaries of government ministers who refuse to call this what it is: genocide.
As with everything like this, individual action can never solve a problem on its own. There is very little that I as a complete nobody can do to help, and I don’t pretend that just howling in horror and rage about it here will do much good. But even though my actual power is limited and small, I can’t just keep watching appalling footage and donating money and hoping in vain that the food gets to the people who need it. It won’t. Because Israel is committing genocide.
Israel is purposefully starving the population of Gaza. As the Palestine Red Crescent explains:
deliberate starvation of civilians constitutes a war crime and a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including:
• Article 54, which prohibits the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare;
• Article 55, which obligates the occupying power to provide food and medical supplies to the population under occupation.
It is not a ‘crisis’, it’s genocide. Not a famine: genocide.
Here’s Amnesty International:
“Amnesty International has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israeli authorities committed, and continue to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
As I say, one random blogger howling about it isn’t going to make it stop. But over the last few months I’ve seen many of the artists I follow using their platforms to stand up for the rights of the people of Palestine, and affirm that what is happening does not happen in their name. It would be a waste of the (albeit small) platform I have to not do the same.
Each picture that comes out of Gaza… another hospital bombed; child permanently injured; person shot while queuing for food; baby starving in the arms of one of their parents while food sits in trucks just a short drive away across the border… every single one of these documents a war crime that is ongoing and preventable.
What is happening in Gaza is genocide. Anyone with a shred of power who is refusing to call it that should be held to account.
Today the news is telling us of limited aid being allowed into Gaza, of ineffective air drops and a few trucks being allowed across the border. They will tell us this is enough. They will show us videos of this aid being distributed and hope that calms things down.
But I don’t think we can, or should, calm down until every single person in Gaza is treated with the same rights and dignity as we expect for ourselves and our loved ones. Until every single person is given access to food, medical treatment, and safety.
Not temporary relief or a ceasefire: freedom. From starvation. From persecution. From genocide.