I SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE
By all accounts, this headline will not get me arrested — though that is by no means guaranteed.
The disgraceful decision by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe Palestine Action has appalled human rights lawyers around the world; predictably, the campaign to ‘de-proscribe’ Palestine Action is gathering momentum week by week, with the very real prospect of the police having to arrest and charge hundreds if not thousands of people who will not sit by any longer confronted with the devastating pain and cruelty of the genocide being carried out by the government of Israel against the people of Palestine.
I can no longer read about or watch coverage of what is happening in Gaza. It is simply too painful. The unending, calculated murder of wholly innocent people, day after day, defies belief. As does the complicity of world leaders.
On Thursday, together with my 26 young Co-authors from Just Stop Oil, I will be launching ‘Love, Anger & Betrayal’. (Press Release here]. One of its most important chapters speaks directly to the links between the genocide in Gaza today and the near-inevitability of the genocidal consequences of climate breakdown in the future.
I know a lot of mainstream climate campaigners find this comparison extremely problematic — and are so concerned that such an ‘intersectional approach’ may even undermine their own campaigning endeavours. Which is why, I suspect, so many are deeply critical of Greta Thunberg’s humanitarian commitment to do whatever she can to help relieve the suffering in Gaza.
In that context, I’m a strong supporter of an initiative called Bystanders No More (https://www.bystandersnomore.com/) — and recently did an interview with Farah Maraqa about all these troubling, deeply controversial issues.
