OUR STATEMENT ON GAZA
16TH OCTOBER 2023
This may seem nothing to do with solar power or renewables or retrofit, filmmaking or art. We may, as many have found, lose a lot of people through this statement. But lives and work cannot be separated. We live in a world of cascading crises and everything is intertwined. We can't keep to our 'topic' as this is actually about how we live our lives on this earth, what we believe in and what we are willing to stand for.
I think we’ve been paralysed by the horror of it all. The horror of the atrocities but also the horror of the unfolding UK/ western government and media response – at the twisted narratives propagated and cynical weaponization of antisemitism.
What is happening in Gaza is a war crime. To call it by its name it is genocide. Bombardment and trapping of civilian populations, use of white phosphorous, cutting off electricity and water supplies – total contravention of international law.
Sky news talk to Ghassan Abu Sitt a doctor in a hospital in Gaza asking what he will do should the ground invasion begins. “We will stay with our patients and defend our patients right to life….if Israel decides to commit genocide then that is on the international community who saw this coming.”
A news crew talk to Jewish woman Katie Colley at the weekend march for peace in London.
Heartbroken and eloquent she states: “Every life is precious. The root of this violence is the occupation. It’s not complicated. It’s a settler colonial state imposing apartheid and oppression on indigenous people and that’s wrong everywhere, for anybody.”
Calling this out is not to be an apologist for the horror of Hamas actions but nor did those actions come out of the blue – this is an apartheid regime now stating explicitly the intent to destroy the ‘human animals.’ This is the language of genocide and to call this out is not antisemitic. It is anti the terror inflicted by a far-right Israeli government. As Naomi Klein says sharing Roz Segal’s article “A textbook case of genocide’. This is the ‘Again’ of Never Again. propped up by weaponised language, censorship and the complicity of the cowardly and corrupt.
Conservative MP Crispin Blunt makes this clear to BBC news.
“The United Kingdom government has given unequivocal support to the State of Israel.. and I ‘m uncertain that they fully understand the implications of the development of international law whereby if you are encouraging a party to undertake a war crime you become complicit in that crime itself. And it’s absolutely clear now that what is happening in Gaza does amount to a war crime because it is disproportionate and it does not distinguish the targets it is taking out, hence the terrible number of children that have been killed and what we’ve just heard from the World Health Organisation and the effect of the transfer on the hospitals - a forced transfer of 1.2 million people is an absolute crime under the laws of war. You are simply not allowed to do it. As indeed is the collective punishment of the people of Gaza with a siege and the imposition of no food, no water and no electricity.”
Testimony after testimony and plea after plea are coming in from Israeli Jews, from those caught up in the Hamas attacks, from those who have lost loved ones or whose family are still missing saying STOP, this revenge does nothing.
We have our own family context - family in Israel, in army reserves, in Kibbutz. We cannot utter anything in this context without being enemies of the Jewish people. When we made the film ‘How To Re-Establish a Vodka Empire’ it was a reconnection with our Jewish heritage. This story of Dan’s Grandmother ended up with her forced out of Ukraine – she knew persecution. On the side of the oppressed as an immigrant to Northern Ireland, she converted to Catholicism and was denounced by her family and community – buried on the Fall’s Road in an unmarked grave, her Polish Jewish husband becoming at Orangeman. The learnings from this journey led to an increasing understanding of the formation of Israel for Dan and for others in the family a step towards an embrace with the ideology of nationalist Zionism. ”
I don’t know how to end this. My autistic mind hurts. I’ve never been able to engage in clever debates or articulate arguments. I just know hypocrisy and injustice is unbearable. So together with millions now marching across the world we add our cries to:
A call for an immediate ceasefire
A call for true empathy
A call for peace and justice
A call for international law to be upheld
A calling out of the cynical weaponization of antisemitism that has destroyed so much
A call to stop the hate peddled by politicians entering our souls and communities where love and healing can grow
A calling out of the self interest and hypocrisy of our politicians
A call to recognise and hold dear humanity and good faith where it is evident
A call for a miracle – knowing that they are possible, with work and courage
A call out in this time of despair to just, at least, state we are witnesses. We see this complicity. Millions do.
