TUES 14 NOV
Morning begins with a carrier bag of poo. Patrolling the garden and picking up the dog mess.
With the amount of shit happening right now Ursula Le Guin’s carrier bag theory of fiction pops to mind. In this thin volume she writes about ways of storytelling - moving away from heroes, weapons and victors to posit that the proper shape for a story is a sack, a bag: ‘A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.’ Narrative does not have to be conflict. Stories can be cultural carrier bags of care and connection rather than weapons of domination.
Someone says ‘it’s all so sad and confusing.’ It is devastating. But, although we have a duty to educate ourselves, what is happening in front of our eyes is not confusing.
But I am perturbed by a tweet by Eddy Marsan. He shares the call to join a ‘March against Anti Semitism’. I go to the website. The first sentence is a lie. ‘Week after week, central London has become a no-go zone for Jews.’ Jews have been at the forefront of marches, station sit ins and calls for ceasefire. Anti-Semitism, like any form of racism and prejudice is not to be tolerated but calling for a ceasefire, calling for an end to genocide, calling out the actions of Israel is categorically not Anti-Semitic and those who seek and succeed to conflate the two are playing a dangerous game for the world.
And behind the scenes of this march is danger. The organisers ‘Campaign against Anti-Semitism’ tweet that those on the streets and outside parliament advocating for ceasefire are a ‘mob’ and that anyone mentioning the Nazis in reference to Israeli leaders talking and acting in terms of ‘annihilation’, ‘erasure’ and genocide is antisemitic. They consider this pretty accurate equating of actions as proof of antisemitism. They call this comparison appalling rather than call out the action as appalling. There is an extreme carelessness in this flurry of instrumentalised victimhood. In France a large march against Anti-Semitism aligned directly with the far right of Le Pen’s National Front. Literal Fascists, Centrists and Zionists ‘shoulder to shoulder.’
Marsan distances himself when people point out this alignment made all too clear when BNP and EDL afficionado Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Yaxley Lennon calls on his followers to attend this march and let British Jews know they are not alone. The comments say it all - “What you are now experiencing is the consequences of trying to equate the Jewish people with the Israeli government. He supports Zionism, not Jews. Maybe think a bit about why’ and more revealing and damning - ‘If Nazis kept supporting my causes, I ‘d eventually start to wonder about my causes.’
Marsan’s tagline is ‘nothing human is alien to me’ consolidated by a pinned tweet stating his creed as humanist. “I believe that the cultural & religious identities that we construct for ourselves & their belief systems, although they may give us comfort, are illusionary. Morality & meaning come from seeing every human being as pure potential & of equal value.” And yet his timeline is only full of the atrocities of 7 October. None of the ongoing terror. The selective sight and hearing of the so called liberal ‘humanist’ centre resounding and astounding.
Meanwhile Jews for Ceasefire sing in Hebrew from the book of Isaiah – a prayer to end wars from a thousand years ago and in the Israeli Knesset Gil Dikman whose relatives were murdered on October 7th responds to Likud MK Gail Distel’s calls for Gaza’s annihilation with anguish and anger – ‘Stop talking in slogans - to wipe out, to flatten, to annihilate – Take care of life because there is life in Gaza.’
It's raining outside. It’s raining in Gaza. A little boy thinks it has been sent from God.
The sky here both clears and darkens and we take lights and cameras up to the youth group Project Zero with an invitation to sing Bread and Roses. There is an intense concentration on the young faces illuminated singing out into the night. We hand out flyers asking people to join us to sing more on the street. I think of flyers falling from Israeli aircraft – warning citizens to move south - to move out of harm’s way only for harm to follow. I wish that the stories we hold dear could really be medicine bundles falling from the sky - sacred protection - healing wounds and hearts, guarding innocents.
A poem by Em Berry is shared:
This morning I learned
the English word gauze
(finely woven medical cloth)
Comes from the Arabic [ ] or ‘Ghazza’
Because Gazans had been skilled weavers for centuries
I wondered then
How many of our wounds
had been dressed
because of them
and how many of theirs
have been left open
because of us.
David Cameron is now a Lord and unelected Foreign Secretary. Our government votes on a ceasefire tomorrow. As if there could ever be any question.
