TUES 31 OCT
It is Halloween. All Hallows Eve.
The word hallowed has etymological origins in the Old English for holy or sanctified. Like life.
Not holy as in the holy war cited by Netanyahu as justification for atrocity. Of narratives as full of gaping holes as the land they label Holy yet destroy.
This is a time of year when the physical and supernatural worlds were considered closest, where the time and space between worlds thinned. Where lines could be crossed. Lines are being crossed all the time this Halloween. International law. Lines between truth and lies. In its ancient Celtic beginnings as Samhain this time marks the end of summer – a moment full of trickery and danger and a preparation for the coming of the long winter. It certainly feels like that.
Last year, in torrential rain, I filmed - sheet ghosts illuminated by orange street lamps, werewolves running in mutant packs. I became a strange apparition crouched in the gutter with a long lens. Last year we found a pumpkin field in Wales, rolling the giant orange orbs up sodden hillsides and bringing them home to London. This year they came from Sainsburys.
Pumpkins on the doorstep signal you are open to trick or treaters and, once the candles are lit, they come in their droves. This trick or treating originates in going ‘souling’ - exchanging sweet soul cakes for prayers for the dead in purgatory. Traditionally food was prepared for the living and the dead. Who is there to prepare the food for the dead of Gaza when whole families have been wiped off the earth? When there is no food to prepare? The streets outside are alive with children’s sugar rushed laughter. I eat a sherbet fizz and pray for the lost souls or those dead and those living.
The road is ablaze with sparks and cries of anger and fear as a group of teenagers fire rockets directly at parents and young children. These few bangs are portent to a sky soon alight with seemingly continuous fireworks as bonfire night overlaps with DiwalI: A festival of Lights, a celebration of light over dark, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance. The sky over London is a magical vision but the accompanying soundscape turns the dogs into shaking wrecks and has different connotations. Bombardment. Time travel 83 years to East London families crouching under stairs, constructing Anderson shelters, racing underground as air raid sirens blare. Close your eyes and imagine the terror of bombing with nowhere to hide or run.
It is also the time of year of the poppy. A time for silences and silencing in the name of remembrance. Commentators express outrage that a protest march for peace was allowed to set up near the Cenotaph dedicated to the glorious dead – a place to honour the fallen whose remains are elsewhere. Kier Starmer wears his red flower whilst calling for a humanitarian genocide, for pauses between crimes against humanity. As he speaks the IDF carpet bomb a refugee camp. Someone tweets their surprise that the poppy on his lapel didn’t burst into flames as he spoke.
Meanwhile:
Sisters Uncut shut down Liverpool Street station with hundreds of commuters joining them.
3 major Trade Unions of Belgium with 3 million members announce they will refuse to transport weapons going to Israel citing the ongoing genocide in Palestine and calling out the hypocrisy of the Belgian government.
The Financial Times Editorial board state “Israel’s collective punishment of the 2.3mn people trapped in Gaza — almost half of them children — must stop.”
Activists and Unions block British weapons factories stating ‘UK, stop arming Israel.’
Rabbis call out members of the Jewish community supporting this - ‘we will forever be ruptured by this moral failure, there will be no forgiveness’ (Rabbi Alissa Wise).
Craig Mokhiber - Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commission of Human Rights resigns, sick of the UN being powerless to stop this and critically, calling it a ‘textbook case of genocide’. (https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1719385390086271164).
I will listen to a life-long advocate of human rights over the apologist columnists and dangerously, morally void party politicians. I will listen to the voices of those subject to the extremes of lived experience telling the truth with courage:
To Motaz Azia - a photographer now forced to be the eyes on the ground sharing news daily not knowing if he will survive. https://www.instagram.com/motaz_azaiza/
To Wael Eldahdouh, bureau chief for Al Jazeera whose whole family was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike just hours after US ask Quatari prime minister to ‘turn down the volume’ on Al Jazeera news coverage.
To all the journalists currently being threatened with death for reporting genocide in real time. (The Committee to Protect Journalists reports 31 journalists have been killed since Oct 7. https://cpj.org/).
To committed aid workers losing team members by the day. (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/14/1205951247/12-unwra-aid-workers-were-among-the-over-2-000-killed-by-israeli-airstrikes-in-g)
To dissident Israelis and refusniks https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/23/not-in-my-name-the-european-jews-condemning-israels-war-on-gaza
And there are voices that will no longer be heard. Of Israelis kidnapped and killed, of generations of Palestinians murdered in Gaza and the West Bank, of victims of anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic fascist attacks across the world. Bodies piled high by a pileup of lies, whataboutery and collusion.
We the living, we who have voices have a responsibility not to stay silent . Husam Zoblot, Ambassador, Head of Palestinian Mission to the UK “NOTHING justifies this mass murder of civilians live in your cameras. Nothing, nothing justifies the carpet bombing of entire civilian areas. What is happening now could not be justified by any standards. When the world fails, fails to call for a ceasefire and we hear some western governments including the US and the UK calling for a pause. PAUSE!? Pause for war crimes and crimes against humanity, really?! The world has failed yet again.”
