Scotland for Palestine - all along the waterfronts

A small ship of humanity will soon drop anchor in the River Clyde. 

Sailing around various European ports, Handala, a vessel funded and launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) is to dock in Glasgow (24th - 27th June 2023) as part of its continuing ‘For the Children of Gaza’ voyage to the stricken Strip. 

The international-based expedition is the latest courageous attempt to break Israel’s illegal blockade of the long-suffering Palestinian enclave. 

Previous maritime efforts have been brutally intercepted and hijacked in international waters by Israeli forces, most notably with the infamous storming of the Mavi Marmara in 2010, in which 10 civilians were murdered and over 50 more injured. Israel has never accepted responsibility, or been held to proper account, for this appalling massacre.  

Thirteen years later, much of the same high-seas piracy can be expected. One hopes and prays for the crew's safe passage. But before any such showdown, the FFC's tour of Euro harbours is serving to build public awareness of Gaza’s terrible situation. 

Contrary to Israel’s oft-repeated claim to have ‘withdrawn’ from Gaza in 2005, the regime still controls every access point for its over 2 million inhabitants, one of the most densely populated places on earth. 

Encircled and controlled by land, air and sea, an imprisoned people are denied the most basic rights to life, including the freedom to sail to and from their own shores. 

Consequently, Israel remains, according to the UN and other major human rights bodies, the primary occupying force, directly responsible for the protection and well-being of Gaza’s people:

 “Although Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, the Commission notes that Israel continues to occupy the territory by virtue of the control it exercises over, inter alia, the airspace and territorial waters of Gaza, as well as its land crossings at the borders, supply of civilian infrastructure, including water and electricity, and key governmental functions such as the management of the Palestinian population registry.”

In flagrant denial of its legal obligations, Israel has continued to bomb, punish and contain the population, with merciless disregard for international law. 

In particular, this latest flotilla is seeking to highlight the plight of Gaza’s children. As the Coalition’s explanatory info reminds us, over half of Gaza’s population are children and minors. They endure chronic shortages of basic human resources, including drinkable water, nutritious food, normal medical supplies, decent schooling, safe homes and ongoing electricity. Years of relentless bombing by Israel has left thousands injured and homeless, an entire generation scarred and traumatised. 

During the recent March of Return protests along Israel’s weapons-laden fence, the regime showed no restraint in shooting dead 49 defenceless children and injuring over 6000 more, half of them requiring serious hospital treatment. 

Other horrific crimes include the May 2021 mass bombing of Gaza, which saw 256 killed, including 66 children. Nine members of the Abu Hatab family, all women and children, were killed at Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp.

In addition, 2022 saw the largest number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 2004, a level likely to be surpassed, with over 120 killed in the first half of 2023, including the murder of two-year-old Mohammad Tamimi, shot in head by Israeli soldiers.

More children have been killed this year in indiscriminate bombing raids over Gaza's tightly-packed streets and houses. Six died in May during Israel’s air attacks, part of the twenty seven murders of children (to early June) this year alone across the West Bank and Gaza. 

The callous indifference of the Israeli regime, with its daily slayings in the West Bank and regular ‘mowing the lawn’ in Gaza, is mirrored only by the cowardly complicity of its international allies in turning a blind-eye to such atrocities. 

Hopefully, the Flotilla’s visit to Glasgow will help highlight the true extent of Israel's violence, shame a service media into reporting it, and generate even greater support for Palestine from Scotland’s shores. 

Waters of the Clyde

In similar spirit, along the same banks of the River Clyde, the admirable Roger Waters has just performed his magnificent This is Not a Drill show.  

Accompanying an evocative Waters/Pink Floyd catalogue - with nods to his own Scottish heritage - the performance featured a stunning set of mass-screen images, from anti-war statements and indictments of neoliberal capitalism, to Israel's brutal apartheid wall, and the relentless suffering of Palestinians. 

In another great expression of solidarity, Waters and his tour management gave special dispensation for two groupings to campaign within and around the arena: one in support of Palestine and the Flotilla sailing; the other against the wicked incarceration of Julian Assange. 

In brave defiance of the Israel lobby’s spurious claims in trying to close down his concerts, it was inspiring to witness Waters sending out such resolute messages from this waterfront to Palestinians living under occupation and siege between their river and sea.    

And in an exemplary display of how to confront the establishment forces trying to take him down - as they did to the great humanitarian hope and Palestine advocate Jeremy Corbyn - Waters has shown the most shining resolve in denouncing the lobby's mendacious efforts to smear him and his show as ‘antisemitic’. 

In a truly remarkable piece-to-camera for Double Down News, Waters provides a veritable blueprint for how to handle his assailants, and the lying charlatans trying to get him cancelled. If anyone is in any remaining doubt about the futility of trying to appease the pro-Israel crowd, please watch this masterclass in assertive resistance.   

Nor, facing the same establishment vilification, is Waters sparing in his condemnation of the prevailing proxy-war propaganda, denouncing the Western arms advocates with his damningly reprised The Bravery of Being Out of Range.

Spreading support in Scotland

With fortunate timing, Waters’ heroic show has also coincided with the release of Asa Winstanley’s outstanding new book, Weaponising Anti-Semitism, a quite brilliant, forensic account of how the same dark forces deployed their fabricated narrative to bring down Corbyn. 

Again, like Waters, Winstanley perfectly understands the need to take a critically offensive, rather than pleadingly defensive, position against such reactionary elements. 

This vital message was further reinforced by Winstanley in joining Scottish-based journalist Yvonne Ridley (member of a 2008 flotilla that did make it to Gaza), Israeli dissident Ronnie Barkan, and a host of other fine activist/cultural voices in a recent series of pro-Palestine public meetings across Glasgow, Edinburgh and other Scottish locations.  

In marking the cold-blooded execution of esteemed Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Ridley and Winstanley also talked about the false and distorted language used by ‘mainstream’ media in serving to shield the public from the regime’s true criminality. 

Israel only gets to commit such acts knowing that it can expect impunity from its international patrons, and silence from a craven media.

Another key theme to emerge from Barkan's and other discussions was just how tenuous Israel's hold over the Palestinians is becoming, as it lurches towards an even more extreme form of theocratic fascism, and potential implosion, much to the alarm of its liberal Zionist defenders. 

Of course, the zealous capacities of the Israel lobby, and establishment at large, cannot be understated. 

Witness Keir Starmer’s own ruthless purging of the Labour left, coupled with his display of unconditional service to Israel. 

Indeed, Starmer’s own shameful letter denouncing Waters as ‘antisemitic’, despite all obvious evidence to the contrary, shows just how low this establishment-approved figure has descended as a McCarthyite witch-hunter, flag-bearing jingoist and warmongering authoritarian in the Blairite mould.  

Nor, alas, does there appear to be any sincere or decisive support for the Palestinian cause here from the SNP-led Scottish government. Despite Humza Yousaf's marital family ties to Gaza, the new First Minister has paid mere lip-service to the issue, even refusing to endorse open declarations from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem that Israel is an apartheid state. 

Yet, as with the breaking of apartheid South Africa, it is sustained grass-roots activism that's driving the Palestinian case - all, of course, as supplementary support to the Palestinians' own agency and rightful resistance. 

Backed by international law, increasing artistic boycotts, and growing support from the global south, the same critical tipping point is coming for this unsustainable entity. 

Indeed, as the internal contradictions of Israel’s fortress system plays out, the crisis of its settler-colonial project is becoming all too apparent for many disillusioned Jews, now leaving Israel for Western shores, and for many, too, watching with growing detachment from them.

The sight of any such return for occupied, corralled and exiled Palestinians may seem a more distant prospect. But it is no less a reality than the receding horizon of Israel's failed state.       

The search for one land of equality, dignity and democracy for all goes on, as the only real, just and durable solution. 

As it does, we can take good heart from the resilient body of pro-Palestine solidarity organisations, human rights campaigns and other stalwart supporters here in Scotland advocating for that one true country. 

In the same onward spirit as Roger Waters' tour, the Flotilla's crew will soon set sail from Glasgow in its brave endeavour to break the siege of Gaza, a fatal waterfront where fishermen risk their livelihoods, and very lives, in taking their boats beyond Israel’s illegally-imposed nautical limit. 

And who can forget Israel’s brutal slaying of the four little boys in 2014 - nine-year-old Ismail Muhammad Subhi Bakr, ten-year-old Ahed Atef Ahed Bakr, ten-year-old Zakariya Ahed Subhi Bakr and eleven-year-old Muhammad Ramez Ezzat Bakr - playing football on Gaza’s beach?

In memory of them and all the other small souls taken by this savage regime. 

Wishing those aboard the good ship Handala a safe passage, much publicity for their worthy expedition, and best wishes in their honourable quest to save Palestinian lives.