The perils of cycling

And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists?
- Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

I recently became a cyclist, in the sense that I bought a bike and now ride it to work. Work is six miles from home, so in the last week I've cycled at least 60 miles, which I reckon is pretty good going, and certainly makes me feel healthier. Truth be told though, while I don't miss the stale warm air of the tube, or the crush when trying to get on the southbound Northern line at Kings Cross, or closed stations necessitating annoying detours, I've actually swapped one set of frustrations for another.

Even though there are some great, quiet routes through some bits of London, and even bits of genuine cycle path (ie those not just hastily painted on the side of the road that finish in less-than-useful places) to help you avoid death traps like the Elephant and Castle roundabout, you can't avoid busy roads sometimes. And here one encounters the intimidating rumble of heavy goods vehicles. Buses aren't great either, but to be fair, most bus drivers are very considerate to cyclists, even if their fumes and and sheer size are not what you want to encounter on your journey to work.

But with the advantage of being able to cycle in bus lanes you can often seem reasonably safe, even on a busy road. Unless its full of potholes that is. Some roads in London have terrible surfaces, a combination of regularly being dug up and multiple manhole covers. The latter can be particularly frustrating when they litter those painted-on cycle lanes - with heavy traffic to your right, its difficult to cycle round them, and the worst threaten to knock you off course and into an accident. Farringdon Road is a particular danger for this, as its often necessary to keep up a reasonable speed to avoid getting in the way of other vehicles.

The Green Party, wherever it gets a local council seat, is keen on pushing 20mph speed limits. This would definitely make for safer roads, though on the road I live on, getting people to stick to 30mph would be a start. Slower cars will encourage cycling and make London safer for cyclists. But what we also need are decent road surfaces, so cyclists can travel on equal terms with drivers.

Long live the Freedom and Solidarity Party!

Perhaps its because of frustration at there not being a political party in the UK that accords well enough with my views, but I've always had a certain fascination with the details of political landscapes in other countries. Its great news that the Left-Green Movement in Iceland has just won 21% in the general election there, giving it a major role in a coalition government with the Social Democrats. But one country isn't nearly so much fun as the whole of Europe, with its myriad of different parties.

Enter the EU Profiler (thanks Jim!), an online tool to help you decide who to vote for in the European elections. No great surprise or interest that it tells me I should vote Green on June 4. But if I switch from 'national parties' to 'parties in Europe', I discover that my closest matched party is the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) in Turkey. The ÖDP is a libertarian socialist party with 1 MP and no prospect of getting any MEPs, because of course, Turkey is not a member of the EU. So while its strange that EU Profiler decided to include it, I'm glad it did - I've found a political home and will send fraternal greetings immediately!

My other very close matches include the Communist Refoundation (Italy), Left Alliance (Finland), the Left Bloc (Portugal) and the Swiss Greens. Also within the rather arbitrary circle around my position can be found Holland's Party for the Animals (no animal welfare questions were included incidentally) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (from the Spanish state, in case you were wondering where Galicia was). Just outside my circle sits France's newly-formed New Anti-Capitalist Party, an organisation I would have thought I had plenty in common with, but apparently EU Profiler knows better...

But no matter. I have my political home. I shall be setting up the North London branch of the Freedom and Solidarity Party shortly.

Brown New Deal

It's rare, these days, for a bank to be condemning the government rather than the other way around, but that's what a new report by HSBC does. It reveals that despite promises to "lead the world in building the low carbon society with a low carbon economy", Gordon Brown's actual investment in anything resembling a 'Green New Deal' is tiny compared to other rich countries. China, whose emissions are regularly referred to as an excuse for not tackling our own, is devoting 110 times as much money to environmental investment. Brown loves to jump on any bandwagon that rolls by, but just like with Make Poverty History, it seems he's not actually serious about the Green New Deal.

The HSBC report points out that by investing in green energy, the government could create more jobs than with conventional financial stimuli, as well as cutting emissions and solving energy supply issues. All well and good. But when the principles of the Green New Deal were originally brought together last year, they included proposals such as a windfall tax on energy super-profits. Although campaigning was done around this issue, it doesn't seem to have made its way so strongly into mix when the Green New Deal is talked about in the mainstream. There is a danger that HSBC, Brown or anyone could cherry-pick the corporate-friendly policies, calling what they've done a Green New Deal, but losing the vital essence of the proposal; to fundamentally challenge the neoliberal model that got us in the mess in the first place.

I think its important to remember, though, that its possible to both critique and push further any Green New Deal -style proposals. We should use the momentum created by the fact that mainstream alternatives to free market dogma are starting to be implemented to demand proposals which contain more social justice and a more sustainable basis on which to run our economy. That means more co-operatives and credit unions, more local food production and sustainable transport systems, not just investment in hi-tech green energy projects which are most suitable for multinational corporations, thereby confirming their place in our future.

A space to build a movement?

Yesterday was a long day. I've been on the organising team for 6 Billion Ways and yesterday it happened - all 14 hours of it. But it was also a real success. We don't have a final figure for the number of people who came, but it was getting close to 2,000 over the course of the day. They came to hear a mix of international and UK speakers talk about everything from whether getting climate justice necessitates getting rid of capitalism, to whether overseas aid is a good thing or a bad thing.

One of the original inspirations for the event was 'McPlanet', which various campaigning NGOs hold in Germany every two years, but the feel was very much like that of a mini social forum. That was deliberate on the part of the organisers. While there is nothing new in campaigning NGOs working together on events, what set 6 Billion Ways apart was that it had at the centre of it an idea of building a movement. This was just one event, of course, but it aimed to contribute to something wider, instead of simply seeking to build either the brand of even the particular campaigns of the organisations that put it on.

It was also clear, from both the numbers that turned up and the things they were saying, that the event struck a chord with lots of people who are becoming deeply disillusioned with the global order. I'm sure very few would have failed to be inspired by the day which was very buzzy and featured a photo exhibition, radical bookstore area, campaign stalls, skills workshops, films and a party at the end.

The inclusion of speakers like Tariq Ramadan, and the involvement of City Circle (an organisation of progressive Muslim professionals) as one of the organisers, also meant the event drew a diverse crowd. At the final plenary, speaking last after Susan George, Tariq Ramadan, Bianca Jagger, Trevor Ngwane and Meena Raman, Mark Thomas quipped that he was glad to have been included on the panel as the token white male. He then went on to be as angry and impassioned as I've seen him and gave us a very fitting end to the day.

After worrying about whether people will turn up and all the logistical and programmatical headaches that come with a big event for the last few months, we're now left with a question. Surely we have a responsibility to do something with the enthusiasm we've created for the 6 Billion Ways idea - and if so, what?

Derek Simpson is a disgrace

The picture says it all. A trade union leader grown flabby on a union expense account with his arms around two 'glamour' models from the right-wing (not to say anti-union) Daily Star to promote the most xenophobic take on the wildcat strikes over oil refinery jobs.

Simpson is the joint general secretary of Unite, the union formed from the recent merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union. He's also a key union ally of Gordon Brown, which perhaps makes his support for “British jobs for British workers” unsurprising, since Brown was the originator of the phrase in recent political discourse.

The wildcat strikers who have taken up the slogan have provoked much debate in the lefty blogosphere, including over the actual level of racism among strikers, but when Brown makes a promise like that and it rings so hollow, its not surprising that some of them seek to throw it back at the Prime Minister. Its certainly no more reactionary in their mouths than it is in his.

Nevertheless, there are people involved in the strikes that have tried to steer them away from nationalism and towards a demand for transborder workers' rights and decent terms and conditions for all. Not so Derek Simpson it seems. But the problems with Simpson don't end with his embrace of reactionary nationalism and sexism.

Simpson's leadership of Unite (Amicus section) has seen the union supporting a new third runway at Heathrow despite the implications for climate change and an expansion of nuclear power. Union leaders have to defend their members, but responsible progressive ones should be arguing for expansion in green industries, not dirty and dangerous ones. The union also strongly supported Tony Blair when he forced the Serious Fraud Office to drop its investigation into arms exporter BAE Systems amid pressure from Saudi Arabia to do so.

Now Simpson has been forced into a leadership contest he was trying to avoid. The strange terms of the merger between the T&G and Amicus led to a situation where Simpson was able to try and stay in power for eight years without being re-elected – until someone brought a legal challenge that is. Now that person, Jerry Hicks, is a candidate against Simpson, on a platform of democratic grassroots organising, environmental responsibility and internationalism. Simpson meanwhile has been accused of using official union publications to argue the case for a vote for himself. Being a member of the T&G section of Unite I won't be able to vote, but for the sake of the union's future I really hope that Jerry Hicks wins.

Review: The trouble with aid

Below is my brief review of Jonathan Glennie's 'The Trouble with Aid' for the February issue of Peace News. I hadn't seen Peace News for a while when I was asked to write this review. The last time I saw it, in 2006, I was less than impressed. A feature article about Venezuela, for instance, spent much time regretting Chavez's military background and virtually failed to mention the social advances that had taken place under his Presidency.

Looking at the December/January issue online, Peace News now seems more relevant and useful, even if its constituency must remain small. Clearly Milan Rai's editorship of the paper has improved it, and I'm happy to make a small contribution in the form of this review.

The Trouble with Aid: Why Less Could Mean More for Africa Jonathan Glennie, Zed, 2008.

This isn't a book about humanitarian relief, or really about the aid delivered by aid agencies at all. Instead its about the much bigger sums which rich country governments contribute to African infrastructure, governance and welfare systems on a regular basis. Most African countries receive more than 10 per cent of their GDP in aid, and a few, like Sierra Leone and Burundi, receive more than 30 per cent.

Aid received on this scale has an enormous impact, but not necessarily a good one Glennie argues. For a start, governments who are dependent on aid like this end up being more accountable to donors than to the people they are supposed to represent. And when those donors insist on economic policies like privatisation or the lowering of import taxes, aid dependence undermines not just democracy, but development too.

Glennie isn't opposed to aid, but calls himself an aid 'realist'. He makes a convincing case that there's lots rich countries could do to help reduce global poverty that would be far more effective than aid is even in the best scenarios. Like closing down tax havens that deny poor countries tax revenue for instance. Instead they promise aid increases because its easy, its buys influence among recipient countries and it presents no challenge at all to Northern corporations.

This is an accessible and tightly argued book which makes a refreshing change to both the uncritical calls for 'more aid' from some development charities, and from the neoconservative assumptions of last year's best-selling development book 'The Bottom Billion' by former World Bank economist Paul Collier. What Glennie is arguing for is a global justice agenda, and in that he's bang on target.

Our friends in the South

The latest issue of Red Pepper is just out and carries my article about social movements in the global South ('Our friends in the South', Red Pepper Feb/Mar 09). It was written partly to accompany an event which is happening in London on 28 February, 6 Billion Ways. The event is a kind of Social Forum lite, with speakers including Social Forum stalwarts like Trevor Ngwane (from South Africa's Anti-privatisation Forum) and Susan George. There's a huge range of discussions and workshops for a single day event, especially one which is free. Its organised by some of the more radical and social movement-orientated UK NGOs, and you can register for it here.

The article meanwhile surveys just a few of the coalitions of social movements in non-rich world in order to make a tentative argument that social movements have a better critique of the global system than many of the charities that are our primary connections to the 'developing world'. They also have better solutions too, like food sovereignty. In dealing with the fallout from the financial crisis as activists, we need better connections with such social movements.

The article is not available online yet, and its a bit long to post here. Besides, I should probably encourage people to buy Red Pepper, which also has some other interesting stuff, including analysis of the youth revolt in Greece and some very quickly turned around coverage of Palestine issues after the assault on Gaza. There's also an excellent piece by Sue Branford about the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil as an accompanying article to mine.

If anyone gets round to reading it, I'd welcome comments on it here.

UPDATE: My article has now been put up online: Our friends in the South

Good news from Iceland

The recently resigned Prime Minister of Iceland, conservative Geir Haarde, is being widely described as the first government victim of the financial crisis. Since the economy collapsed last year, weekly riots have rocked the government until it was no longer viable. Early elections have been called for May, and the interim Prime Minister is to be Johanna Sigurdardottir of the Social Democratic Alliance.

The fact that she will be the first openly gay Prime Minister in the world is one in the eye for global homophobes. But although she's considered slightly to the left of her party, the Social Democrats have been in coalition with with Haarde's Independence Party since 2007, and therefore bear some responsibility for the neoliberal financial-deregulation-and-privatisation which turned out to be a house built on sand.

The Social Democrats' new coalition partner is the Left-Green Movement, which has 9 of the Icelandic Parliament's 63 seats. Although solidly green, they're not aligned with other global Green Parties, but rather with the Nordic Green Left, the alliance of left-wing parties across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Polls now put them on 28%, which would make them the biggest party if nothing changes before the election.

The Financial Times explains their appeal: "The Left-Greens – an anti-big business, pro-environment party – have benefited from a dramatic rise in anti-capitalist sentiment in Iceland following the crisis as people expressed disgust at prominent and flashy young businessmen known as the ‘Viking raiders’."

Of course, a Left-Green led government would not be a panacea. It is calling for the renegotiation of Iceland's recent bailout deal with the IMF, but even if it manages to do this, the better terms it negotiates are unlikely to include ensuring that ordinary people don't pay for the financial crisis through job losses and reposessions. If people resist this, which they may well do given the evidence of the protests so far, the Left-Green Movement could end up enforcing the interests of capital rather than fighting them.

But perhaps I'm judging them by the standards of your average Social Democrat. If the Left-Greens maintain a close connection to the social movements which emerge in response to the crisis, and those movements maintain their self activity rather than leaving it all to the Left-Greens, something rather exciting could emerge in Iceland. And in the meantime, we can be heartened by the fact that Iceland seems to be lurching left rather than right in response to their economic crisis.

For further reading (all in English) see the Left-Green Movement's website, Aftaka (an anarchist site) and the Guardian's Iceland section.

'My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you'

Last week I went to see 'Milk' and I can heartily recommend it. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US when he became a Supervisor of San Francisco in 1977. Although this was no mean feat, given that his constituency covered the city's gay district (the Castro) it was perhaps another campaign that was more astonishing. Milk was at the centre of the defeat of Proposition 6 which would have made the dismissal of gay teachers mandatory across California. Rather than hide behind mealy-mouthed assertions about human rights as some of the moderates in the campaign would have prefered, Milk took the bigots head on in public debates, and urged gay Californians to come out to friends and family.

The defeat of Proposition 6 was a turning point in the battle for gay rights in the US. Up to that point a wave of homophobia was sweeping the country, not least due to the efforts of evangelical Christian singer Anita Bryant. Milk's achievement was not so much to get elected, although that helped, but to build a movement. Thus it was that when both he and the Mayor of San Francisco were shot dead by a fellow Supervisor in 1978, 30,000 people turned out on the streets to mourn.

On Newsnight Review the day the film came out, Tony Parsons complained that the film was sanitised for a straight audience. This was San Francisco in the 70s, he said, where were the bath houses, the depravity? He even went so far to compare it to Philadelphia, the supposedly groundbreaking 1993 film with Tom Hanks as a gay man with AIDS who never so much as kisses his boyfriend on screen. In fact, I think Tony entirely missed the point. This was not a film primarily about gay life in 70s Frisco, but about political activism. The kissing, and indeed sex, was there in appropriate amounts to tell the story.

The generally excellent director Gus Van Sant made the right call here, and does a great job of invoking the excitement of the movement at the time (at one point an angry crowd of protesters chant "civil rights or civil war, gay rights now!"). Sean Penn's performance is also great, as a number of reviewers have commented. But perhaps the best recommendation is that despite the fact that though Harvey dies at the end of the film, you're still left with a sense of hope and optimism.

Being both gay and an activist, this was perhaps an obvious film for me to go see, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who isn't a thorough reactionary will enjoy it!

Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning'

Guest article from Ewa Jasiewicz in Gaza...

As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the house. Apache’s are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.

UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine’s largest medical facility. Another was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.

Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their lifetimes.

Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity, fuel and freedom of movement.

Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital’s maternity ward had to transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had 12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.

There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed. Shifaa’s main generator is the life support machine of the entire hospital. It’s the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn’t have the spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.

Shifaa’s Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, ‘We had over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short space of time’.
And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this morning, ‘This is only the beginning’.

But this isn’t the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread, revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking, ‘If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?

11.30am

Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves, family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would shoot into his fields.

Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family, caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.

I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16 bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas authority here. In Gaza City, in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit Hanoon.

We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to Gaza City, before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its’ name - meaning 'place of dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying ‘take care’, Diere Bala, Diere Balak – take care.

Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had soared through a children’s playground and a busy fruit and vegetable market before impacting on its target.

Civilians Dead

There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken English what had happened. ‘It was full here, full, three people dead, many many injured’. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. ‘Look! Look at this! Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!’ He was a market trader, present during the attack.

He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his legs were bloodied. He couldn’t get up and was sitting, visibly in pain and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.

The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree split the road.

We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK’s Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares – a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.
Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road. ‘They’ve been bombing twice, they’ve been bombing twice’ shouted people.

We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be target number two, ‘a ministry building’ our friend shouted to us. The apaches rumbled above.

Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman’s hat, the ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around 20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a motorbike, tossed on its’ side, toy-like in its’ depths.

Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. ‘Stop it everyone, just one, one of you ring’ shouted a man who looked like a captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3 feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks, blocks and debris to reach the man.

We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without interruption.

Hospitals on the brink

Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief, horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. ‘They could not even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who, because they are so burned’ explained our friend. Many were transferred, in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.

The injured couldn’t speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area, wards and operating theatres.

We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was making stilted, repetitive, squeeking sounds.

A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground, Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic police station. All levelled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying force.
At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to cries of ‘La Illaha Illa Allah’, there is not god but Allah.

Who cares?

And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in and the building – Abu Mazen’s old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said to us, ‘We don’t have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world? Where is the action to stop these attacks?’

Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, ‘We didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work’.

The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head injuries. ‘We couldn’t recognise his face, it was so black from the weapons used’ one explains. Another man turns to me and says. ‘I am a teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, ‘human rights’. He pauses. ‘How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of human rights under these conditions, under this siege?’

Its true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on ’48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both here and in Israel? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by Israel, with Richard Falk the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against Gaza by Israel. An international community which speaks empty phrases on Israeli attacks ‘we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties’.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza’s largest, 125,000 people are crowded into a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of a lack of access to essential medicines.

A light

There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education, see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are reportedly big enough to drive through.

Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of international governmental complicity and silence?

There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity in the West Bank, ’48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn a spotlight onto Israel’s crimes against humanity and the enduring injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and for a genuine Just Peace.

Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light at the end of the Gazan tunnel.

Ewa Jasiewicz is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement.