Why do I stand in solidarity with Palestine?
Here are some words from Anna Hubbard that were shared after our demo on Saturday;
“It seems that everybody is on a journey these days so I am going to talk about mine which has brought me to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with you all.
My great grandmother and two of her daughters were transported to Auschwitz. They had been members of the Belgian resistance smuggling allied soldiers and airmen to freedom. This is one of the defining stories of my family and bred in us the idea that you have to do the right thing whatever the consequences. Meeting my surviving great aunts with their wigs to hide their burnt off hair and numbers tattooed on their arms further reinforced this for me.
It also led me to think that, after all their sufferings through the Holocaust and down the centuries, the Jewish people needed a country of their own. In my early twenties I got bored with nursery nursing for Greenwich Council and followed several of my friends to a kibbutz in the Negev desert at a time when Israel’s war with Lebanon was kicking off. With the boys off to war we volunteers generally accepted the narrative that Israel was fighting for its survival albeit in someone else’s country. One of my friends stowed away in her boyfriend’s tank to go to war with him but I do not think her motivations were entirely martial.
Anyway, I soon got bored with alleged agrarian egalitarianism and went with my friend Laura to work in a bar in Eilat – much more our natural environment. When I returned home I was probably an unconscious Zionist. I didn’t go round waving an Israeli flag but if asked I would have said Jewish people needed their own homeland and were besieged by the Arab world. This remained my view for some years.
Fast forward to 2014 when Israel invaded Gaza. I was horrified to see on line children being murdered while playing on beaches and a man collecting the remains of his dead child in a plastic bag. Suddenly Israel no longer seemed like the plucky underdog. When I spoke of my shock and concern on line I found myself subject to accusations of antisemitism and blood libel. It was joining Jewish Voice for Labour as an associate member that gave me a way to see through this - it’s not nuanced and it’s not complex you stand always with the oppressed never with the oppressor. When Jewish people are subject to antisemitism I stand with them. When gay people and women are oppressed by Hamas in Gaza I also stand with them. However, the most urgent stand I have to take today is with the Palestinian people to demand an immediate ceasefire and that their rights and aspirations are respected.
Ceasefire Now.”