I arrived in a taxi to what looks like the outer wall of a prison. Because that’s what Gaza is. Israel has built prison walls 30m high around the Palestinian towns that make up Gaza.
Next…
You enter the main building which feels like a departure lounge in an airport. A row of desks where Israeli soldiers check your documentation before allowing you (or not) to move on.
Then you begin a long walk through endless concrete and steel corridors
Every now and then you come to a floor to ceiling steel turnstile. Above it are a red light and a green light. You look up at a camera, you hear a loud buzz, and the green light comes on. You go through the turnstile and head off down another corridor.
Finally you reach the “no man’s land”. A supposed demilitarised zone between Israel and Gaza which is simply more land Israel has stolen from Palestinians and murders them if they attempt to enter. A metal corridor bisects that land, you continue to walk for 1–2km
At the other end you meet the entry point to Gaza.
No one comes through Erez without Israel’s permission
Israeli snipers man the walls, routinely murdering farmers, kids, anyone they feel like killing that day
In ’06, Senior Israeli advisor Dov Weisglass, said Israeli policy was “to put the Palestinians on a diet”. In ‘08 Israeli authorities drew up a document calculating the minimum caloric intake per Palestinian & restricted food entering Gaza to that limit
I was warned over & over it would be weaponised against the very people it claims to protect.
I worried that reasoning was a cover for closet bigots, not wanting to make changes to language or views.
But my god, what came next-
The utter bastardisation of discourse that’s happened since 2015 is breathtaking
Wealthy white supremacists (whether white or not) cosplaying as liberals hijacked the “lived experience” discourse
To the point they’re now using it to justify GENOCIDE
First it was anyone likely to vote for Corbyn who were suddenly labelled as (literally) Nazi stormtroopers.
Whether they were black, brown, or even Jewish themselves - they were treated as if they were the white supremacists with no experience or awareness of racism
Most westerners think Hitler took Germany by force. They think most Germans were opposed to fascism, weren’t antisemitic, and/or didn’t know about the Final Solution.
They don’t know about the 5m OTHER humans murdered with the 6m Jews.
Let’s bust some myths & explore the reality:
1. Most people here are still enormously prejudiced towards socialists, sick and disabled people, and the LGBT & GRT communities who made up the rest of the Holocaust victims. So these victims are memory-holed.
2. Fascism was a massively popular, pan-European movement from the late 20s onward. Every country in Europe had a thriving fascist movement.
Germany, Italy, Austria, Vichy France and a host of other nations had fascist governments and partook in the Holocaust
I’m happy to do that if it helps a single person in the Global North challenge their socialised racism
So here’s how I ended up going from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine 🧵
In May 2002, post 9/11 and with the Blair govt in its first term, I was a total Centrist.
I refused to sign a petition on my uni campus against the invasion of Afghanistan.
Then some students that had just returned from a delegation to Palestine held a talk. I went…
What I saw were tanks barrelling down residential streets, queues of Palestinians at checkpoints in the searing heat being abused by Israeli soldiers, children being assaulted, homes being stolen by Israeli settlers.
I considered myself informed. I read papers daily…