Skip to content or view screen version

Act Local, Act Now

3rd Intifada | 09.01.2009 20:01 | Palestine

Yesterday was the worst day of bombardment for Gaza yet you wouldn't know that from UK TV, newspapers or radio. Today seems just as bad so far although the media are still only talking about fake peace deals, weasel words and crocodile tears. We have to assume the killing is going to accelerate until the politicians are motivated. WE are OUR politicians only motivation.

I first saw Ewa Jasiewicz speaking at a Faslane demo at the start of the Iraq invasion, with five other speakers. The three male speakers were the most boring. AL Kennedy was a great speaker, furious and pithy with cutting words. Morag Forbes was good but she was was nervous as it was probably the biggest crowd she had spoken to untrained, plus she knew if she got carried away and said what she was feeling she would be carried away by the MoD. Ewa Jasiewicz just went for it though, fearless. She told what she'd just witnessed in Iraq and explained why she thought that was happening, how she felt and dealt with that and importantly how she thought we should deal with it. She is the best orator I have heard let alone seen. I am the Forest Gump of the peace-movement and in various photos you will see me behind Benn etc, yawning. [I'd love if someone who recorded Ewas Faslane speech posted it somewhere]. The crowd was electrified because she was challenging us. Instead of the 'We are the vanguard of decency and we will prevail' speechs we were used to, she was saying unless we are prepared to suffer the same risks opposing our war-mongering as those on the sharp-end do, then we are risking nothing. That is what we still face when we see Gazan children huddled hungry around corpses, denied of any rights by the IDF.

At the same time in Gaza, yet unconnected to Ewa, a different sort of humanitarian made the same plea. John Ging, Gaza Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency told the world "It is very clear to everybody the scale and nature of what is going on here, we have to cut to the chase and get it stopped. So now let's get action rather than words from all quarters and let's hold under international law everybody accountable for whether they act or don't act effectively....and I hope everyone will be held accountable under international law for their action or their inaction at all levels. If you want empathy with the people here then don't eat, sleep or drink until you actually deliver your part of the solution because that is the way it is for women and children of Gaza for the past 11 days. So now let's get action rather than words from all quarters and let's hold under international law everybody accountable for whether they act or don't act effectively".

Ewa Jasiewicz could have written that, instead she wrote "The third Intifada being urged now has to be our intifada too. As Israel steps up its destruction of the Palestinian people, we need to step up our reconstruction of our resistance, our movements, of our communities in our own counties, where so many of us live in alienation and isolation. We need to be the third intifada – people here need more and say repeatedly that they need more than the demonstrations, because they are not stopping the killing here. Demonstrations alone, are not stopping the killing here."

We don't have leaders but there are always people who are out in front. So what do we do if we want to follow Ewas' lead?

A third intifada ( Intifada3.0 ) in the West means cutting off Israeli profits, Israeli propaganda and Israeli munitions. It means damaging the companies and politicians who facilitate genocidal acts. It means doing much more than you are currently planning on doing, and on maximising your victories. It means doing unaccountable actions, getting away with it, so you are free to do another one. It means sending cash and raising cash for the activists like Ewa are already in there. It means intelligently damaging property, leeching the bloody war-profits.

On a previous IM-UK article someone said the best thing we can do is to head to Gaza to block tanks. Maybe if you are Superman. No unarmed civilian stops IDF tanks and Gaza has the corpses to prove that. None of us is likely to get into Gaza. What we can do is what Ewa asked of us - hit the local defence/offence companies as hard as we can, repeatedly and effectively. Imagine it is your child caught in the jaws of the beast.

3rd Intifada