At a French airport as final calls were made for a flight to Tel Aviv, I watched a group of soldiers entering the terminal. Their movements were oddly slow; they spread out, stationed themselves against pillars, glided through the crowd, eyes swivelling, big guns held high. Being French, they topped off their camouflage fatigues with sensational hats – an extra-wide alpine beret – and stylish boots. They patrolled and loomed, and once the travellers to Israel had boarded, they melted away.
The world is on high alert, for obvious reasons. There is such horror at events in Gaza that people want to shout and rail, take it out on someone. In Milan, a Jewish man and his young son were horribly set upon by people shouting “Free Palestine”.
In the UK, another kind of patrolling and looming is taking place in response. The government has declared Palestine Action, a group protesting about Gaza, a terrorist organisation.
Palestine Action earned their designation as terrorists by carrying out protests that caused property damage in sensitive places: in one, members broke into an airfield and damaged the engines of military planes with spray paint.
This column doesn’t express support for Palestine Action. If I were to do that while still in the UK it would now be an offence under the Terrorism Act, with a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
The UK government’s ban has been criticised as a breach of human rights. Ex-police chief Sir Peter Fahy was widely quoted as saying, “How have we got into a situation where we are arresting elderly women for holding a protest sign?” Since the law came into force, hundreds of people have been arrested for doing just that.
Walking through central London, I entered an area clogged with emergency vehicles: police cars and vans, armed tactical units, ambulances. In the middle of it, I tried to ascertain what was going on. Mystifyingly, the source of the trouble couldn’t be located. In the end I gave up and asked a policeman. He pointed wryly, “They tried to protest about Palestine.” Behind a line of armed officers, a young woman and an elderly man stood handcuffed. I was looking at two small, respectable looking people being arrested by about 200 police.
Palestine Action has now won the right to seek a judicial review of its banned status. Meanwhile, decent British folk will probably go on being arrested for holding up banners. It reminds me of the 1981 Springbok Tour protests, when ordinary New Zealanders (my parents among them) defended charges of disorderly behaviour by arguing that the only right-minded course of action was to protest. History shows the anti-apartheid camp was on the right side, but at the time, those defences were dismissed by the courts.
So how do people express their sorrow and rage about Gaza? How do they deal with the images of dead, injured and starving Palestinian children? This month, a leading Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem, issued a statement: “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The weapons used by Israel in Gaza are supplied by the US. It’s hard to forget President Trump’s musings about the real estate opportunity offered by all that beachfront property. Along with his comment in January, “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”
