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Hull: First class
football. First class politics...
M'bro has just had 2500 people on a
pro-Palestinian demo!
True we managed 250 on the 10th,
which is not bad for Hull given it was our third demo in a week
on an international issue. Also rare.
But Middlesbrough has just had ten
times that number! This is actually enough to reignite my
hopes for world peace. It may well be that our next planned
protest, Saturday 24th, becomes redundant. Well no argument
here.
Clearly we have work to do then if
Hull is really to be a first class political city. Because it
is, indeed, a first class political action to stand up for one
of the poorest and most oppressed populations in the world - and I
no longer mean Tigers supporters - but the less than 4
million that comprise the Palestinian population and an average
age of 17.
One of the ways we can do that
across Hull is to be aware of the goods we buy and where
they come from.
In Whitefriargate yesterday we had a
Boycott Israeli Goods stall. About a dozen of us leafleted
to raise awareness that there was something practical Hull people
can do: not buy Israeli goods - and write to store
managers when you do find them.
But another practical thing Hull people can do - as well
as supporting the underdog - Good God we've been one long
enough ourselves! - is to not accept the equivalence of
Israeli suffering with Palestinian suffering - and to reject
racist attitudes of all types.
A well-dressed man walked by yesterday and refused a
leaflet, in what I think was a Northern Irish accent, saying
something like "What do you think you're doing?",
pointing to the stall, "they killed Kenneth Bigley!",
before moving his way on with this girlfriend.
This guy is wrong on so many levels. First it's
just plain wrong. Ken Bigley was killed in Iraq by Iraqi
insurgents after we conquered their country. These protests
are all about Palestinians killed in their hundreds by the
most heavily armed state on the planet (per head, including
nukes). As an apparently educated person, to write off the
hundreds of women and children killed - let alone the hundreds
of men, most of whom have nothing to do with militancy - is
ignorant, racist, bigoted and condones the numerous
Israeli war crimes we have watched unfold: bombing UN
buildings, compounds and schools, herding people into a single
house to make a better target, the use of DU weapons and the
cancers that will ensue, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, an
unidentified poison gas that incapacitates, an
unrelenting attack on the civilian population of Gaza. And all
this planned months in advance together with a media storm
that, in Britain, heavily parrots the Israeli government
line.
Back in Hull, first class
politics unfortunately still consists of electing Labour MPs as
if there's something in the water - which knowing Alan Johnson
is probably fluoride. You will look in vain for any comment on
the present Israeli attacks on Gaza from Messrs. Prescott,
Johnson and Johnson. To date. It is cold comfort that a
former Labour MEP and a serving senior Labour councillor did
speak out recently.
First class politics in Hull is a
skill now long lost. It remains to be done and will be by an
informed committed people.
We still have some divisions to go.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Deane
Hull & East Riding Green Party
3.76 in the Palestinian territories
(Gaza and the West Bank)
Another 7 or 8 million are
around the world, initially refugees, half still without
citizenship.
Ken Bigley
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| Coming
Up
27.01.09 |
CAGEPRISONERS
presents: TUE 27th JAN, 7pm, Quakers, Bean Street, Hull:
Moazzam
Begg, "Enemy
Combatant", detainee
Sami
Al Haj, Al
Jazeera journalist, detainee
Chris
Arendt, US
marines, guard
"How
to become a concentration camp guard and not even notice."
Author
and former guard at Guantanamo Bay, speaks out on the
dehumanization process involved.
At
Hull Society of Friends, Bean Street, 7pm, Tue 27 Jan, 2009
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