I watched Dame Emily Thornberry MP for Islington South, London awkwardly skirt around the proposal by the new White House Administration, How to stop the war in Gaza on the UK’s Channel 4 news.
The segment was actually about UNWRA and the humanitarian work and aid desperately needed in Gaza running alongside the story the Biden administration’s decision to stop America’s funding contribution to the agency.
I wouldn’t call myself a socialist, I did not vote Labour at the last general election and yet I am not sure whether Dame Thornberry’s seeming diplomacy, stemmed from not wishing to upset the incoming president Trump any further after Keir Starmer publicly backed V.P. Kamala Harris for the win before she lost or because she genuinely didn’t know what to say.
I wonder what everyone in England would say, the English, including Dame Thornberry if all of a sudden we, England was invaded attacked by our neighbour; say Scotland, thousands killed and the solution to end the conflict was to move everyone English to say Finland?
Would we just go? Would you say OK? Would we could we be so broken down and weak we’d just comply? Or would you say hell no, we’ve lived in this land for centuries, generations, stop attacking us and leave us alone.
This would be blanket ethnic cleansing if it was even suggested let alone allowed to happen.
In the week Jews around the world recognize the 80th anniversary of the liberation of concentration and dehumanising camp Austwitz I struggle to see why we all as ONE WORLD cannot see we are doing the same thing, repeating the same behaviour just to somebody else.
First They Came is a poem by Martin Niemoller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
_
I am not a Jew, an Israeli, a Muslim, or a Gazan. Just a concerned citizen of the world speaking out.