🇵🇸💞Any Voice That Speaks On The Palestine Cause Is A Voice That Needs To Be Heard.

Why I Grieve For Palestine 💧

I've always had empathy and championed the  Palestinian cause and wanted with all my heart to see her liberated from the clutches of her thieving oppressors. I truly believed that after the ending of apartheid in South Africa the world would come to it's senses & condemn Palestine's confinement and demand change, but alas that wasn't to be. like hundreds of millions around the world i only got active after 7th October 2023 as i saw clearly the push for her liberation needed to be a Global one and we could no longer stand by and leave Palestine to fight for her freedom alone. She's been my constant companion ever since & has dominated my every waking hour. Once i opened the gates to my heart to her there was no shutting them, she kind of saved me in a weird  way but that another story.

Over these last 15 months, I've had the honour of listening to just a few of the most resilient, kind hearted, dignified, humble, and beautiful Human Beings, Palestinians, mostly from the West Bank & East Jerusalem, born & bred on the land of their forefathers, a land that was stolen, given away by colonizers to thieves who became colonizers themselves. They have spoken so deeply & movingly about occupation, living under an apartheid regime and the effects it's had on their spirit, their collective communities, and their people; it's almost broken my heart in two.

You may think this is somewhat self-indulgent for an outsider to write about; I beg to differ. Once you come to know the story of Palestine, you can't help but fall in love with her, and as most of us know, love stories often mean a broken heart & endless tears before the sun rises again. That heart of mine has been in my throat the last 15 months as they've opened up about their reflections and experiences under the apartheid regime, known to it's allies as "Israel."

My heart is full of sorrow, grief, rage & HOPE for our brothers and sisters in Palestine, a people I have come to love and admire more than most of my own. A people full of desire to be free from occupation, at peace, content & settled. A people who just want the same human rights for their children and themselves as any other on this earth. A people with dreams and aspirations who just want to be given the sane human rights as those who live beyond that horrible fucking wall, a wall built out of hatred and greed, a foreboding tombstone 27 feet high that imprisons the rightful people of the land, a concrete mass of hate. The wall of shame to us civilized human beings.

The occupation regime's merciless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlements and dispossession of Palestinian homes & land, coupled with unbridled discrimination & hatred, have inflicted immense suffering on the Palestinians, dispossessing them of their basic human rights. The apartheid regime disrupts every facet of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It affects everything: what jobs they can do, how they earn a living, how they're allowed to travel to work or school, checkpoints everywhere. They can be kept waiting to pass for hours & hours in a deliberate attempt to humiliate and demoralize them.

God forbid if the Palestinian men or women, even children, succumb to the IDF's calculated attempts to degrade them when provoked while passing through these gates of hell, for like so many, they may never return home to their families. The bodies of martyrs lie across the land in graves dug far too soon for daring to defy the colonizers whip, just for complaining about their treatment or glancing at the occupying soldiers the wrong way. I've seen endless footage of this happening with my own eye's.

Special roads for 'settlers only' run through the West Bank where Palestinians are made to wait, sometimes for hours in the scorching heat just to cross the road so they can reach home.  Palestinians can't even visit their relatives in villages nearby, unable to attend peaceful protests, or speak up for their rights, even access to their own farmland is prohibited & their grazing fields relieved of their stock by the regime. Their use of electricity or a clean water supply is all dictated by the occupiers and what i write is just the tip of the iceberg.

Most of us think of our home as a place of safety, no one can invade our private space without our permission, we have rights, there are laws to protect them rights. Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank, however, are constantly vulnerable to arbitrary invasion of their homes by the israeli regime at any point and without a warrant. The harm caused by home invasions is  severe and often brutal as it robs individuals, families and communities of the absolute certainty that their home is a haven. Every night, armed Israeli soldiers raid homes, terrify the women, men and children, and carry out searches, arrests,  mapping of their properties & on occasion murder occupants who dare to move a muscle. These bastards can even sequester their homes without any prior warning or warrants and move in for operational needs, like setting up an observation or shooting post. They can stay indefinitely and keep the family completely isolated from the outside world. The families  are forced to sleep in one room and obey ever order given by the IDF, they're not even allowed to leave the house for work.

All this means is daily humiliation, demoralisation, fear, and oppression at the hands of the israeli regime, People’s entire lives on a knife's edge 24/7, it's insane ! I often think i'd go nuts if i had to live the life of a Palestinian for just one week, or i'd probably be shot for loosing my rag, i don't know how they do it. 

There are over 10.000 Palestinians detainees in israeli prisons, this includes hundreds of children. Abusive Israeli law used to arbitrarily detain them from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and beyond indefinitely without charge or trial often with no access to legal advice or lawyers mostly for daring to look the wrong way or verbally protest about their lack of human rights & treatment under israeli occupation.

Several Human rights orgs like Amnesty international have been documenting that child prisoners face increasing hunger and abuse, harassed, strip searched and violently beaten, including sexual violence, contagious diseases are all on the rise with conditions deteriorating rapidly since the start of the  slaughter in Gaza, like it wasn't bad enough before. Most have no access what so ever to family visits or letters from home. All this supposedly strictly prohibited under international law. I dare not write about the treatment of adult detainees for fear of being silenced again but use your imagination and think the worst possible thoughts you can and times them by 10. There are endless documented cases of prisoners been tortured to death while held in these cages of doom.

Could you imagine having to live like that, day in and day out, for years, decades, through generations upon generations.? It beggars belief. How on Gods great earth can anyone with a beating heart & a so called moral compass ever support such tyranny & oppression, it baffles me, it really does. I'm not an educated Bird in the geo political sense but it didn't take much working out after the 7th to see why these things happen. There's no excuse for anyone on this earth not to understand the bigger picture once you ask the Question, WHY ?

My blood boils, the internal screams literally echo through my core when I hear the Palestinians share their stories as if they were my own flesh. Anger repeats itself on me like a spoilt dish; sometimes I react, for I am not well versed in the hate of such despotic tyrannos regimes and their oppressive reign of terror, I find it difficult to contain my emotions. I allow it to spill over into my life, uncontrolled & free to be angry & let go as a natural reaction to need to release, it relieves me and enables me to continue to act and move for our Brothers and Sisters in a graceful way in the outside world. If only they had those freedoms. Instead they have to find mastery in their manner, their reactions in an adept, expert, proficient way, or they, like so many, may not see morning; they may not see the sun rise again.

This grief & anger is not new to me, but I can't seem to shift it of late; it just won't leave my side, lingering around like an unwanted fog in the dark winter months. It lies on my chest; I feel breathless at times, startled by thoughts that haunt my soul, the stories they've shared, the sorrow I feel for their struggle, their suffering, their suffocation, their occupation.

My tears on & off throughout the day, sore rosy cheeks from the salt that lies on my skin from weeping, having to catch my breath at times when in deep contemplation about the things I've heard and seen, the things they so humbly shared, they emerge out of my reflections and stop me in my tracks. It's not like a grief I've felt before, where you say goodbye to a cherished family member or friend, where you can let go & let God and hand over your loved ones to the care of the beloved Almighty for a final time; it's a far greater sorrow than a last farewell, for it is a grief for the living that torments and penetrates my heart so deeply. It's not my rightful grief, i don't own it; it doesn't belong to me, but how can I not house this friendly stranger I never met who needs a warm room in her time of need? It's an impossibility to shut the door on Palestine once you open your heart to her. I grieve for the living & breathing, the rightful custodians of the Palestinian soil.

MY HOPE FOR PALESTINE

I can't leave you yet, for I need to talk about HOPE. In all those I've come to know and admire for their resilience, generosity, kindness, loving, dignified, humble hearts, they always talk of HOPE; it floors me every time. They never fail to see the possibility of a beautiful sunrise, to see peace, reconciliation & freedom in their near futures; they refuse to be razed to the ground by the hate of another, that rancid poison that runs through the very heart of the enemy; they simply refuse!!

I heard a really special Palestinian man, a beautiful human being, talk about Palestine's need for the international community to walk side by side with her as she trudges the road to a happy destiny. It was everything I needed to hear, for I would never want to presume we are welcome after what we've done to her.

We've been part of the problem for far too long; it's time to be a part of the solution and do everything in our power to effect change in government political arenas in our own neck of the woods and demand an end to the complicity of our leaders in their support of this abhorrent torturous regime. We need to do this by lobbying our MP's, protesting, direct action, education, divestment, and boycotting; there is so much we can do, but we need to be in this for the long haul, as total liberation will take time, commitment, love, and patience. We have to be a unified movement and devote our humanity, our every spare minute to Palestine, it's the right thing to do, it's as simple as that.

I have to have HOPE that a ceasefire for Gaza will come soon; this has to be our priority; the suffering must end. The obliteration of the strip and all who barely survive in her walls must stop. The IDF removed, hostages on both sides released ( i'm talking about all the Palestinians illegally detained) , Aid must be allowed in, funds to rebuild Gaza made available and all sanctions lifted, medical aid & treatment for all those effected by the genocide has to be a priority, no ifs no buts. These are things we must continue to demand. This is the starting point to Palestine's liberation; there's much further to go after this is achieved.

We need to stay in our lane and do what we can on our end, but the internals and politics must be left in the hands of the Palestinians; that stuff is not our business; we need to know our place. We have caused enough damage to Palestine; it is for her to heal herself & for us to assist with whatever she asks of us.

These beautiful, resilient, gracious humans are the most indestructible people on this earth of ours, this very dear earth. It's time Palestine had her part of it back.