5 January 2024

The State of Palestine

Palestine is where all human rights converge. It’s the dividing line. The old excuses that reduced us all to some degree of complicit silence, will no longer work.

For three months, I have watched brown-eyed children and babies that look like my own slaughtered on an industrial scale while the “civilised world” looked on, its human rights bodies utterly incompetent.The pain is the same, whatever their eye colour, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq. I imagine their mothers dressing them lovingly that morning in colourful rompers, not knowing that they would be stained with blood and concrete dust later on. With far less carnage, the UN acted immediately with Ukraine and prepared arrest warrants for Putin. You see the unlevel playing field. Utterly biased, the instruments of international human rights look very much like tools of double standards democracy designed to beat the global south and provide cover for the ongoing barbarism of the West. If you respond that this is “complicated,” you lost sight of your humanity. Palestine is where all human rights converge. It’s the dividing line. The old excuses that reduced us all to some degree of complicit silence, no longer cut it. Silence will no longer secure a comfortable life. We think we are freeing Palestine, but Palestine freed us And Showed us what human values we lack. They are suffering, and they are dying. But they liberated an entire world. There’s a growing movement, a resistance forming to the barbarity that has played out on our smartphones into our living rooms for over three months. Pray for Gaza now. Pray for Gaza when this horror finally ends. Pray for Gaza for generations to come because they will never recover from what’s taking place right now. These horrific tales will be told for centuries, and anyone who hears them will shudder and weep in disbelief.

Robina Qureshi

#Gaza #Genocide