Glasgow Protest Against The Genocide in Palestine (December 30th 2023)
Below is a speech I gave at the Glasgow protest against the genocide in Palestine on December 30th 2023. Since I gave this speech, the number of Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF has increased dramatically and every single day, this brutal genocide continues. It must be stopped and we must stop this. Israel is a terrorist state, backed to the hilt by the US and the UK.
What can we do?
- like and share social media posts
- keep informed via a variety of media sources
- go on demos
- go to vigils
- get involved with your local protest group
- speak to people, sharing thoughts, feelings and ideas
- write to your MP/MSP
- sign and share petitions
Here’s the words I shared at the demo in Glasgow on Saturday 30th December, organised by #GGEC and #ScottishPSC:
I’m Lizzie Eldridge, and I’m here representing Scottish PEN. We’re the Scottish centre of PEN International, an international NGO which advocates for peace and campaigns for writers facing censorship, oppression, torture and death right across the world.
Over the past few years, we’ve issued a number of statements concerning the situation in Palestine, including statements on the plight of writers in Gaza; the killings of journalists Shireen Abu Akleh and Ghufran Hamed Warasneh by Israeli forces; July’s so-called military operation in Jenin; PEN International’s call for a halt to hostilities; and, very recently, the demolition of the shrine to Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces. First, on 11th May 2022, the IDF killed Shireen; shortly after, they attacked mourners at her funeral; then, on the 26th October 2023, they desecrated her shrine in the West Bank and bulldozed over the site of her murder.
These are the Israeli forces that Biden and Sunak are busy supporting. These are the Israeli forces who, funded and armed by the West, have been trying to obliterate Gaza long before October 7th. These are the Israeli forces who, led by Netanyahu who deliberately ignored warnings about a possible attack by Hamas, used the 7th of October to whitewash more than 75 years of violence, oppression and occupation, and used it as the excuse they always wanted to commit genocide; to exterminate the Palestinian people; to slaughter babies, children, women and men, and to ensure their brutal dying by destroying their hospitals, kidnapping and killing their doctors, dropping bombs on the sick, on the injured and the dying to mercilessly smash up any chance of survival.
None of this began on October 7th. October 7th saw the rabid, mercenary, bloodthirsty intensification of decades of persecution of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Zionists. Gaza had already been turned into a prison, with Israel able to turn off its water, its electricity, its internet, its basic necessities at the cruel flick of a switch. Now, the tiny stretch of land that makes up Gaza has been turned into a killing ground, the scale and nature of which is beyond our capacity to fully take in.
It is callous. It is monstrous. It is psychopathic. It is bloodcurdling. It is insane. It is fascism on the rampage. It’s a horror movie on a loop – except it’s real. We see the photos. We watch the videos. We hear those agonising screams.
There are too many stories, thousands of stories, and each one moves us to tears. Just the other day, a doctor spoke of a little boy called Ahmed – 9 years old – dying in a hospital that had barely any supplies. The doctors gave him sedatives to try and ease his dying. A 9-year-old boy, brutally attacked by Israeli bombs, and still the Palestinian doctors tried to alleviate his final moments of pain.
The genocide in Gaza is like nothing we have ever seen. The number of people who have already been killed – a number which increases every minute of every day – is inconceivable.
I want to finish by drawing attention to the writers, the poets, the artists who have been brutally massacred by the murderous Israeli fascists whose appetite for blood knows no bounds. In addition to the huge number of journalists killed, at least 13 Palestinian poets and writers have been murdered in Gaza. The fascists hate the artists. They hate the truth-tellers. They hate the creators of beauty.
On the 7th December 2023, the Palestinian poet and academic, Refaat Alareer, was killed in his home by the Israeli bombs. Refaat refused to leave his home, knowing that nowhere in Gaza was safe. He was killed along with 6 members of his family.
In an interview given shortly before his death, he speaks as bombs fall outside. It is terrifying and it is also testimony to his strength and courage in the face of the barbaric attacks by the Israeli aggressors.
Testament to his strength, courage and integrity is the final poem he wrote and I’d like to share this with you now:
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself —
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love.
If I must die
let it bring hope,
let it be a story.
Never stop speaking this story. Never stop speaking out against this inhuman genocide. Never stop shouting THIS IS WRONG BEYOND WRONG.
Never stop demanding CEASEFIRE NOW.
Stop The Genocide: Free Palestine
As I write – the 15th January 2024 – over 24,000 people in Gaza have been killed as the Israeli Zionists remain intent on fulfilling their decades-long mission of eradicating the Palestinian people. The vast majority of the dead are children and women. We have seen the videos. We have seen the images. We have heard the agonising screams.
The number of people killed by the inhumane IDF does not include the lifeless corpses beneath the rubble, nor those continually slaughtered in the Hamas-free West Bank. No-one and nowhere is safe in Palestine. The decomposing bodies of tiny babies in hospitals destroyed by Israel’s ruthless military machine leave us horrified. The sight of mothers and fathers weeping over the bloodied bodies of their dead children leaves us in tears. Scenes of people desperate for food being shot at by Israeli snipers leave us wondering to what debased levels evil can stoop.
We hear the voice of Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Gaza Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera, determined to carry on documenting the war crimes, while having just ‘the soul of my soul’, his eldest son. We are left humbled with awe, grief and profound respect.
Wael’s son, Hamza, also a journalist, was killed on the 7th January 2024 in a targeted attack on the vehicle in which he was travelling and in a supposedly ‘safe’ zone. Hamza was killed alongside another young journalist, Mustafa Thuraya. Less than a month earlier, Wael was injured in an Israeli attack that killed his friend and colleague, Samer Abu Daqqer, left to bleed to death for 5 hours because Israeli snipers stopped amy medical aid reaching him.
Last October, Wael lost his wife, his 15-year-old son, his 7-year-old daughter, and his grandson, when the house where they were sheltering came under fire from Israeli bombs. Wael was live on air when he got the news of their deaths. He went straight to the site of the explosion and began digging in the rubble with his bare hands. This is Gaza: you risk your life reporting on the atrocities and then you dig beneath the rubble for your family.
As Wael says: ‘Israel is targeting civilians and committing massacres against families. This is part of what Palestinian families living in Gaza go through every day.’
It is a genocide, aided, abetted and funded by the West, leaving the US and the UK drenched in the blood of the Palestinian people, willing parties to the frenzied blood lust of the merciless Zionists who, after 100 days of massacre and devastation, have no desire to place their hi-tech weapons of mass destruction on the ground. White flags, as we have seen time after time, mean nothing to those intent on killing, even when those flags are waved by the very people Israel is pretending to avenge.
The scale, nature and ferocity of this genocide is inconceivable. That it continues is an outrage to humanity. We must do everything we can to stop it; every single thing we can. Like and share posts on social media. Write to your MPs/MSPs. Sign and share petitions. Go to demos. Join protest groups. Wear the keffiyeh. Hold the Palestinian flag high above your head. We must do everything – no matter how big or small – we must do everything to stop this genocide.
#FreePalestine
The following 2 stories are my own response to the atrocities in Gaza and the unspeakable horrors being inflicted on the Palestinian people. They were originally published in Literary Revelations last December and reprinted with kind permision by Scottish PEN:
All That Have Dark Sounds
This blog is named after and influenced by the Spanish writer, Federico García Lorca, murdered by fascists in 1936, right at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 100 years later and writers, poets, playwrights and artists continue to be killed by oppressive regimes across the world. The darkness of Gaza as we speak, the indescribable horrors being inflicted on millions of people there, is a heavy cloak hanging desperate over our heads. The sadistic brutality being meted out on a whole nation of people is beyond words until words seem futile.
Yet the Palestinian people, from within this bloodbath and carnage, continue to speak with their actions and their words: the selfless acts of people searching for survivors in the rubble; the respect paid at funerals for the thousands of the dead; the doctors and medical staff in the few remaining hospitals who work with the bare minimum of resources to care for the injured while corpses mount up outside and the bombs fall without mercy; the journalists who, mourning the loss of their families and colleagues, continue to bear witness to the atrocities all around; the UN and charity workers who, seeing their comrades killed and deprived of the humanitarian aid they need to give assistance, continue to speak out from this terrifying hell.
As Israel sadistically perpetrates its long-awaited act of genocide, with the shameful backing of the US and the UK, Palestinian voices have not, and never will be, silenced. They continue to speak out, to cry out, against evil. They cannot be silenced. They show us, in their agony and anguish, they show us the face of humanity. And it is our humanity that makes us bleed when they bleed, scream when they scream, want to hold them and protect them as they are dying. It is our humanity that wants to stop our children, our brothers and our sisters, our parents and our grandparents – we want to stop them dying. With all our humanity and empathy and sorrow, we want this atrocious genocide to stop.
Lorca lived, wrote and breathed the concept of duende, a Spanish word that has no direct translation into English. Duende is that vital impulse, that yearning, that need which balances on the knife-edge of life and death. Deep-rooted and unstoppable, it is a force that can never be silenced because it speaks to us, it embodies us, it engulfs us with the urgent necessity to find expression in the darkest of places. And we don’t have the means to ignore its call.
No wonder oppressive regimes hunt down the writers, the poets, the artists. No wonder they shoot us when we sing. No wonder they stamp their jackboots in our faces. They abhor the sight and sound of beauty. They despise the existence of truth. They hate all signs of humanity and goodness. They detest what it means to be human and so use obliteration as their bastard weapon of choice.
The pen is always mightier than the sword. Words have far greater power than guns. In the darkest night with all its blackest, darkest, bloodiest sounds, words can never be silenced. We will keep on singing till we bring the light.
All That Have Dark Sounds was first performed on Eat the Storms podcast Episode 2 Season 7 (May 2023). It was subsequently published in The Serulian (October 2023).
Bay Leaves and Butterflies
This video was released on Monday 16th October 2023 to mark the 6th anniversary of the assassination of the investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Malta.
Daphne was murdered for exposing corruption on a rampant scale, both in Malta and globally. The climate of impunity which enabled her killing still remains today.
Six years on and we have never stopped fighting for justice for Daphne. We won’t give up until justice is done.
The film was directed and produced by John Quinn (JohnQ Films); with thanks to Mick MacNeil and Darrin Zammit Lupi. The film was created in association with Scottish PEN.
Scottish PEN and the CCA
It was an honour and a privilege to be invited to read 2 of my stories at the CCA Glasgow. Both my stories connect to the brutal assassination of the investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Malta in 2017.
I’d been living in Malta for 10 years when Daphne was murdered and the whole landscape shifted. I became part of the protest movement demanding justice for her killing and I’ve continued this work since returning to Scotland nearly 4 years ago.
The assassination took place after decades of harrassment, arson attempts, legal threats and an ongoing dehumanisation campaign against Daphne. Despite this relentless intimidation, Daphne refused to stop exposing the rampant corruption in Malta until the moment she was killed, blown up in a car bomb just minutes from her home.
The final words on her blog post written minutes before her horrific murder were:
‘There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is dangerous.’
An independent public inquiry into Daphne’s assassination was fiercely resisted by Malta government. The inquiry submitted its report in July 2021. It concluded that the Maltese State must take responsibility for Daphne’s murder and that the disgraced ex-prime minister, Joseph Muscat, was responsible for creating the climate of impunity enabling her killing.
This climate of impunity still exists as none of the recommendations stipulated by the inquiry have been implemented. These recommendations are designed, amongst other things, to protect journalists from attempts on their lives.
Activists in Malta continue to risk their lives by speaking out against injustice and pushing for reforms to ensure justice for Daphne, safeguard the rule of law, and restore democracy and freedom of expression. I continue to fight for justice from Scotland and I’m grateful for the ongoing support from Scottish PEN.
If you want to support this campaign, follow Occupy Justice on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/occupyjusticemalta
Repubblika https://repubblika.org/
Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation https://www.daphne.foundation/en/
Join Scottish PEN https://scottishpen.org/
Photo Credit: Linda Jaxson
CCA Glasgow 19th September 2023
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it
So happy to see this story published in the wonderful Ellipsis Zine. This story is dedicated to the disgraced Boris Johnson and all the dirty oligarchs who sail in him 🙂
Reflections
It’s almost August. In Scotland, we’ve scarcely had a summer, but the seasons have moved on since winter and since last Christmas Eve when my dad died. While he was ill in hospital and me and my family were on a rollercoaster of hope and despair, I wrote several stories about my beautiful dad and I’m very grateful that nearly all of these have now been published. The piece that was published in Sixpence Society (see above image) was written and submitted when my Dad was alive. The email from the journal saying they wanted to publish it arrived only days before his funeral. The journal was published on the 6-month anniversary of his death.
My dad loved the word ‘serendipity’. I love the word ‘synchronicity’. The two words are descriptions of the same.
Another story, Into the light of the dark black night, appeared in Northern Gravy at about the same time. I grew up in Scotland and I was born in Yorkshire so the North has strong ties with who and what I am. And who and what I am is very much down to my dad. This extends far beyond biology and genetics, but connects to deep-rooted values and ethics. While I don’t share my dad’s Christian faith, his solid yet quiet sense of faith has made a lasting impact on me – the rebel, the anarchist, the woman who finally made it through the doors of AA in 2014 – inspired and supported by a man who didn’t judge me, but gave me his unspoken blessing as he always did.
Into the light of the dark black night is a line taken from the Beatles’ Blackbird, a song my dad loved and a band he introduced to me as a baby. Revolver is the first vinyl record I can remember and me and my brother and sister thought my dad looked like George Harrison at a time when both were young, even if this realisation was only made in hindsight.
The story published in Sixpence Society is called A Time of Confidences, the title taken from Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends. Towards the end of my dad’s life, my stepmother took a CD player into the hospital. I turned up with Simon and Garfunkel Live in Central Park, a concert which, in 1982, me and my brother and sister recorded on video and watched again and again and again. We were one of the first families I knew to have a video and this was courtesy of my Dad, one of the founders of the Glasgow Media Group who did groundbreaking research into media bias. My dad taught me critical thinking from the age of dot.
I put on Simon and Garfunkel in my dad’s hospital room. ‘Do you like the music?’ I asked. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, smiling and alert. ‘Yes, I do.’
On that final Christmas Eve, I went to visit my dad with my daughter. His breathing was very difficult. His eyes darted between our faces and I played Simon and Garfunkel to make the atmosphere as light and happy as possible. The nurses had quietly warned me he was going to die but I hadn’t listened to the subtext. They told me I didn’t have to wear protective clothing even though my dad now had Covid. They advised me that this would, of course, be at my own risk. They told me the one visitor rule no longer applied. I was oblivious to the meaning.
It sounds corny but truth is always stranger than fiction. Slip Sliding Away was playing when my dad began to lose his grasp on the living. He brought up a substance from his mouth which suddenly allowed his breath to clear. A nurse came in and lowered the sides of his bed. ‘Just sit with him,’ she said.
If memories are all we’re left with, then I have a thousand moments of joy which I can preserve for the remainder of my own life. I have years of love for and from a man who instilled all the good things in me. My beliefs and the things I fight for are the values he shared with me: human rights, freedom of speech, equality, and social justice.
My father might not have been perfect, but he came a close second. My father might not have been perfect, but I am blessed to have him as my dad. My father might not have been perfect, but as a wise and compassionate human being with an endless capacity to share, I cannot fault him.
Links to stories for and about my dad:
https://sixpencesociety.wixsite.com/journal/issues-pdf
Tracks (Home Anthology, Pure Slush)
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Pure Slush
Very pleased and happy to have my story, Tracks, included in this anthology. Available to order as a paperback, epub or Kindle.
Lorca by Candlelight 