"It lifted my grieving heart to join crowds in London on the March for Palestine. We need more of them" - a timely Guardian op-ed by Nimer Sultany

‘It was heartening to see so many demonstrators showing solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.’ Photograph: Loredana Sangiuliano/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

It lifted my grieving heart to join crowds in London on the March for Palestine. We need more of them

by Nimer Sultany

UK politicians have been shamefully silent on the carnage visited on Palestinians in Gaza. Saturday’s protest was cathartic

• Nimer Sultany is reader in public law and a Palestinian citizen of Israel

On Saturday, for a few hours, I was finally able to breathe. Marching alongside tens of thousands of demonstrators in central London was reinvigorating. Like so many Palestinians abroad, I spent the week finding it hard to work or sleep; I watched in horror as Israel inflicted carnage on Gaza’s 2 million residents. In one week, according to one military expert, Israel dropped on the small and densely populated Gaza more bombs than the US dropped on Afghanistan in a year.

It was disturbing to see that the language of condemnation and political consensus was glaringly absent when it came to Palestinian civilian deaths in the face of an incomparably superior military force, which wiped out entire families and neighbourhoods live on-screen.

Despite Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, saying it will “eliminate everything” in Gaza and speaking of removing “restraints” on his troops, despite reported plans to raze entire cities to the ground and to drive out more than a million people from their homes, scores of British politicians repeatedly and bluntly refused to show concern for Palestinian civilian lives. This kind of disregard leads millions of Palestinians to reach an unavoidable conclusion: that, compared with Israelis, their lives are less precious, their freedom less urgent.

It is also astonishing when compared with western concern for Ukrainian lives. Only a year ago the EU considered Russian actions to cut water and electricity to be war crimes and “acts of pure terror”. But when Israel announced a similar policy to starve the population and inflict collective punishment, US and European leaders flew to Israel to show support. Are brown populations expendable?  ... READ MORE

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]