Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine... "As the war gets livestreamed to our phones, it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel helpless. But even small acts of activism add up" Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/02/please-dont-succumb-to-hopelessness-over-palestine-your-voice-can-still-make-a-difference

It is hard to stay hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”, but for the sake of the people bearing the brunt of modern monstrosities, it is imperative that we do.

Your voice can still make a difference

Arwa Mahdawi

Tue 2 Sep 2025 

‘It is hard to stay hopeful in monstrous times’ … A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Warsaw, Poland. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

I don’t know if Frankenstein star Christoph Waltz is normally a man of few words but he didn’t have much to say at a recent Venice film festival press conference. Waltz uttered only six words, with “CGI is for losers” constituting four of them. The remaining two were “I don’t”, in response to a question about how he stays hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”.

Waltz is certainly not alone in despairing of a world which seems to elevate liars, cheats, and adjudicated sexual predators. It’s hard to feel hope when a genocide has been livestreamed to our phones for almost two years and there is no justice in sight; just a systematic slaughter of the journalists who serve as messengers. No peace prospects on the horizon; just well-paid consultants putting together ethnic cleansing prospectuses so a “Gaza Riviera” can be built. (Oh, sorry, we’re supposed to say “voluntary relocation”, aren’t we?)

As a British Palestinian, I urge you to keep (or start!) speaking up for Gaza and Palestinians. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank gets worse daily. But please do not succumb to hopelessness or assume that you are powerless to change things. While it may seem like nothing will shame politicians into meaningfully upholding international human rights law, your voice does make a difference. Writing to your MP; protesting; donating; supporting the Freedom Flotilla Coalition; advocating online; boycotting companies such as Airbnb which profit from illegal settlements. These sorts of things do make a difference.

Plenty of people are keen to tell you otherwise. There is a certain form of hopelessness that has been repackaged as sensible centrist thinking. Don’t bother with your silly little acts of activism or your social media posts, these people will tell you, they won’t achieve anything.

Look, for example, at the contemptuous reaction in many quarters to Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey’s decision to boycott King Charles’s state banquet for Trump in protest over Gaza. Per a sneering piece in the Telegraph, this boycott “betrays a serious lack of seriousness”. Davey would be far more serious, apparently, if he just joined other politicians in doing nothing, except perhaps issuing an occasional statement expressing “serious concern” about Israel bombing another hospital or executing another aid worker.

Of course, Davey’s boycott won’t shame Trump into acting. But it might cause someone to think more deeply about the perverseness of holding an extravagant state banquet while a US-enabled Israel, which has a history of weaponising food and controlling the calorie intake of a captive Gaza population, has orchestrated a human-made famine. It may pressure other politicians into some sort of action.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/02/please-dont-succumb-to-hopelessness-over-palestine-your-voice-can-still-make-a-difference

  AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]