THIS past week saw Dumfries and Galloway Palestine Solidarity Campaign Group meeting for the 52nd consecutive week for a rally in support of a ceasefire in Gaza.
The group, with chilling prescience, was officially launched as a local group on September 11, 2023. One of its first actions was to attend the Glasgow Protest March on October 14, 2023. It then began its own rallies, and short protest marches through the town, on October 28, 2023.
Throughout a year of protest, the group has been there through thick and thin, come rain, come shine and it has never been a case of performing to one man and his dog. The support has been consistent with an average attendance of around 40. Yes, like any other war, the war of words does have its moments of battle fatigue but there has been always someone there to pick up the baton.
An amazing group of people from Dumfries and Galloway have come out of the towns and out of the villages and have raised their voices in defence of Palestine. We have arranged film showings and meals giving us a taste of Palestinian cuisine. We have formed a Boycott Divestment Group highlighting those manufacturers and outlets who work with Israeli companies. We have formed a choir, inspiring us all with songs of resistance and freedom from oppression. We have canvassed MPs and representatives of local government.
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Most of all, we have spoken. A variety of speakers have spoken, some from political parties but none from the Tory or Labour Party. Some spoke with a good deal of knowledge on the subject of Palestine and others mere amateurs, thrown into the role because in the main, they wanted to announce their disgust over the way the UK Government was behaving.
We have had poetry and, often, local poetry written by local poets. We have had music and songs from local artists. Talking of music, we held our own Alternative Eurovision Song Contest to make clear our objection to Israel’s inclusion in the contest. At Palavision, as it was named, we played Palestinian music and local musicians performed.
As each month went by, we recognised significant dates and festivals. First of all, Remembrance Day held on Saturday, November 11. Then came Christmas and a Christmas message from and to Bethlehem. We acknowledged the New Year, hoping that it would bring peace. We acknowledged Holocaust Day, Easter and Ramadan. We held a rally in support and recognition of the journalists, 134 of whom have been killed while trying to report, from places of extreme danger, the true situation. We did not forget those journalists in this country who try to repair the damage to the truth done by major media outlets, including the shameful BBC and some sections of the tabloid press.
We held a vigil for the health workers, recognising the tremendous work that they do and the risks that they face including the risk of dying. More than 500 had been killed and a least 300 detained by the Israeli military.
We also held a day for the children so brutally murdered in Gaza. A report by Oxfam puts the number of children killed in Gaza over the past 12 months as being at 11,000-plus. This figure, of course, cannot include those still buried under the rubble and yet to be found. This vigil was a very moving experience as well as being a rally that was well attended. Extra poignancy was added by the reading out of the names of some of the children who had died emphasising that they are not merely numbers but were living and breathing children.
As well as raising awareness, the group has also raised money. More than £4000 has been raised for the Oxfam Gaza Appeal and during Ramadan, £744 was raised for the Muslim Charity Human Appeal.
The main purpose, however, has been to raise our voices in protest. What would be wonderful would be for each town, however small, in Scotland, in England, in Wales and, maybe, in Northern Ireland to hold its own rally for peace. The UK Government has made each one of us complicit in this genocide and we need to express our disgust with the stance it has taken.
The UK Government takes no notice of the huge number of people marching through Glasgow, London or Manchester. However, perhaps a rally organised by every town in the UK would attract its attention and make its members recognise the opprobrium with which they are viewed by those who want to see an end to the killing of innocent men, women and children. We need a ceasefire now and an end to the arming of Israel.
Dumfries and Galloway Palestine Solidarity Campaign Group will be holding its first Annual General Meeting on Saturday, November 9. If anyone is interested in attending, please contact us via our e-mail address: dumfriespsc@gmail.com.
Jan Smith
Dumfries
MORE than a year since the start of the genocide of an entire nation, and still nobody mentions the fact that the Hamas operatives who gave in to their frustration caused by their nightmarish existence in an open-air concentration camp for 80 years, are obviously the “terrorists”, but those who put them there are obviously the good guys. The Israelis knew very well that the attack was going to happen because not a worm can move in Israel, OR Palestine, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world, without those psychopaths knowing about it with their cybersecurity.
It is going to take a nuclear war for the world to come to its senses before the Palestinians are free. Biden and his crackpot supporters have very kindly said that the Israelis have been “very naughty boys”, but the Americans still refuse to stop supplying arms and money. The same story from Downing Street, with their “we told them not to do it”, but still no ceasefire. Do we have to have a general strike before the warmongers in Westminster hear what we are saying on our demos every week?
Margaret Forbes
Blanefield
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