Ciao a chairde,
I don’t need to tell you that things in Palestine are worse than they’ve ever been.
Yesterday I listened back to an El País podcast entitled ‘Así ha perdido Europa el alma en Gaza’ (So has Europe lost its soul in Gaza). The title puts the matter more frankly than any leading anglophone publication would dare, and it’s still overly generous: Europe lost its soul with the transatlantic slave trade, if not earlier, and its collaboration on butchering Palestine is an unbroken extension of that same ideology.
I’d first heard this podcast nearly a month ago, while on a collective fast in response to the previous worst-it’s-ever-been threshold. At some point in late 2023, I set up a command loop in my brain: hear awful news -> do something tangible as directly linked to the awful news as possible. ‘Awareness’ on its own does nothing.
Sometimes there’s an action, a protest, something collective and physically present to support. If not, or in addition, money is always an option: the Sameer Project and Reviving Gaza go directly to those inside the blockade, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to those non-violently attempting to break it. (I’ll put a longer list at the end.)
‘Do something, if only to lighten by a single shade the darkness festering within your own soul’ is broadly the conclusion the podcast arrives at, too. Governments will not voluntarily stop doing what they’re meant to — that is, serve empire and capital — and so we need to make the pressure on them so unsustainable that they are forced to change course. There’s a risk of overestimating European agency in Israel’s response: Netanyahu’s reasons for gunning ahead are primarily domestic. But he wouldn’t be pragmatically able to proceed without resources. Not everyone might agree on the means of forcing governments to stop extending weapons and funds, but the unanimous wish to stop the genocide from any vaguely sane person on all points of the political spectrum is a strength. It means we can come at it from all angles. We all have different abilities, different tactics, and we have to keep going.
At the end of the El País podcast, Andrea Rizzi cites a passage from Italo Calvino. Since the podcast was in Spanish, he quoted it in Spanish too, but it struck me so much that I looked up the Italian original and have now started reading the book it’s from, Le città invisibili (1972). Here’s the passage:
L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.
Hell for the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it’s what’s already here, the hell we inhabit every day, that we create by being together. There are two ways to avoid suffering from it. The first is easy for many: accept the hell and become a part of it until you no longer see it. The second is risky and requires constant vigilance and learning: seeking and knowing how to recognise who and what, in the midst of hell, is not hell, and making it last, and giving it space.
Not everyone might agree with my translation choices — ‘hell’ rather than ‘inferno’, for instance. But while ‘inferno’ is closer etymologically to the Italian, ‘hell’ is closer to the intended meaning. Much as ‘inferno’ is associated with Dante, it’s an everyday Italian word; terms like ‘oltretomba’ or ‘inferi’ would be closer to the exclusively literary register that ‘inferno’ has in English. (Someday I want to translate Italian books into English, if only to offer some small dam against the current flood of overly stiff renditions that come from lazily choosing cognate above connotation. But there are more pressing matters.)
I’m not far into this book, but I love everything of Calvino’s I’ve read so far. I feel recognised in his diametric combination of extreme cynicism and endless hope. Perhaps for Calvino, and certainly for me, the two are linked: I’m not resigned to people being awful, I don’t think a world that prioritises profit over all that is good and true is the only option available to us, and so it frustrates me when critics of the status quo are seen as the pessimists. I’m saying we can, should and must do better than this! You’re the one who thinks we should just keep sipping — or perhaps chewing, depending on consistency — our gruel!
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Anyway, enough talk. Here are some responses I’ve programmed into the ‘tangible action’ end of my ‘awful news -> tangible action’ loop lately.
Direct action: Freedom Flotilla Coalition aims to non-violently break Israel’s blockade.
If you’re able to get to London, they’re still seeking signups for this 6 September Lift the Ban protest on Palestine Action. It’s not quite direct action, but it’s only one step removed: the right to engage in it, or even support it, without being legally classed as a terrorist.
There are no upcoming Belfast protests on the Palestine Action ban that I know of, but they’re worth keeping abreast of, too. A simple act of solidarity for anyone in Dublin willing/able to risk arrest would be to get the train up for the next one. (I did for the last, and wrote about it for the LRB.)
I think more engagement with organising in the North would further Palestine solidarity in the 26 counties for another reason, too: Belfast is where they’re most astutely critical of the UK and the Free State governments, having themselves been violently failed by both. The UK might be the occupiers, but the government of the ‘Republic’ has — for all practical purposes — made its peace with British rule in Northern Ireland and actively collaborates to keep it in place. It stands to reason, from those material conditions, that Belfasters would have the clearest-eyed perception of why both governments are dire on Palestine.
Mutual aid: Sameer Project and Reviving Gaza are the ones I know enough to vouch for. There are other mutual aid groups, but be careful: there are unfortunately also a lot of scams. That’s of course not a reason not to contribute; it just means we need to do our homework first.
Dublin gig: Relatedly, if you’re Dublin-based or able to travel there, I’ll be taking part in this gig at Whelan’s starting 8pm on 5 Sep with all proceeds going to Reviving Gaza. I’m planning a speech-essay hybrid on my hatred of that oft-posed question, ‘How do writers respond to crisis?’ — because in my opinion, the answer is that they should shut up about being writers and just do the same work as everyone else.
Protests: Not quite direct action, either, usually, but they disrupt the perception that normal life can continue when we’re all complicit in genocide and are likelier to make the news than writing letters. From Ireland, the IPSC keeps a well-updated list of options; I’m sure there’s something similar in other countries, too.
The website also lists less geographically constrained ways to contribute to campaigns.
September 2, do not renew: This is the most important thing for Irish people in the 26 counties. Ireland is the gateway to EU money for Israel; we alone regulate the sale of their war bonds across the Union. We’re due to renew that approval on 2 September. Come to this protest in Dublin if you can, and above all do not shut up about this. The Central Bank is hoping we’re too distracted by the UK madness to pay attention to Ireland’s own complicity. Look, the Palestine Action ban is insane, I completely agree — but here is something within our actual agency that we need to fucking address.
Thursday no-spend and strike: I’ve only heard about this on social media so far, so I don’t know how widespread it is yet — but it seems to be backed up by concrete local action in Derry at least, and it’s worth trying. Anything that gets people thinking about how to disrupt business as usual is worth getting behind; there is room to build organisationally from there. The idea is simple: no financial transactions on Thursday, every Thursday, and withdraw your labour too if you can.
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Everyone faces different constraints. I don’t want to make assumptions about anyone else’s time, resources or ability to absorb risk. But I hope there is something up there you can try if you’re feeling as desperate as I am.
I’ve mostly been immediately actionable and single-issued-focused in the above, rather than drawing extensive theoretical links to broader organising or class struggle, because, well, there’s an active genocide.
Palestine will be free.
Beir bua,
N
Thank you for this, it's an important reminder of the real power we do have right now.
Thanks for writing and sharing this. <3