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Jeremy Corbyn: The Gaza Tribunal · explore words discover worlds

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Good afternoon, everybody.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Paul Rogers and I'm the loose chairman for this.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: When Jeremy met me at what about it, we met up about an hour ago, he immediately said, Oh, you're the man from the ministry, aren't you?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, I'm overdressed for this.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think he was expecting me to be there to look at the locals, so to be.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: But since I'm from Warthestone, East London, it's a long way to come.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a very significant.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: But you live in Huddersfield.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: I live in Huddersfield.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, I live in Huddersfield, yes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a very significant thing in many ways this afternoon.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to put it in a little bit of context.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, many of you, I suspect, would have been at a similar session to this last year.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that so?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Quite a few people around last year, quite a few nods.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you may remember that was actually a book launch.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was a book launch which was meant to happen but couldn't happen.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because what had happened was that this book, it's not actually banned, you may be interested to know, the monster anger at the guns, how the global arms trade is ruining the world.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that the problem with it was that it had an eight-page chapter about Palestine action?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that mainly could have made it liable to some sort of action by the government at the time.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because when we were launching it here, it was the weekend that there'd been the prescription of Palestine Action.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And our publishers said, as far as we can tell, if you actually have a formal book signing, you could be in trouble.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're just having it on sale at the time, you'd probably be alright.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we have that crazy situation.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm pleased to say that although that is still technically banned as far as sort of events, that is not true at all for the Gaza Tribunal, which is now on sale and is a remarkable book, and we want to talk about that quite a lot this afternoon.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I should also add that with provision this is a provisional thing that next year we're hoping to publish through the Peace and Justice Project, uh, essentially a book which the title will probably be something along the lines, The Monstrous Prophets of War.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's going to be a similar kind of book to this one, which will have a lot of contribution from around the world.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so look out for that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: We might even get it up in time to have a proper launch at the Bradford Literature Festival, which is the last week of June next year.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Just remember that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: Then of this afternoon.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's difficult to know where to start with this.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the Gaza Tribunal book is quite remarkable.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Copies are only very recently available, and I read it through a fair bit of last night, and very, very occasionally, I must say, checking on the football school.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the point is, finishing it this morning, it really is an extraordinary book.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: It is so packed for information about what is happening in Gaza.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some of you will may have seen there was a very good session earlier in this week, uh, I think it was called Complicity, uh, with Peter Oborn.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a detailed account of what was happening.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: That account basically takes you through what has actually happened in Gaza.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: This book does a lot more than that in many ways.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: It takes you through that and we'll explore that, but it also gives you a lot of background, the background about the legal aspect of this.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And two of the three authors, Jeremy obviously being the third, are both legal and human rights experts.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in one book, in a very readable style, you have almost the whole problem that exists in Gaza.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's probably going to get a lot worse as far as the current British government is concerned, because so far there seems to be a very general resistance to accepting that policy on Gaza is proven to be disastrously wrong.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the more people realise that, I think is important, which is why personally I think this book is so significant.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremy, I hope you're happy with just asking you questions and maybe commenting here and there, because you're the person that people want to hear this afternoon.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially, we really want to look at how this book came out into being, what the aim was, and where we are now.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got to just throw a general question to you, just to present the background from your own point of view.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why did this come as a possibility and why was it necessary to do it?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: Paul, first of all, thank you very much for being here, for hosting this session, but also for all the incredible work you've done all your life to remote an understanding of an alternative world of peace and justice rather than one of war and armaments.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: And you've always been a very good friend and given me a lot of very good advice, and I'm forever grateful for all of that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you all for coming today.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: I, like all of you, I'm sure, have been beyond shocked and appalled at what's happened in Gaza.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: 73,000 people now dead.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been on every single one of the national marches, 37 of them, since um this particular period started.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I went to the International Court of Justice at the invitation of the South African government, so I've been very involved in the whole process.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: The point behind it is really this demonstrating is important, getting a voice out there is important, but it's also important of what we can do politically here in Britain.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: And our complicity is actually quite deep in all of this.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I was thinking, along with um Oli de Rose, who works with me in my office, about how we could do more in Parliament on this.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: So we decided that I would introduce a private member's bill to set up an inquiry into British participation in Gaza.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so I uh did the things you have to do in Parliament, go and see the public bill office and queue up and everything else to get the opportunity to introduce this bill, which I did.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I introduced it and it got through the first stage.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, it could then be printed as a parliamentary bill, which it has been.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then it comes up for the proper debate and it's blocked immediately by the government.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: And they could do that because it's a private member's bill.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: I knew they were going to do that anyways, because it was hardly a surprise.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: So we decided, well, if they won't hold an inquiry, more or less on the style of Sir John Chilcott's inquiry into Iraq, then we'll hold our own.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so we booked a church house in Westminster, which is a beautiful building just near Parliament, which is owned by the Church of England, but it's basically a conference centre and meeting place, and set up a two-day public inquiry into it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we had 29 expert witnesses, and they all came and gave evidence of life in Gaza, of medical revision in Gaza, of British complicity in Gaza, and um the health conditions of uh the children and other people in Gaza.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: We also had um evidence from a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office the way he'd been told to dumb down reports of deaths in Gaza because it was un made ministers feel uncomfortable.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm glad they feel uncomfortable.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure how people in Gaza would uh feel about all of that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so we then held these um inquiry over two days and took all the evidence we did and um then decided we'd put it into book form as well as into film form, and Al Jazeera covered it, and a number of others have covered it, and we've now produced this.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: And essentially, British complicity goes like this.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: We have a lot of bases in Britain, that you all know.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: We have membership of NATO, that we all know, and we have a very close relationship with the USA, that we all know.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: We also have a security arrangement with Israel in which there's security sharing with Israel.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: We have the Royal Air Force Base at Akrateri in Cyprus, and from there there have been surveillance flights over Gaza the whole time.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: They claimed these surveillance flights were all about freeing the hostages.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And a number of people gave very serious and very important evidence on it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Those surveillance flights have been over Gaza, picked up lots of information, all of which has been fed back to Israel.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: My supposition is that information was then used to target the bombing of Gaza.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: We've had REF Accriteri as a staging point for the delivery of weapons to Israel and Israeli forces landing and taking off there.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: And we have the supply of parts for the F-35 jets made in Britain, 15% of the components are made in Britain, all of which have been used to make those planes operable and bombardment of Gaza.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I raised a question in Parliament said, if the International Court of Justice says, as it does, that there is evidence of genocidal activity going on in Gaza, Britain knowingly continued to supply the wherewithal, the weaponry and the information to Israel, knowing that acts of genocide were being committed.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know it's hard for people to take.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: That means Britain, Britain is complicit in an act of genocide contrary to international law.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: So what we're trying to do is get people to understand this.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what the book's about.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is the first event we've done on this book, and I'm very grateful to you all for being here.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: We've got a lot of events planned over the summer in different festivals, places, and so on, to get a discussion going on it about our participation in the arms trade and what the actual results of it are.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: 73,000 dead.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: There are two million people in Gaza, and there are 60 million tons of rubble in Gaza.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Do the math.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: That is the state that the place has been left in.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the Israeli presence in Gaza has now restricted the Palestinian population of Gaza to less than 30% of what they had before, which wasn't very much.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, in other words, they're being constrained more and more into this tiny area to do what?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Be pushed into the sea, pushed into an internment camp of some sort, or forced into Egypt.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And we're all watching this in real time, and our government is fully complicit in the whole thing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's my point, and that's what makes me so angry.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I was pleased we got this book going.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And as Paul said, we're doing another book next year on the monstrous prophets of war.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: I could go on too long, Paul, and you're gonna stop me, so I'll just say this.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: We need to have a serious thought about where we're going in this world.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: We have huge pressure on all our public services, social services, housing, health, mental health, all of it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: We have huge inequality globally.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: So the response now by all governments, USA, Canada, Europe, is what?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: One, cut overseas aid, thus making the situation worse in the poorest and most vulnerable countries that produce most of the refugees because they've got nowhere else to go.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: What are we doing in our own society?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Cutting expenditure on the social needs of our people.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: The big winner in all this is the arms industry, and Britain is proposing to go up immediately to 3% and ultimately aiming for 5% of GDP to be spent on arms.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: Other countries are doing the same.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Europe as a whole, Russia, China, USA, and so on.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I I raised this question with the Foreign Minister the other day in Parliament and said, well, at the NATO summit, wasn't there a thought for a moment of the historical situation this planet is in?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Climate change, inequality, poverty, human rights abuse, and refugee flows.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Is the only answer to spend more on weapons, or is there an answer which is to condemn, obviously, illegal acts of violence, but also to look for the diplomatic path for peace, look for the path of coexistence, look for the path of a future that benefits the entire population of the world.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: So if our book helps to promote that debate, that's absolutely fine by me because that's what we're doing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're trying to change the political debate and atmosphere in this country.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we exist for as a peace and justice project.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that perhaps the key thing about this book isn't so much the title, it's the subtitle, Britain's Complicity in Genocide.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is a book which is faced on based on the British situation.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's specific to this country.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the argument would be that probably second only to the United States, Britain is the one which is closest to what is going on in Gaza.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And if any country was complicit, it's certainly Britain.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the very big questions is is it a question of uh complicity or does it go farther?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is it actually participation?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that I think is a crucial question.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: We have to find some way of bringing this to the attention of far more people.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: I would point out one thing.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: So much of this is about the whole legal questions.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's worth noting that the two co-authors, one is Neve Gordon, who is a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary College, who is actually Israeli.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the other is Shahed Hamuri, Dr.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Shaed Muri, who is Palestinian-Jordanian, and she is a lecturer in international law and legal theory at the University of Kent.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: So they're both sort of very experienced, hugely appropriate academics who can back this up.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that, you know, working in the field to some extent, what amazed me was reading the book is so much is packed into it, and so many references if you need them.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it isn't an academic book.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's a book which, if anything, I would hope, will be one which will help the activists and the campaigners and make life a lot easier for them.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: So this is why I think we really need to look at this.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremy, could we talk a little bit about your experience with your group in writing about the book, particularly in the way Gaza has developed, particularly in an angle towards, I suppose you would say, the legal aspects, you know, the way in which I think they use the term, I think medicine is one way, and goes through the different ways in which uh human rights have been so terribly misused.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: The whole history of Gaza is one of tragedy upon tragedy.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I've I first went to Gaza in uh 1998, and um I thought it was fascinating, I thought it was interesting, and I thought it was grim.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then I've been there a number of times since then, and every time I go, I'm eternally fascinated by how people survive in that uh that atmosphere, but also the permanent levels of stress they're under.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I remember going to Gaza as a UN accredited observer in the elections in 2005, and um the Israeli forces decided to encourage people to vote in Rafa by firing on the polling station from checkpoints all around.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: And when uh the team, I was with the UN team, persuaded them to stop doing that, people all came out and voted again.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then we went through the whole day trying to observe polling stations and things like that.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I just thought to myself, how on earth can you actually hold a genuine, open, and free election whilst you're under occupation and you've got Israeli forces all around the place?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then that evening I went to Gaza City and um I stayed in with the family of um Dr.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: Munafarah, who was uh then head of the medical uh mental health services in Gaza.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And um there was uh long with a long discussion, I know her very well, and she said, you know what?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: This was remember, this is 20 years ago.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: She's saying 70% of the people in Gaza are then suffering from profound mental health conditions based on stress.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that was then.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: And since then it's got worse and worse.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: And um, whilst Israel did withdraw and took their settlements with them, they then controlled the access uh to Gaza, controlled the supply of everything, and were able to turn on and turn off water and so on all the time.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: So that's not that is not new, that's been happening all along.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: But some or other resilience of people survived through all this.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I remember another time was there, uh, there was a bomb while we were there of a particular building was bombed.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know why, I don't know who was supposed to be in this building.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was a house, and we went to see it, and the bomb had gone straight down the middle like that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: House destroyed, but the destroyed internally, family killed, external walls survived.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: So you saw the sort of business of children's pictures on the wall of a bombed-out building.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that was then when there was targeted bombing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: What's happened since October 23 has been carpet bombing.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Carpet bombing of whole towns and villages, schools that I visited, like Beach Primary School in the ref in Jalapia refugee camp, destroyed, and so on, every one of those.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then the medics that have been killed, the journalists that have been killed, targeted.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then you look at the systems and information, then you look at the companies involved, and you ask yourself a question: why are we inviting Palantir in to get hold of our information in our Social Security and uh health systems when we know that company is involved in with the Israeli Defense Force and everything else it does?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: These things are serious questions.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so this whole process was uncovering all of that.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And the um evidence we've given was profoundly moving, and you'll read it, you'll read it all in the book.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh very profound piece of evidence came actually from a young man who's a footballer, who's got to Ireland on a scholarship given by the Irish government.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well done, and thank you, the Irish government.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And um he talked about his life in Gaza, the way he'd been starved for months, just trying to survive, even though he's an athletic young footballer in a very difficult situation.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then he said he just felt enormous guilt.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I took him to a restaurant when he was here, when he was in London, and he's just felt guilt the whole time.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: Why is he here and why is his family living in a tent?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, as anybody would feel.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that is that the the guilt of the survivor's guilt in Palestine.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so our book is trying to explain that sort of human story that's there, because often the human story is easier to convey to the public.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the legal implications of it are denying people food, water, power, education is illegal as a war crime.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, bombing people's homes and so on is a war crime.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: Denying people, even people in detention, access to medical care is uh illegal by any stretch of the imagination.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And denying people uh the right to exit from Gaza in order to get medical treatment in Cairo or wherever else where they might be able to get it, because there's obviously extremely limited services in Gaza is also illegal.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we've gone through in detail all of those.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And each of the witnesses, we had 29 witnesses, they were all asked to give evidence on a specific area, and they kept to that.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that meant their very powerful evidence came out in the in the allotted time they had, and then we were able to question them.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you'll see that, and you'll see that in the film version of it as well.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um International law is something we all quote and rely on, and Paul knows far more about international law than me.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very important documents, you know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Foundation of the UN, UNESCO, the Refugee Convention 1951, and so on are all, and indeed the convention that set up the International Court of Justice in the 20s.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Very, very important documents.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: But if they are not adhered to, and there are no repercussions for the breaches of international law, then international law will become less and less and less effective.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: I've been many times at the UN Human Rights Commission hearing the plain plaintiff calls from people in a very bad situation, wanting the rest of the world to listen to the way that they're being treated.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so you then move into the economic relationship and what we do about it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: So if we are trading normally, selling arms normally, defending Israel in international law, then there are no implications for Israel for its multiple breaches of international law.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's moved on a bit.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: There is an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu and uh a number of other people.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: But until there is a serious attempt of an economic boycott of what Israel's doing, particularly of its military activity, then the international law breaches will continue.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that is exactly what is happening at the present time.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so condemning those that raise these awkward questions only gets them so far.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, the awkward truth has got to be answered.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you occupying Gaza?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you so denigrating Palestinian life, culture, history, and living?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you allowing the occupation of the West Bank?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you allowing destruction of life there?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And those awkward questions keep on raising their heads.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: The governments of the region sometimes raise them, sometimes don't.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: They're not permanent friends.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're not reliable allies for the Palestinian people.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Times they are, at times they're not.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: The only reliable allies the Palestinian people have got is the court of public opinion around the world, which is where we come in.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why we've got to do all we can.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Support the Palestinian people.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think in many ways the aim of the book is to make that more easily seen that there is this court of public opinion and it is much more aware of what is going on in there.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's one section of the book which I don't think we should go into detail, where you called it Medicide.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the most powerful parts of the book, on a very quick reading, was the way in which a number of the witnesses were senior British medics who'd been doing tours of medicine, if you like, often just for a month at a time in Gaza.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: And some of them doing it, you know, for years, long before even this war.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that is devastating when you see the effects of just lack of anaesthetics.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: So kids being treated for very serious injuries without benefit of anesthetic.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that I think is one of the things, according to some of the commentaries from the people involved, that probably hit them most of all.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And one suspects that quite a few of the people who've actually come from abroad, then come back to Britain, who've worked under these conditions, have to some extent PTSD themselves, because of what they've seen.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Another area which I suppose struck me was what the book and the author's term scholasticide.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to sort of make it difficult for any kind of society to be effective, then one of the areas you go for is their education system.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially, this has been a very particular part of what is happening in Gaza.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: The importance of this, I think, in the Palestinian case, is something which most people don't realize.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And perhaps I could just mention just quickly, in sort of anecdotally.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: My first visit to Gaza, which was admittedly 40, 45 years ago, when things were relatively quiet, I should explain.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: My wife is an examiner, or has been for many years, was for many years an examiner with the Oxford and Cambridge Board in Biological Sciences.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a biologist originally, so I have a rough idea of the syllabus.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the places that we were able to visit was an UNRWA school, that's the United Nations Relief and Works Agency school in Gaza, which was educating, having to be a girls' school.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: And we sat at the back of a class in biology, A-level Cambridge biology girls.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially they were about one year ahead of their British counterparts, and they were doing it in a foreign language.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: That gives a really clear idea, it came home to me very strongly, the impact of that.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially, on another occasion with a colleague from Peace Studies, we were staying in the home of one of our PhD students, Dr.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Gaza bit in the West Bank.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it was September, so it was very hot.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what people would normally do is to go up on the roof in the evening and basically have coffee or something.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: This was the village, I think, of Anabta.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if I remember rightly, it was about late September, so it was still pretty warm.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: What you had across the whole village on virtually every roof was one or more children doing homework using kerosene lamps because it was not properly connected to the electricity at that time.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And those two struck me.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the terrible things that has happened in Gaza is every single university, and there are quite a few of them, has either been completely destroyed or more or less wrecked.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the great majority of schools are now not able to operate.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially what that is doing is removing the right to knowledge and the right to education of tens of thousands of young Palestinians.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: They're trying in all kinds of ways to overcome that, but it is basically at root, a huge problem for them.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're also seeing, as Jeremy said, the whole starvation thing.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then, crucially, in terms of communications, the last figure I saw was 250 people being killed who were journalists.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the rate of killing of the press, particularly Palestinian journalists, is equivalent to almost all the major losses of life among journalists across a whole range of conflicts over the last 20 years.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's single-minded in a way.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: And this is why I think when you realize it, just how important the legal element of this is.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it should be hugely stronger and better known in Britain than it is.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: But this is where we are, and this is in some ways how we got to proceed from now.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremy, what do you see as the best way forward given the situation we are in now?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: What are the, if you like, the points that people can most develop, the attitudes you need to have to try and promote much more knowledge of this so that knowledge does actually move to the extent where people are forced to act?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Raising funds to help medical aid and development work in Gaza is very, very important.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: And there are plenty of very good organizations doing that, which you can donate money to.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: But in donating that money, that in a sense is taking a stance, and it also becomes a form of education because if you go out in the street asking for support for Gaza, people are then open to a conversation about it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a way of actually encouraging understanding.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: Secondly, and this is the very specific demand on the British government, is one of military cooperation with Israel, which is we have an independent alliance group of us in Parliament.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we also work with a number of um members of parliament in the Labour Party, in Lib Dems, SNP, Plight, Green, and so on.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody from Reform has joined, and nobody from the Tories has joined.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: I know you'd be surprised at that, but there you go.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we then work out a strategy of what issues we raise in parliament and how we and how we do it, and uh consistently ask the same question.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the one that the area that I've been doing consistently is the question of um military aid and cooperation and expenditure on weaponry by Britain, which has been used in Gaza.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I think making demands on the political system of members of parliament here is very important.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: And also the BDS movement and ending the use of our pension funds, which have been invested in some cases in Israeli defence companies or invested in places that are supplying companies that are supplying to them, is very important.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: A number of unions have got well involved and well behind that, and well done them for doing it.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: And Fran Heathcote from the CPSA came and spoke very, very well, PCS rather, came and spoke very well at it and supported her members who had been speaking out against the military cooperation.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I think making those specific demands on members of parliament is important.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I I know that um Keir Starmer is no longer going to be Prime Minister after uh tomorrow week, I think it is.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um so his role in this will be examined by historians, and I don't think it's gonna be a kind examination.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um Andy Burnham is going to become the next Prime Minister.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: A number of us have already raised this question with him, the need for a complete change of policy, a complete reset of policy on the Middle East.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: And end, yes, the military cooperation with Israel, but also this nonsense of claiming that the bombing of Iran by American planes from Britain is somehow or other defensive bombing and it's not aggressive bombing.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a feeling that if you're I've got a sort of feeling that if um I'm living in a town in Iran and my school gets bombed, it doesn't make an awful lot of difference whether the person that bombed it says it was defensive or offensive, is the reality is your school's been bombed and uh children have lost their life as a result of it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so that has to be challenged.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Burnham has made some emollient sound about Gaza.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: Not very much, not enough, and not strong enough.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: But he, I believe, has recognised the political damage that's been done to the Labour Party, particularly by its support for Israel in the bombardment of Gaza and its failure to recognize the the needs of Palestinian people.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so keep up that pressure, keep up that demand, keep up the marches, keep up the meetings, keep up the demonstrations.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: I sometimes feel very frustrated.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: You get back from a demonstration, think, what have I done?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then you start to talk to people.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: In Gaza, West Bank, refugee camps and so on, and they say, Thank you.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: And um the scale of it is really hard to understand.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Last um autumn or November time, I went to South Africa with Dr.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mustafa Bhagouti from the Palestine National Initiative, and we did a speaking tour of meetings all over South Africa.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the last one we did was a very big one in Cape Town, huge number of people there.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we were talking about the politics of it and congratulating South Africa on being part of the Hague group and supporting the application to the International Court of Justice and well done, South Africa.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I was sort of kept thinking, wow, this is South Africa that suffered under apartheid in South Africa that threw off the yoke of apartheid.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then I thought, well, this is just amazing.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then a gentleman, an older gentleman in the front row, put his hand up to speak, and he'd been very active in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think he'd been imprisoned and so on.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he said what's being done to the people of Palestine and Gaza is far worse, far worse than anything that was done to us in South Africa.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we suffered, yes, uh people were killed, people were executed, yes, people were imprisoned, yes, it was a disgusting system, yes, it was discriminatory, yes, it did leave the black population in desperate poverty, many of whom still are, he said, but they didn't carpet bomb our cities, they didn't carpet bomb our towns, they didn't demolish our schools.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I mean I hate to have this sort of comparative stuff, but to hear that from a South African victim of the apartheid system was something that deeply moved me.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: And what's the reward to South Africa for having the courage to go to the ICJ?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Donald Trump puts extra tariffs on them.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: Likewise with Namibia, likewise the endless attacks on Malaysia for joining in and supporting the Hague group, which we set up to get a group of nations together globally to support the ICJ and ICC decisions.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's a long, hard road.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: And the only friends the Palestinian people have got are their own strength, their own resilience, and the solidarity movements around the world.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we are part of the solidarity movement around the world, all of us here.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: And in regard to that, what is clearly also happening is that Israel is losing more and more of its reputation as a state and what is expected of a state.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the most significant part of this is the change in support among the seven million plus Jews in the United States.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and this is, I think, far more uh realistic than people actually understand.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: There is a change in mood uh which seems to be uh cautious here, it seems to be accelerating.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: That in fact, more and more people across the United States are actually changing their minds, and more opinion polls now tend, if anything, to favor the Palestinians, not the Israelis.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: And J Street and the other groups that come from the Jewish communities are actually a lot more active than they were.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a change happening there.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And what is also clear is that within uh Palestine itself, not just in Gaza but elsewhere, uh, Israel itself is becoming less secure, not more secure.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's sometimes said that the point you make about Israel is it is a country which necessarily has to be impregnable in its insecurity.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Impregnable in its insecurity, in the sense that it's fundamentally insecure in its position, and that can be resolved if justice can be there for all the people, but in terms of its basically risk to it, it must be impregnable.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it must have the huge power that it needs to do this.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that is basically the worst thing that you can do.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if anything, although it's not from Israel and Palestine, um, people talk about this in the military, and they often refer to a particular US uh colonel in the Marines making the comment uh in exasperation about two years into the war in Afghanistan, that every time he killed a Taliban, three more come in and take his place.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that became a sort of an indication of the failure of this kind of approach, even to security.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this is why I think what Jeremy was saying is so important when you look at Britain's overall defense policy.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because the crazy thing is we're not even taking seriously the biggest single security threat worldwide, which is climate breakdown.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: And unless we do that, unless we do that, you know, this is the crazy situation we're in.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I suppose what what the book is trying to do, which really struck me, is it's providing the means to speak from a degree of confidence in what you're saying.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because this, I think, is what we need so much.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Jeremy, one thing I wanted to ask in a way was in doing this, how has the group managed to do it?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: On very few resources.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what do you sense?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: People who know what the situation is, what do you sense is the attitude to try and do something like this from people who are already knowledgeable?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's it's been obviously hard work to get it done and get it done in the time frame that we set ourselves.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: But uh we've got good friends who've come in and helped in lots of ways, of volunteers and so on.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: But having the peace and justice project there has been absolutely essential because we have the project we set up after I stepped down as leader of the Labour Party.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we exist, as the name says, for peace and justice, and we take up causes.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: And we've done this, it is the uh third book we've done.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: We did a book on poetry, poetry for the many.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: Still on sale.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: 15,000 sold already, going well.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the next poetry books are going to be poetry from the many, not to the many, but for the many.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then we did the arms trade book, which um you is you're very welcome to get.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then we're doing this war book at the moment, which Paul and I and others have been working on, and we've got a timetable for that, which is again, it's global voices.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got voices from this country, from different parts of Europe, from South Asia, from Africa, from the United States, and so on.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a it's a global issue about it.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: We're talking about the costs of war, the human costs of war, and the need and the environmental disaster we're facing.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: You can't bomb your way out of global warming, it won't work.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to do something else, a bit more scientific.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, we're also looking at the incredible influence that the arms industry has on our society and on our economic thinking.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're doing all of that.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: So Peace and Justice Project is the center of it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then the people that contributed, you'll see them all when you get the book of those who contributed, but working with Nev and Shahad has been a wonderful revelation.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: Nev is um a Jewish man, he's a professor, he lived in Israel, he worked in Israel, he's worked in a lot of other places, and um has incredible knowledge of international law.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: He brings a personal dimension to it as a Jewish man, and his speech to the tribunal was absolutely riveting and fascinating.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: He brought that tradition of Jewish intellectualism to the issues that we're facing on law and the rights of the people of Palestine.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: Indeed, he quoted Deuteronomy in his uh in his speech.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then Shahad, to his family, are from Palestine, from Jordan, uh, is at the University of Kent, and she brought the whole uh Palestinian anger, uh constructive anger, to the whole issue and the anger she feels about the way uh people have been treated.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: So we were the tribunal, the three of us, if you like, receiving this evidence.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was the most moving experience of my life just to be there, this time-slotted thing of receiving all this all this evidence.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm very grateful to all those that made small donations to help us put the event on.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: That are now buying the book, which um we're selling as cheap as we can get it, and to make sure that it does well.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: And we're giving some of the money from it to cover our costs and some to um various Palestinian charities.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh it there's nobody that contributed to the book in any way has benefited in any sense personally from it, and they they don't want to either, because they won't want it to achieve.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so um sometimes from these sort of small independent sources like Peace and Justice Project, we can achieve a great deal.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we do other other events as well, we do music events and and and so on, as well as campaigning on how on housing and lots of things.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're not a supporter already, please join and sign up.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: Peace and Justice Project.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think it'd be nice, uh Paul, if we could bring in some of you from the audience.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: We've got time for a few questions, but us being able to see you makes it so much better from here, because you're speaking almost into a gloom.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: But if we have to.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: Nice to see you all.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um could we take some questions?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Could we keep them really brief and we'll try and get through?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: We've got about 10 minutes.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so we get something at the end.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: I want to quote something from the end.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: All right, yeah.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you have a particular ending.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone like to ask a question?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: Very short if possible.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think the effect or the importance, if there's any, of the thousand I think it's 3,000 nearly people who are being under investigation as terrorists in various cities in Britain since time last year.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is apparently terrorism.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is these soldiers, yeah.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is the people who are being as a result of the yeah.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: People who are arrested in my case up a placard in September.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: Hold the microphone to your mouth, please, yeah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, people like me who are arrested for holding up a placard saying I oppose genocide.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it is Well, it's it's obviously outrageous that um several thousand people should be arrested uh for holding up a placard saying they support Palestine action and at enormous cost, enormous discomfort to them, and a real threat to our civil liberties as a whole.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: And hence, when the terrorism um naming of them came up in Parliament, I absolutely voted against it and absolutely would, because I wanted to protect the right of free speech and the right of assembly and the right to know in our society.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: When you take those away, we're all diminished and weakened in a society.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: The rich and powerful get more rich and more powerful, and the rest of us suffer as a result of it.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so, absolutely, my solidarity and sympathy with them.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: I went through the court cases with Benjamin and Chris Nynham, who were charged after the demonstration that I was part of.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: And their case is coming up to appeal, so I won't say too much more about it at the moment.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: Interestingly, the cases and the general case about Palestine Action is meandering its way through the courts.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: And at some point, the legal hierarchy will have to decide whether it's no longer in the public interest to pursue these ridiculous charges against, what is it, 2,000, 2,500 people, I think?
• 44:53
  unknown: How much?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: 2,000.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: 3,000.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm hoping that will be the case.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: There's also the case of those in Palestine action that are charged with Elbit systems and so on.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think we should distinguish between what the government would call acts of terrorism in our society, and acts of terrorism are things like bombing hospitals in Gaza.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: That to me is an act of terrorism.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: Bombing people in a refugee camp, that is an act of terrorism.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Nonviolent resistance is a tradition that has been adopted in this country for a very long time.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: And Paul will know this better than me as a professor of peace studies.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: That is a tradition of opposition to what one sees as danger of overwhelming military power.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that is something that I think we have to defend.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: If we want to live in a democracy, a democracy isn't just about voting.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's about speaking, it's about talking, it's about listening, it's about activism, it's about the right to know.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so let's get behind and support those people.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: Demand that the charges be dropped and demand that the terrorism law itself be discontinued so that we instead have replaced that with a human rights element of protecting our rights and adhering to international human rights law.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: To me, that is far more important.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: I question the compatibility of the anti-terror legislation that's being introduced with international norms of human rights and of the European Convention of Human Rights.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I will continue to mount that questioning in Parliament.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've mounted now.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly got time for another one.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone else got a question?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: One more?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, over here, please.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's a microphone coming.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, thank you so much to everybody who was involved in organizing this event today because I think it's really given us the opportunity to have shared empathy, which I think is something that is missing sometimes in society.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of points that you made really resonated with regards to, well, we have these international laws, but if they're not actually being held to account, I think people can feel a bit disheartened.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you to you for acknowledging the plight of medical professionals who are having their jobs taken away from other sort of more violent threats that are currently happening at the moment and raising those uncomfortable questions.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess my question to you would be you've talked about how when you're trying to appeal to those in the corridors of the power, it's not surprising that certain things get blocked.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're looking with regards to the funding of arms and sort of the profits that war brings, that's I don't think a surprise to anyone in this room.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess when we're talking about campaigning for peace, do you think that there is a potentially an economic argument for peace?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're trying to appeal for peace to be a good thing for society, a good thing for people, good thing for sort of reducing inequalities, all these things that we know is the case.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you're appealing to that to somebody who doesn't care about those things, or is not directly affected, or has the privilege to be in a bubble away from that, I'm just intrigued to see what your thoughts would be for, I guess.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: Jeremy, can you I think we can both answer that one, Paul, because you've spend your life working on essentially defense alternatives.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that the thing to remember is that, and it's an extraordinary story, this, is that you go back 40 years when we all fear for a potential nuclear war, and you had some very good work done in academics, some of it was at Bradford University, supported, as you would expect repeatedly, by the Quakers.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the Alternative Defense Commission.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a remarkable document which has been used widely by academics, and it basically said you can do defensive defense, you don't have to sort of be ready to deter people by blowing up the world.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: The interesting thing about that was it wasn't really taken up in the West.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: The people who were really interested in it were the people around Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, because they were finding themselves being spent into an early grave, so to speak, with all the money that it was costing.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: And here were people in the West who saying it doesn't have to be like this.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think those academics, including some from Bradford, had a much bigger impact than people realize.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that one has to remember, you know, so much of the best social change over the last two centuries has been done by non-violent direct action of all kinds.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: The whole Chartist movement, the development of trade unions, women's suffrage.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: There was some violence mostly used against the women, but then you look at, you know, the Gandhian impact on the beginnings of decolonization.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: You look at the civil rights movement in the United States, you look at the citizen movements in the what 1989-1990 in Eastern Europe, Solidar in Poland.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: We forget that in many cases real progress is made, at least in part, by non-violent action.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we forget that really somebody needs to write just a little booklet reminding people in easy English this is how things actually can change, and they change for the better.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's thank you, Paul, and thank you for your question.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: I just leave you with this thought before I read something that the suffragettes were condemned as evil, extreme terrorists, threat to society, threat to democracy, threat to the crown.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: They were threats to pretty well everything, actually.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then here we are, a century later, they're on tea towels, postage stamps, banknotes, and everything else.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're now sort of seen as the heroic part of British history.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: So condemn today, praise tomorrow.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of happens historically.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: I just wish that uh those people that have uh stood up for Palestine around the world be recognized now by a change of government policy and stop spending money on arms well.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is about to tell me to stop.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm afraid we're going to have to stop, but I would ask you, Jeremy, to say some final words just to remind us.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, before we do that, I'll leave Jeremy with the last word.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you all for coming.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you hugely to Simon and all the people of the Bradford Literature Festival for what they do.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the reasons why Bradford, I'm pretty certain, got the City of Culture Award, and it's made a very big difference to the city.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to go from virtually nothing uh to, I think it's the third largest uh literary festival in the country, exceeding Edinburgh and no, close to Edinburgh and close to Wiley, and to do it in a far more multi-confessional and multicultural way, I think is one heck of an achievement, and we should be proud of the people doing it.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Totally endorse what Paul said.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well done, the festival, well done, Bradford.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_03: What a contribution to the world by this festival, and I love being here and supporting it.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: Our book was um helped by many people, one of whom was Sally Rooney, who we approached and asked her to write something to conclude the book, and she very kindly did.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: And in it, and I'm going to quote one paragraph, because she's a very generous person.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: She says, in a letter essay written during his extended imprisonment, the novelist Wali Dhaka invoked the idea of parallel time to describe the experience of Palestinian prisoners.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: We in parallel time see you, while you all do not see us.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: We are a past continuous and never-ending.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: We address you all from it presently so that it does not become your future.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Gaza today is perhaps the parallel time of all civilizations.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: Seeing and unseen, past and never-ending.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: To see Gaza not as a tragic historical event, not as a list of facts and statistics, but as a really existing place at the moment, is to enter a different relationship with the future.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's really thought-provoking stuff.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Sally Rooney, for the book.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you to all those that contributed.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: Let's make sure the rest of the world hears about and listens to the tragedy that the Palestinian people are facing.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: But also, remember, they are a people.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: They have music, they have art, they have ideas, they have history, they're a culture.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: And any society that oppresses another starts by oppressing its history, its culture, and its faith.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's why our solidarity with the Palestinian people is cultural as much as it is political, economic, and aid related.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you all for being here today.