Gaza, Barclays, the climate crisis and me
I remember the moment when the realisation hit me, and it hit like a punch to the gut. Early in the conflict in Gaza, two news reports in quick succession. One reported the ferocity of the Israeli aerial bombardment and the devastation that instantly followed; the other on the terrifying quote from an interview given by Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, defining the people of Gaza as “human animals”; something less than human, undeserving of the most basic rights. Undeserving of life itself. This is what the rhetoric of genocide sounds like, made real by acts of hyperviolence.
It left me reeling. Beyond the fear of the ungodly horrors that would follow, I have an intimate connection to the Palestinian cause. My godson Kareem, who I adore, was born and raised in the Occupied Territories. His memories from early childhood tell the story of a community bathed in love and solidarity. His mum Clare is one of my closest friends in the world and has been a fierce advocate for a free Palestine as long as I’ve known her. She inspired me to never look away from Gaza and the West Bank, and to educate myself in its past and present.
And so to the present: even if the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must take measures to prevent genocide, it has also said that “at least some” of South Africa’s claims that Palestinian rights needing protection under the genocide convention were “plausible”. This strikes me as an obvious and troubling discrepancy.
Far from the legal arguments, the Israeli assault on Gaza appears genocidal in intent and execution. The appalling rhetoric from several members of the Israel government and a stark, long list of statistics bear that out.
And here is where I struggle most. Because genocide, or near-genocide, or simply the mass killing of innocent people is impossibly big to conceive. I can only conceive a thought relative to my own experience, and all I know, like most people, is the death of someone I loved. The grief that I’ve felt to lose just one person has consumed me entirely, has taken every part of me in its grip. To lose an entire family, a village, a community…more than 26,500 people to date…is suffering I can’t even begin to comprehend.
So while the terrible scale of devastation can lead to a sense of overwhelm, I choose not to feel paralysed and weak. This is the same choice we all have as witnesses to this tragedy. I’ve learned through years of political activism that we can affect what happens elsewhere in the world, and there is power in collective action. This is how I choose to respond.
It’s why I’m attending a rallying action by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and XR Southampton this weekend, to urge customers of Barclays to shut their accounts and switch to a more ethical bank or building society. Barclays directly finances 9 companies who supply weapons to Israel with £4bn of funding. They are bankrolling a genocidal campaign on innocent lives, many of whom are children. They funded apartheid in South Africa until anti-racist campaigners forced them to withdraw, so we know we can win this fight.
If that weren’t bad enough, Barclays is also one of the Europe’s biggest funders of fossil fuel projects, contributing over $150bn since the Paris Agreement in 2015. Each project is a carbon bomb, one of 125 current oil and gas exploration projects which scientists recognise will cause emissions to rise four times higher than the 1.5 degree limit we need to avert the very real threat of human and non-human tragedy on a catastrophic scale like we’ve never seen.
We can pull the plug on those who invest in death, and so PSC are asking Barclays customers to shut their accounts with thousands across the country this Saturday 9th February to send a message that we aren’t overwhelmed and alone, and we’ve decided to act.
We’ll be outside Barclays on Above Bar Street between 11–12 this Saturday. If you’d like to help handing out leaflets please come at 10:30 for a briefing.
