Church bell tolls for an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Boasting an impressive list of speakers, including singer and TV personality Charlotte Church, Saturday’s Welsh National March For Palestine saw thousands of humanitarian crusaders from across Wales gather in Cardiff’s Central Square to express their prayers for the UK government to stop condoning Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign of terror in Gaza, where tens of thousands of children and civilians have been slaughtered by the Israel Defence Forces since the false-flag Hamas raid on 7 October.

Also speaking at the biggest solidarity rally to take place in the nation since Israel’s genocidal campaign began were a number of members of Wales’ Palestinian solidarity movement such as Palestine Social Club chairperson Sumayya Ahmed, Palestine Solidarity Campaign honorary president Betty Hunter, Cardiff councillor Ali Ahmed, MP Beth Winter, MS Peredur Owen Griffiths and Swansea cardiologist Ahmed Sabra… who became trapped in Gaza, with his family, when the tragedy in the Palestinian enclave was unfolding last month.

Organised by the Wales For A Free Palestine coalition, the march also saw a number of Palestinian activists from Wales decry Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in their homeland and call for the UK government to back an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza, supposedly experiencing a temporary four-day humanitarian respite from the carnage this weekend following a truce brokered after talks mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt.

But the break in hostilities is only a temporary postponement of the genocide, with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant telling members of the Israeli Navy's Shayetet 13 commando unit on Twitter (aka mark of the Musk): "This will be a short respite, after which the fighting will continue with intensity, and pressure will be made to bring back more hostages. At least two more months of fighting is expected.”

Sabra has not long returned to Swansea after he was separated from his family and stuck in Gaza, while his wife and children were allowed safe haven to Egypt.

“My heart is bleeding for what we've witnessed and what is still ongoing,” he told ITV last week. “I still have family in Gaza and I'm really worried about them.

"Gaza, I think now is the most dangerous place in the world. A child is being killed every 10 minutes. More than 50 per cent of houses are getting bombed. There is no safe place in Gaza."

Talking about how he managed to cope with the situation, he told ITV: "I was going back into survival mode, trying to find shelter and food. But at the same time, the general concern is: ‘Am I going to make it to join my family? And when is all this suffering going to end?’"

He also thanked his friends and former colleagues at Morriston Hospital for their efforts to get him home. “I cannot thank them enough,” he said. “I think they did an amazing job. And I think it did really pressure the Foreign Office to do their job."

He also told ITV: "When I arrived at my home in Swansea, I slept for 15 hours. During that time you don't sleep, the bombing is continuous. You can just see the flashing light of the missile and its explosion. Even the smell of the gunpowder is there all the time.

“My wife is still having nightmares and she sometimes gets up and thinks we have to be evacuated. I'm still trying to look after my family and trying to protect my family. I'm still not at the stage where I'm recovering and this is still ongoing as every day you see the killing."

On Saturday in Cardiff he put aside his nerves about public speaking and swallowed the heartbreak coursing through his veins to relate some of the horrors he witnessed in Gaza.

“Right to live is maybe the first right,” he said. “People don’t even have this right, this has been taken away from them. They want even the right to die with dignity, which is more important for them than life now because they don’t have a choice, they are going to be murdered and killed.”

Sabra said families were not even allowed to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the streets. “They are rotting in the street,” he said. “They are being eaten by wild dogs. Safe passages are not safe passages, they are lying to you, the south of Gaza, which is ‘safe’, has seen 43 per cent of people killed.”

And perhaps most tragically of all he related a story about his last three days spent sheltering in a United Nations school: “People were forced to walk over these dead bodies, who’ve been killed before in the previous day. Anyone who looks right or left was killed. And they were picking some people randomly, ‘You with the blue shirt, you with the black shirt, come here, undress fully.’ This happened over three days, identical story, they will take them fully naked to the side of the tank and two bullets and done, field executions were a daily reality and this is safe passages.”

Sabra’s accounts were heartbreaking but none of his testimony made it into yesterday’s Wales On Sunday, which was enticed by Church’s presence to give the rally some space on its front page, with a plug to page five where a story could be found.

There were also a few pictures and words on WalesOnline, which were much the same as those that appeared in print and just acknowledged Church had taken part.

“Crowds gathered at Cardiff city centre on Saturday to show their support for Palestine,” the online report said. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of people met outside Central Square near Cardiff Central train station, before marching through the city.”

However the words of the speakers seemed to be of no consequence, it was the effects on traffic that seemed to be of most interest.

“It is thought that the large turn out contributed to slow traffic in Cardiff, along with Christmas shoppers,” the report stated.

But Church spoke so passionately… although to read the Wales On Sunday coverage you’d never have known it. There was nothing about her plea to the people of Wales to not look away and to be brave and strong in support of the Palestinian people.

There was nothing about her anecdote about a lonely vigil carried out by lifelong pacifist Abraham Johannes Muste (better known as AJ) outside the White House during the Vietnam War.

“A man stood outside the White House with a single protest candle every night during the Vietnam War,” she read. “A reporter came to him one night and said: ‘Sir, do you really believe your little protest will change anything?’ And the man said: ‘Oh I don’t come here to change them, I come here so they don’t change me. I will not allow the steady maddening onslaught of insanity to wear down my humanity. I will keep knowing the truth and telling the truth. I will do my small part every damn day to stay human, to stay awake and tender so that the world does not wear away at my humanity.’”

Church then recounted some words by prominent Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, reading: “The spirit of evil is a negation of the life force by fear. Only boldness can deliver us from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.”

She continued: “So to all the people at home, sat on the fence. Not sure who’s right, what they should do. Please, keep watching the videos, keep sharing, keep knowing the truth.

“We must understand that this is so important for all of us right now. And it’s not just about Palestine, it’s about peace. It’s about freedom, it’s about decolonisation. It’s about justice. So if you believe in life, and you believe in humanity and dignity, then please stand with the people of Palestine.”

Church finished up by singing “a beautiful song” by Manchester-born British-Palestinian musician Reem Kelani that she asked the humanitarian crusaders in Central Square to accompany her with. It probably didn’t go quite how she’d envisaged it in her head but it was nevertheless a poignant climax to her speech, which she concluded by sending a message to the UK government and governments in the west.

“Just to remind you that we are not in service to you and your interests, but you are in service to us and our interests,” she said. “And our interests mean supporting life, all life, all freedom on Earth and it’s about time we reminded you of that. And we will become more and more strong, more and more of a collective action. We will get more and more creative in ways to help you remember that. Thank you very much, free Palestine!”

To have experienced her passionate plea for sanity to prevail in Gaza and the West Bank there’s no point looking in the mainstream media, it’s not covered there as the Wales On Sunday report clearly indicates.

If you care about human life and condemn the genocide of children and civilians in Palestine then you need to stand in solidarity with them and tell the world the madness has to stop.

What do we want? Ceasefire! When do we want it? Now! But it must be a permanent lasting end to the ethnic cleansing… four-day breaks are of no use when the genocide will resume when the devils in Jerusalem think the pressure to stop is subsiding!