Musings on the politics of youth work, community work and society at large – dedicated to the memory of Steve Waterhouse and Malcolm Ball, great youth workers, comrades and human beings
At a time when it is tempting to use the analogy of ‘lunatics running the asylum’ or should that be ‘Sociopaths running Society’, I drew inspiration and joy from this powerful tale of solidarity.
On 24 January 1919, staff and patients barricaded themselves inside the Monaghan Lunatic Asylum in Ireland and declared a soviet (workers’ council). The asylum workers had already shown militancy during a 1918 strike when they chased away visiting staff who attempted to cross the picket line.
By 1919, attendants and nurses were working a 93-hour week and earning just £60-£70 per annum. They invited Peadar O’Donnell, a leading militant in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, to negotiate on their behalf. And when negotiations failed to resolve their grievances, they hoisted the red flag and ran the asylum in cooperation with the patients. O’Donnell implemented a 48-hour working week and locked one attendant in a padded cell for “defeatism.” The staff and patients showed extraordinary resolve to maintain the occupation even when surrounded by 125 armed police.
Unusually, no great animosity seems to have existed between police and strikers, and during the occupation they co-organised dances and football matches. Nevertheless, when a rumour circulated that military police were about to force entry, the occupiers sealed windows, barricaded corridors, swapped clothes with patients (to confuse the attackers), and attempted to arm themselves with shovels, spades, and pitchforks. When authorities offered to meet wage demands for male workers only, the occupiers refused to concede, insisting on parity for women workers.
In the end, the standoff was resolved peacefully, with the total capitulation of the Asylum Committee. The occupiers held a victory dance in one of the dining halls, which was attended by many local townspeople as well as some of the police force. The following morning, February 4, they returned to work.
It seems unbelievable that the slaughter of the innocents continues; that the calculated genocide pursued by the Zionist Israeli government remains its official policy, afforded succour and ammunition on a daily basis by the USA, the UK and the EU.
With a heavy heart I can do no more than offer the Reverend’s 2024 calm. yet anguished reflection on the situation facing Palestinians today. I can but weep.
“‘Never again’ should mean never again to all peoples,” Munther says in his sermon. “‘Never again’ has become ‘yet again’ — yet again to supremacy, yet again to racism and yet again to genocide. And sadly, ‘never again’ has become yet again for the weaponization of the Bible and the silence and complicity of the Western church, yet again for the church siding with power, the church siding with the empire.”
“So, today, after all this, of total destruction, annihilation, Gaza is erased — millions have become refugees and homeless, tens of thousands killed. And why is anyone still debating whether this is a genocide or not?”
“We’re still seeing images of children pulled from under the rubble. It’s unthinkable to me that it’s been more than 14 months now into this genocide, and we’re still seeing the same images. It seems like we’re powerless, and it seems that the world is content with letting this go on. And here in the West Bank, as we watch from Bethlehem what’s happening in Ramallah or Hebron, we wonder, ‘Are we next?’ Israel has made it clear they plan to annex the West Bank next year. What would this mean on the ground?”
“Our fear here in Bethlehem is that there is no one who’s going to hold Israel accountable.”
Yes, it has been 440 days. It is 440 days of Palestinians’ resilience, sumud. Indeed, it is 76 years of sumud. But we have not and will not lose hope. Yes, it is 76 years of an ongoing Nakba, but it is also 76 years of Palestinian sumud, clinging to our rights and justice of our cause, 76 years of praying and singing for peace. I was thinking about it. We are stubborn people. We continue to pray for peace year after year after year, and sing about peace, and we will continue to do so. And we will continue to echo the words of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth.”
As for an ageing, irreconcilable atheist like myself I can but pledge my unswerving support for the Palestinian cause and with the good Reverend pray for ‘peace on earth’.
It’s not snow but a bitterly cold Yorkshire setting, January 1971. I’m hanging on to the heels of the great Mick Holmes, now sadly deceased.
As has been my fetish since around 1968 I trained on New Years Day. Although I don’t think the aspiring athlete of well over half a century ago would recognise my shuffling attempt to race walk as worthy of the epithet, ‘training’. On the other hand, 2024, a year of relative sickness, has sapped me of my long-standing confidence in an ability to fend off the years. It wasn’t snowing in our Cretan village but Marilyn’s lovely watercolour of a route I used to run back in the day brought back frozen memories of the joy of movement. As it was my slow progress allowed me to take in the beauty and tranquillity of my pine-filled surroundings, enabling my affectionate conversation in both English and Greek with dogs, cats, sheep and goats along the way. I swear they look forward to me coming! Back home in virtual reality, slumped at the computer, I pondered a New Year’s message to my less than adoring public.
It’s been a lean year for posts on this website. Meanwhile the world continues to be in collective, apparently crazed convulsion. Genocide is normalised. There is not just talk of crisis but of polycrisis. I find myself claiming to be confused. There is so much going on I can’t see the roof for the tiles. This tame assertion contains grains of truth but is no more than a limp excuse. For I do possess an overview of what’s happening in the world and, to an extent, I outlined this perspective, however flawed, a year ago. Indeed, when I go back to the three or four pieces I published back then, there is little I would change and much I would add – see the link below.
In claiming that I have some kind of overall insight into the present course of history (and in the light of observations I have made, in particular, about the COVID melodrama) I open myself to the curt dismissal that I am a simpleton, a conspiracy theorist. The knee-jerk charge, whether explicit or implicit, allows its prosecutors, drawn initially from the professional milieu or the ‘knowledge industry’, to pass judgement without recourse to dialogue. This facile reasoning does trickle down, courtesy of a largely grovelling mass media, into day-to-day discourse. Only so far, though. There is also a widespread reaction, which questions the patronising certainty of today’s priests – experts, politicians, journalists, technocrats, professionals, academics, influencers, Ursula van Leyden, Uncle Tony Fauci and all – who demand, despite their often demonstrable deceit, that society submits to their unswerving hierarchical faith and trusts the[ir] Science.
Inevitably this refusal or, at least, reluctance to comply takes many different forms, which in themselves, are strewn with contradiction. However the necessity of grappling with the intertwining, oft conflicting tendencies within those who demur, is spurned by those who know better. The generalisations, the stereotypes flood and drown debate. Who are we talking about here? Who are the refuseniks, the populists, that dubious and derided category of humanity standing in the way of progress ? Amongst them in the States are Clinton’s deplorables, Biden’s garbage, Obama’s sewage. Whilst in the UK and Europe we find racist, xenophobic, working class Brexiteers, far right nationalists of differing hues. All of whose wayward opinions are being given succour, so the narrative goes, by an eclectic and politically diffuse array of authoritarians and anti-authoritarians, peopling the airwaves of the alternative media with its daily dissenting diet of live coverage and lengthy podcasts, the latter the very opposite of superficial sound-bites. My oldest grandson, Ben swears by the strength of the podcast in challenging him to think critically, outside of the status quo. Of course, in my naivete, I’m overlooking that this motley crew of Far Right sympathisers, especially its lumpen elements, is in thrall to strong leaders, symbolised by Trump, a fascist by all ‘progressive’ accounts and has no legitimate agenda of its own. This arrogant trivialisation of grass-roots unrest is symbolised by the demise of the Democratic Party in the USA, which even the loyalist Bernie Sanders admits has abandoned the working class.
On a personal level I am disturbed by the way in which my public outlook and practice has been infected by the dominant narrative and I’m long out of the orthodox bubble. Sure, my nerves are not at all what they were. Age and illness have taken their toll. Just a fortnight ago, a concerned neurologist sent me for an MRI scan to determine further, if possible, the reason for my debilitating tremors and disorientation. As best can be seen, Parkinson’s is not on the horizon but the doctor spoke of ‘accelerated ageing’. Like it or not, this notion does fit with how I’m feeling! This self-centredness aside, I do find myself shaking externally and internally when overhearing in the taverna the predictable pronouncements on the state of the world proffered so confidently by well-off English-speaking tourists and migrants. Nowadays it matters little whether these prejudices are garnered from the Daily Mail or the Guardian. They are uttered shamelessly, unhesitatingly. To my shame I keep my gob shut.
How to understand this level of anxiety around standing up for what I believe? And what is it I believe and why does it feel so problematic to give voice to my opinion? After all since the mid-70s haven’t I often been a disagreeable voice within personal, professional and political situations? Perhaps I exaggerate but I often felt disaffected colleagues looked to me to be their spokesperson. What were the balance of forces into which I was intervening? Let me answer my question somewhat crudely. Certainly within the professional and academic world it was a matter of challenging the liberal order with a demand that the relations of exploitation and oppression be addressed. What of now? In my head and my heart I wish to express still an anti-capitalist, humanist and universalist opposition to the desires of those upstairs, the powerful. I strive to stay true to the memory of my dear friend and comrade, Sue Atkins. Yet I feel down if not out. She would not have approved of my dismay.
I’m at odds with a so-called progressive politics, which in Malcolm Ball’s turn of phrase wishes ‘to change the word and not the world’. Of course words as well as sticks and stones are hurtful. Indeed, in the part-time youth worker training I organised and facilitated in the late 1970s, we engaged directly with the impact of racist, sexist and homophobic language upon ourselves and young people. Although, on reflection, our missionary zeal foreshadowed some of today’s unforgiving insistence on prescribed verbal adherence.
I’ll stop here as I’m opening a receptacle of wriggling rats such as global governance and the nation-state, censorship and surveillance, the climate crisis, identity politics, Zionism, the material and the spiritual, all of which and more needs serious unravelling, It remains to be seen whether I do so. For what it’s worth I’ll try to post links to stimulating writing from across the spectrum. I promised this last year and failed. I’m going to begin revisiting stuff I’ve written in the past, which still seems relevant. I suspect I carry a chip on my shoulder about how much of it has ever been read! Finally I have embarked on a pretentious project, an autobiography. The rough draft of a first decade from 1958 to 1968, from passing the eleven plus to leaving teacher training college awaits revision, At the very least it is helping me to understand better how I’ve come to be who I am today. If, nothing else, it ought to keep me out of mischief.
After her retirement in 1998, Sue Atkins threw herself into the development of the Youth Association South Yorkshire
My friend and colleague Susan Atkins, who has died aged 86, was a highly respected youth worker in Sheffield who also played, over many decades, a national role in the validation of youth and community work training courses in higher education.
Sue was destined to be a youth worker. Born in Uxbridge, west London, she was the daughter of Kit and Paul Beaven, who ran a thriving open-access youth club that drew the attention of Jennie Lee, Labour’s minister for the arts, through its combination of informal social space with drama, music and art.
After leaving Bishopshalt school, Sue forged a reputation in the local amateur theatre group the Argosy Players, holding down an eclectic variety of daytime jobs to finance her thespian talent. In later years she would depict youth work as an unfolding drama, an improvised script, the authors of which were young people and youth workers as animated equals.
In 1966, she barely “survived” the one-year qualifying course at the new National College for Youth Leaders in Leicester. This experience of higher education that faltered on the edge of failure stayed with her for the rest of her remarkable career – and sometimes Sue expressed herself with a feigned anti-intellectualism.
In 1967, she accepted what was intended to be a temporary post in Sheffield as a community-based youth worker with immigrants. She was never to leave, and worked in tandem with Mike Atkins, soon to be the city’s race adviser, whom she married in 1969. Her pioneering work with the Afro-Caribbean community created a responsive youth service within which young people prospered, often becoming education and welfare practitioners in their own right.
She was a dynamic presence within the Community and Youth Workers’ Union (now part of Unite the Union), embracing a caucusing structure that amplified the voices of women, and black, gay and part-time workers. Serving as president of the union in the mid-1980s, she was a leading negotiator for improved wages and conditions.
After her retirement in 1998, Sue threw herself into the development of YASY (the Youth Association South Yorkshire), and, from 2009, she was energised by the In Defence of Youth Work campaign. She identified passionately with its vision of youth work as “volatile and voluntary, creative and collective – an association and conversation without guarantees”. Dubbing herself teasingly as “a woolly Marxist optimist”, she was a socialist-feminist and supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.
In the last of 20 annual reports to her beloved YASY, she ended: “For me, Youth Work has always sought to enable and facilitate young people to test, explore and flourish, to discover their hopes and dreams and find their focus and direction.” The day before she died Sue was in a meeting called to design a training programme for volunteers. Throughout, she was devoted to her life’s work.
Sue is survived by Mike, a stepdaughter, Kiya, and grandson, Isaiah, and her brother, Peter.
My impression remains that people either want to forget or deny the suppression of society during the so-called ‘pandemic’. Given the mounting evidence that, at the very, very least, the undemocratic, unevidenced assault on liberty was problematic, it’s no longer straightforward to dismiss COVID critics as unhinged, anti-science conspiracy theorists. It seems preferable to pretend the nightmare was a dream and consign it to the past.
Amongst the many issues still on the table I’ll draw your attention to just two. Firstly there remain many courageous individuals, who voiced utterly legitimate concerns about the lockdowns, whose lives and careers have been shattered – see the example of the incredibly modest and inspiring Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill.
New Illusion of Consensus podcast! Dr. @dockaurG is a Canadian doctor who speaks bravely vs. lockdowns. She faces a vicious smear campaign & legal action that threatens to bankrupt her. This is her first public interview. Please donate to her legal fund:https://t.co/Y7Q3b2Pyk3pic.twitter.com/2KOtD2P87t
Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill is a frontline physician in Ontario, Canada who supports fully informed voluntary consent without any forms of coercion or restriction in all medical decision-making. She is a long-time advocate for patient autonomy, evidence-based decision-making, protection of the patient-doctor relationship, and an accessible, quality healthcare system.
In the summer of 2020, Dr. Gill was one of the first Canadian physicians to bravely speak out publicly on social media about the catastrophic and irreparable harms of lockdowns. She quickly became the target of an orchestrated malicious online smear campaign that encouraged the public to lodge complaints to her regulatory college. In an attempt to clear her name from spurious defamation, she had launched legal proceedings against those responsible; but a pre-trial procedural ruling against her had led to a cost order of up to $1.2M in October 2022. This court procedural/motion decision and the cost order were both appealed, ultimately leading to a costs order of nearly $300K ordered in late February 2024 with just weeks to pay.
Dr. Gill was once a lone voice against lockdowns in Canada: a compassionate voice for humanity who has inspired countless people around the world to take a stand against harmful government measures. The arc of history has bent towards Dr. Gill; sadly her early warnings on lockdown harms have come to fruition. Compelled by her conscience, her courageous and ethical efforts to uphold the Hippocratic oath in supporting patient autonomy and speaking out against harmful lockdowns have come at an immense personal cost to Dr. Gill. Her supporters are using this platform to fundraise to support her legal fund, and her fight for our human rights. Please donate and share.
Secondly, are we so naive as to think there are no more emergencies in the pipeline as the ruling class creates an era of anxiety? And that it seeks to introduce evermore definitions of what it sees as unacceptable dissension from its authoritarian agenda. For example, see Michael Gove’s new definition of ‘extremism‘. HART, the independent and questioning ‘Health Advisory and Recovery Team’ point out who ought to be the first to be charged under its tenuous tenets.
In the latest egregious bout of trolling from HM Gov, it takes about 3 milliseconds of studying the new definition of extremism to realise that during the so-called ‘pandemic’, the government did precisely everything therein:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others;
What, like denying them social contact, denying them the right to be with their dying relatives, forcing medical procedures on them in order to continue their job, denying them the right to earn a living, denying their rights of free movement, locking them in their homes and arresting them for sitting on a bench? That kind of thing?
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights;
What, you mean like introducing a brand new legal act (in spite of there already existing an appropriate instrument) that completely tramples parliamentary democracy, giving the sitting government the right to jackboot their way into people’s lives as outlined in point 1 above? Or like shutting down parliament entirely and cancelling elections? Or perhaps like Matt Hancock telling parliament that he had unilaterally decided to offer the pharmaceutical companies indemnity for their products.
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).
What, you mean by censoring and smearing any opposing views, demonising anyone who didn’t get with the programme and creating an environment of extremism via a media monopoly that would have been more fitting in Mao Zedong’s China.
Thanks to Edward Curtin for taking me back to a poem I had filed away at the beginning of the New Year
It was composed by the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in Gaza by an IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023 along with his brother, nephew, sister, and three of her children.
If I Must Die
If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze — and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself — sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above, and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love. If I must die let it bring hope, let it be a story.
Britain’s political class rightly responded to the mysterious death of Alexei Navalny with an assortment of horror, outrage and indignation. The Kremlin critic’s treatment was an “appalling human rights outrage”, foreign secretary Lord Cameron said. Putin has to be “held to account”, Labour leader Keir Starmer added. So, when Julian Assange arrives at the High Court today for his final hearing, after being held without trial in Belmarsh maximum-security prison for almost five years, will the country’s political elite once again proclaim their commitment to human rights? I suspect not.
If the British state allows Assange to be extradited to the US, it won’t be dealing a potentially deadly blow just to one man, but to democracy itself
I’ve written for UnHerd about the two-day hearing starting today in which the UK High Court will announce its final decision on Assange’s extradition to the US. If the court rules out a further appeal, Assange could be immediately extradited to the United States, where he will almost certainly be incarcerated for the rest of his life on charges of espionage — most likely in extremely punitive conditions that will push his already critical physical and psychological conditions over the brink. “His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison”, his wife Stella Assange said. “If he’s extradited, he will die”.
The British government’s lack of concern for Assange’s fate is not surprising: they are the ones that put him in prison in the first place, after all. More worrying is the fact that much of the British public also seems relatively unconcerned with the case. This, I suspect, is the result of the relentless smear campaign waged against Assange over the past decade and a half, aimed at destroying his reputation, depriving him of public support and muddying the waters surround his case.
This is why in the article I try to debunk several myths about the Assange case, from the trumped-up rape charges to the depiction of Assange as a fugitive from justice.
As a break from my usual ramblings on the state of the world but not at all at odds with its philosophy, enjoy this brief extract of the quartet, ‘ΤΕΤΡΑΗΧΟ”, playing in the picturesque village of Pollirinia on Crete back in July 2023. I’ve been privileged to hear them breaking boundaries with this unusual combination of instruments and styles. My dear friend, Maria, an outstanding jazz violinist brought together two great figures from the Cretan violin tradition in Michalis and Markos, together with the outstanding lute player, Kiriakos to explore and improvise without any guarantees of whether it would work. The outcome was a joyous, anarchic celebration of intimate music-making founded on listening, always listening to one another. You should have heard their exuberant version of a Brahms Hungarian Dance! It exuded a love of humanity, a mutual affection, which more than ever we need to defend. I’m still trying to ascertain who won the children’s running race taking place in the background! Kids!
When I was about 8 years old my primary school teacher, frustrated by my reluctance to enter, pushed me into the pool at the town’s Baths. I thought I was going to drown but my fellow pupils came to the rescue. How could she have done this? What callousness! Or so the story goes. In truth I’m not sure the incident ever happened. However, I’ve told the tale so many times, often embellished, that I’ve come to believe it. Why the need for this dubious childhood anecdote? Certainly it has served to excuse my genuine fear of putting my head under water. Friends who have sought to teach me to swim can attest to my frenzied splashing in protest. Indeed it appears to explain my life-long struggle to stifle frightening dreams, within which I experience being suffocated, physically with a pillow, or psychologically by guilt, having betrayed my beliefs or people dear to me. I awake dramatically, fighting for my breath. By and large I deal with this, park the neurosis in its place. And then again, perhaps not.
For over the last four years, in particular, I have felt suffocated, drowning in an unrelenting deluge of information, opinion, analysis and gossip. I experience being in a state of alternative asphyxia. It is not that I am starved of the oxygen of ideas, rather I gorge, I binge compulsively on their 24/7 availability. Some sort of diet beckons.
This self-indulgent, breathless cry for relief from the day-to-day assault on my senses inflicted by the media of whatever ilk is very much personal. It is not to be taken in any way as an argument against the widest possible array of views being out there and accessible. I oppose censorship, the suppression of opinion, most of all when I disagree even vehemently with such speculation. I stand against authoritarianism, whether dressed in the cloak of the Left, Centre or Right. Obviously I have no time for the manufactured categories of mis and disinformation through which the powerful seek to silence criticism and opposition. Plainly the charge of misinformation is directed principally at those who question the dominant narrative. It is applied to those who desire to make public what the ruling class wishes to remain private. According to the ever suave Barack Obama, I’m severely mistaken. I’m sinking into the ‘raw sewage’ pumped into the public square by the alternative media. Thus, misled, he opines it’s no wonder I’ve lost faith in society’s politicians, institutions and media and in doing so I represent a disturbing threat – let’s not mince his words – to the future of humankind. Given this apocalyptic charge, it’s no surprise that the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos is deeply bothered about my dissidence.
In his opening remarks to the conference of the great and good, Klaus Schwab, its founder and chair expressed his concern – “We must rebuild trust – trust in the future, trust in our capacity to overcome challenges and, most importantly, trust in each other.” In order to win back my undying support the elite will continue to encourage the creation of an armoury of so-called ‘independent’ disinformation agencies, funded by a mix of private and public sources. For example the European Union has “a network of anti-disinformation hubs that are part of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the independent platform for fact-checkers, academic researchers and other relevant stakeholders contributing to addressing disinformation in Europe”. Forgive the obvious but there is not the faintest scent of humility in these manoeuvrings, the slightest nod of recognition that their arrogant and authoritarian programme of propaganda and restriction might have something to do with our mistrust of their motives.
In the UK’s recently passed ‘Online Safety Bill’ you can see how the government intends to win back our trust. Section 179 section makes it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm…..
…..but Section 180 exempts all Mainstream Media outlets from this new law!
Of course I might not be seeing the wall for the bricks but this suggests strongly that the MSM are explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”. Yet you or I can be imprisoned for a year for committing a criminal act in drawing attention to their conscious deceit. A touch topsy-turvy!
Hence, for my part, I will not be intimidated into accepting the powerful’s rule over what I think or believe. Perhaps you might think me simple but, on a day-to-day basis, I will proceed on the basis of receiving, reading and thinking about information. It will be whatever it is, a product of those who put it together, informed by their expertise or lack of it, their integrity, their prejudices, their beliefs and so on. It is my job as the aspiring, thoughtful citizen of Aristotle’s imagination to interpret and judge what I am told to the best of my faculties. Certainly such an ability, as far as it goes in my case, is born of a splicing of political activism with professional education and a measure of involvement in academia. At my most pretentious I fancied myself as one of Gramsci’s organic intellectuals.
Thanks to avanti.it
In this context, summed up in the world of youth and community work [YCW] work, within which I laboured, as the desire to be a critically reflective practitioner, I didn’t expect to be so isolated as the COVID manufactured melodrama unfolded. I remain perplexed at the extent to which the professional class, including its YCW members, embraced and colluded uncritically with an unevidenced and unethical regime of societal restriction. An emergency was asserted but never proven. Fear provided its justification. Naively, I thought such authoritarianism would spark resistance. In retrospect, I failed to recognise how deeply behaviourism, its apparatus of preordained scripts, prescribed targets and imposed outcomes, was embedded in the professional psyche – not least in work with young people.This acceptance of a discourse of certainty about the correctness of our data-driven, objective models, the righteousness of our impact, the benificence of our worthy goals, spilled over into life as a whole. And, as far as I can see, practitioners remain in denial as to what they were up to. No more than fleeting research confirms that masking, social distancing [made up on the back of a cigarette packet], the closure of children’s and young people’s provision were harmful and unnecessary. I await the National Youth Agency even shyly allowing it was a touch over the top, even as it bemoans a deterioration in young people’s mental health. Evidently it was the virus ‘wot dun it’ not the conscious application by practitioners of draconian social policy. Perhaps, though I’m too harsh, even the much revered Noam Chomsky, ‘an intellectual superstar’, according to the Guardian, succumbed utterly to the smear that the unvaccinated were dangerous and irresponsible, arguing that they should be ‘isolated’.
Ironically and thankfully, Chomsky along with much of the Left recovered his balance as the seemingly endless tragedy of Gaza erupted, as genocide stared us in the face. Almost overnight we rediscovered our ‘instinctive mistrust of the state’, of careerist and opportunist politicians, of undemocratic, unelected bodies of experts. In particular, perhaps, having swallowed whole the COVID propaganda spewing from the mass media, we remembered belatedly our relentless and scathing critique of the bourgeois press, which goes back at least in academic and activist circles to 1974 and the creation of the Glasgow Media Group.
Enough is enough. I’ve peddled this perspective before without reaction, which is fair enough. Who on earth am I? My insignificance acknowledged, it does mean therefore that I must take a deep breath about my suffocating immersion in the currents of available opinion. It is extraordinary but I’m ‘sut on mi bum’ to use a Lancashire expression more than ever in my whole life. True, I still drag myself out more or less every day to indulge the narcotic of my lingering athletic obsession. I persuade myself I feel better for having done it. Yet, outside this hour or so of exertion, I’m sometimes spending up to eight hours hunched over the laptop in a pompous search for the Holy Grail containing ‘the Truth’! Inevitably it’s always just out of reach. I need a break from this self-inflicted imprisonment.
To cut my usual ramble short I’m determined to work out a fresh approach in my declining days. I need to get out more as the saying goes.
I won’t abandon Chatting Critically but, in addition to my occasional originals, I want to use it more as a conduit to challenging thinkers and activists who you might not trip over. In doing so I’ve already culled the number of people I’ve been following because I can’t keep up. A future post will single out blogs and websites, which continue to stimulate me. You might well shake your head at my choices. On the ground I remain committed to our local Chatting Critically group.
I shall spend more time on a project to record the history of the Lancashire Walking Club , of which I am a life member. It gives me pleasure, believe it or not, to do so.
I am close to giving up on even being the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] archivist, the initiative of which I was once coordinator. Few seem interested. To all appearances its open-ended philosophy has been defeated – see the inanities of its supposed Facebook page, which ought to be closed out of respect to IDYW’s corpse.
I’m going to ramble and cycle as I wish without feeling the need to rush back home.
I’m going to spend more time singing and becoming musically literate.
I’m going to spend more time musing for the sake of musing in our village kafeneion.
I cannot promise but I ought to improve my Greek.
On reading this afresh it ends up looking like a belated set of New Year’s resolutions. Given my past track record in keeping to such sensible proposals as cutting down on the village wine, the omens are not promising. We will see.
Tony Taylor
To end positively, let me introduce you to the writings of W.D. James, who teaches philosophy in Kentucky, USA and his substack Philosopher’s Holler
He explains:
Egalitarian Anti-Modernist philosophical ruminations on our contemporary conundrums. In my native dialect, a ‘holler’ can refer to a hollow (empty space), a yell, or a work song.
I’m thinking my way through our current times and I tend to do that by digging into the ‘classics’ of Westen political philosophy to see what light they can shine on the contemporary moment.
My basic stance is characterized by:
Anti-Modernism
Anti-Globalism
Deep respect for pre-modern wisdom traditions, including religious traditions
Liberty
Defense of the opportunity for a good life for everyone
A critique of the modern state
Grounding in nature/reality, intellectually, morally, and existentially
For my part, TT speaking, I would recommend you download and dip into the free pdf, Egalitarian Anti-Modernism
CONTENTS Foreword by Paul Cudenec Part 1: Was Jerusalem Builded Here? Part 2: Jean-Jacques Against the Pathologies of Civilization Part 3: Rousseau and the Evils of Inequality Part 4: Rousseau’s Revival Part 5: William Morris and the Political Economy of Beauty Part 6: William Morris – Dreaming of Justice and of Home Part 7: What is Wrong With the World? Part 8: Chesterton Against Servility Part 9: Catastrophe Part 10: Egalitarian Anti-Modernism and the Contemporary Political Landscape
I enjoyed and was challenged by its content and argument, given that for a long time in my political life I believed in the inexorable relationship between progress and the continual development of the productive forces. I’m less confident nowadays.
A month ago, with some trepidation, it was agreed that our next Chatting Critically meeting would focus on the Israel/Palestine situation. It will take place on Wednesday, January 10th in the ‘Elpida’ kafeneio, Gavalohori, starting at 10.30 a.m.
As the coordinator of the group, I wanted to put together something of an introduction to help the discussion along. However, I’ve found this increasingly difficult as the tragedy unfolds. I’m conscious too that my allegiance to the Palestinian cause goes back to the mid-1970s. I’m hardly impartial.
Thus I’m doing no more than posing a few questions to think about before we get together, supplemented by links to a range of articles, the first of which is by the great independent journalist, John Pilger, who sadly died on New Year’s Eve.
To what extent have we a grasp of the historical background to the conflict? The state of Israel was only founded in 1947 based on expelling thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. How was this justified and who were the players on the world stage, ensuring that this seizure of land happened?
Israel’s establishment as an explicitly Jewish state is a primary point of contention, with many of the state’s critics arguing that this by nature casts non-Jews as second-class citizens with fewer rights. The 1950 Law of Return, for example, grants all Jews, as well as their children, grandchildren, and spouses, the right to move to Israel and automatically gain citizenship. Non-Jews do not have these rights. Palestinians and their descendants have no legal right to return to the lands their families held before being displaced in 1948 or 1967. Deep-rooted structural and social discrimination confirms the second-class status of Arabs within Israel, leading to the charge that Israel is an apartheid state? Is this claim legitimate?
Does the appalling persecution of Jews across the centuries – for a diversity of reasons, not least in the early 20th century because they were seen as socialists. even communists and the obscenity of the Holocaust, the Final Solution – mean that Israel is exempt from moral or political criticism of its actions today – acknowledged war crimes or indeed perceived genocide?
It is generally acknowledged at an international level, even if this is empty of any real meaning that the Palestinian Territories are prison camps. Given the length and intensity of the incarceration, why the surprise and shock when some of the prisoners plan and execute a violent escape. Isn’t such a brutal ‘slave revolt’, as Norman Finkelstein puts it, an inevitable consequence of Israel’s inhuman policies. And is the appropriate answer of the prison guards, the execution of the inmates left therein?
And, finally, on a personal note, how can we allow the closing down of debate by the mere accusation of anti-semitism or ‘Jew-hating’? Amongst my greatest inspirations and influences are to be found composers, Mahler, Mendelsohn and Schoenberg, artists, Menuhin and Bernstein, intellectuals, Freud and Chomsky, revolutionaries, Marx, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg. All were Jewish. In embracing and criticising their artistic, social and political contributions I recognised but didn’t obsess about their Jewishness. In much the same way I don’t think much about Christianity when listening to Haydn or Bruckner. I’m an atheist but I neither hate Jews nor Christians. I simply disagree.
There are many more questions, for sure.
In directing you to interesting and challenging links I cannot but begin with the late John Pilger’s very last article, written in early November, entitled. ‘We are Spartacus’
“Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job, push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.”
He opens::
Spartacus was a 1960 Hollywood film based on a book written secretly by the blacklisted novelist Howard Fast, and adapted by the screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the “Hollywood 10” who were banned for their “un-American” politics. It is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times.
Both writers were Communists and victims of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the US Senate, which, during the Cold War, destroyed the careers and often the lives of those principled and courageous enough to stand up to a homegrown fascism in America.
“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time…”, wrote Arthur Miller in The Crucible, “We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world”.
There is one “precise” provocateur now; it is clear to see for those who want to see it and foretell its actions. It is a gang of states led by the United States whose stated objective is “full spectrum dominance”. Russia is still the hated one, Red China the feared one.
From Washington and London, the virulence has no limit. Israel, the colonial anachronism and unleashed attack dog, is armed to the teeth and granted historical impunity so that “we” the West ensure the blood and tears never dry in Palestine.
British MPs who dare call for a ceasefire in Gaza are banished, the iron door of two-party politics closed to them by a Labour leader who would withhold water and food from the children.
In expressing his undying admiration for the endeavours of David McBride and Julian Assange in exposing the crimes committed under the banner of the ‘Global War on Terror’, he closes:
Their bravery has allowed many of us, who might despair, to understand the real meaning of a resistance we all share if we want to prevent the conquest of us, our conscience, our self respect, if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.
Spartacus was the rebellious leader of Rome’s slaves in 71-73 B.C. There is a thrilling moment in the Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus when the Romans call on Spartacus’s men to identify their leader and so be pardoned. Instead hundreds of his comrades stand and raise their fists in solidarity and shout, “I am Spartacus!”. The rebellion is under way.
Julian and David are Spartacus. The Palestinians are Spartacus. People who fill the streets with flags and principle and solidarity are Spartacus. We are all Spartacus if we want to be.
Nira Yuval-Davis is a diasporic Israeli Jew, Professor Emeritus, Honorary Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. She reflects on the complexities of its start and end points, beginning:
One of the most contested issues regarding telling the story of the current war in the Middle East is about when to start it. Each narrative always has a clear starting point – if not necessarily an end point – but what is the starting point for this war? Is it the terrible massacre that Hamas fighters carried out among soldiers and civilians, Jews and non-Jews, in the South of Israel on 7 October? – the highest number of people killed in one day in the hundred years of conflict since the beginning of the Zionist settlement in Palestine – at least until that day. That’s probably where most Israelis would like to start the story.
Should I start with the ongoing massive systematic bombing, destruction, displacement and killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, including thousands of children, a new Palestinian Nakba? That’s where many international protesters focus their protests.
Or I could start the narrative by telling the history of the Zionist settler colonial project, before and after 1948 and the establishment of the Israeli state. A large proportion of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip today are 1948 refugees, and most of the settlements attacked on 7 October sit on lands where previous generations of today’s Gazans used to live, before the first Nakba.
Or maybe I should start my narrative by telling how Israeli intelligence – just like the US with the Taliban – was a cultivator of Hamas in its infancy, as part of a divide and rule policy aimed at weakening the power of the PLO; and how, until 7 October, it facilitated the rule of Hamas in Gaza by enabling the transfer of money to Hamas from Qatar via Israeli banks, so it could distribute money to people in this huge open-air prison, to maintain its control and keep the population just about surviving.
Another starting point could be the convenience of the Hamas attack and the following war for Iran and its allies, as it has put in jeopardy the anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian, so called ‘normalisation’ agreement that was soon to be signed between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In many ways, this is not just a war between Israel and Gaza, but a regional war, in which various pro-Iranian groups, from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon, are taking part in an anti-American as well as anti-Israeli war, although at the moment, at least, in a contained way.
Related to that, one could start by describing the war as a result of miscalculated wishful thinking. Hamas was hoping that Hezbollah, Iran and other forces in the Arab world would join the war in a much more total way; and Israel has been hoping that Egypt and/or the PLO would take responsibility for governing the population in Gaza instead of Hamas, and, better still, would allow them to be displaced to the Sinai desert. But these organisations and governments have learned their lessons from previous history and are not co-operating.
The timing of the war has also been convenient for Netanyahu and the Israeli government. In one day it stopped the six-month long major protest movement which was demanding the ending of the judicial coup in Israel and the resignation of Netanyahu: the leader of the opposition has joined the government and war cabinet, and all the huge protest and pro-democracy posters which were plastered all over public buildings and public spaces have been replaced with others, even larger, which say – No Left, No Right, together we’ll all win the war.
She ends:
Many of us have been taking part in protest activities against the war in Gaza and its growing human and humanitarian costs, while knowing that the issues cannot be resolved solely by an end to that war. There is a need for the end of the occupation and the de-Zionisation of Palestine/Israel into a state with equal individual and collective rights for all its residents. This seems more than ever a faraway dream, but giving up on striving for it, not keeping alive this alternative narrative, would only be much worse.
RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH explores the central and sensitive question of how the hurt experienced by People in and out of Israel, particularly those wedded to Zionism, is used to deflect us from the reality of genocide.
She ends:
My responsibility is to commit myself to the liberation of Palestine. I am confident that my fight against Zionism as a form of racism aligns with my unequivocal rejection and condemnation of antisemitism. I recognize the lethal and genocidal history of European antisemitism that produced the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry. I reject that because of European antisemitic racism, Palestinians must pay the price. I reject essentializing language, stereotypes, or theories that claim that there are particular traits or characteristics unique to “Jewish people” as a homogenous collective, or “being a Jew.” I defend the right of Jewish people to openly practice Judaism and freely express their religious and cultural identity. I defend the right of Jewish people to practice their faith even though I unequivocally reject and condemn Zionism as a political ideology. I do not accept that such a right can be enjoyed at the expense of Palestinian life, freedom, and self-determination.
No amount of intimidation or emotional blackmail will cower Palestinians into silence, into shrinking our voices, adjusting our language, compromising our demands and claims, or repressing our feelings. When the feelings and fragility of Zionists are used as a rhetorical shield to deflect from engaging with the moral and material reality of genocide, Palestinians are left to ask: how many of us must be killed, maimed and injured, forced from our traditional land and beloved homes, be tortured and have our schools, universities, and livelihoods destroyed, for those in power – those who have the power to stop this genocide – to say in public never again. Khallas. Enough.
A thoughtful video, which touches on whether there are solutions acceptable to all parties.
A second Nakba? What history tells us about Palestine and Israel In this episode of UpFront, we look back at the history and context leading up to the current Israel-Gaza war. Nearly two months after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israel’s response has killed more than 14,500 Palestinians.
While many see the current conflict as a reaction to the attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, others have pointed out that this view ignores crucial historical context and that the conflict has been ongoing for generations.
Following the 1917 Balfour Declaration which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants, the creation of Israel in 1948 saw an enormous displacement of Palestinians, in addition to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands who remain refugees to this day.
On UpFront, Mustafa Barghouti, the co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, and author Ghada Karmi, join Marc Lamont Hill to look back at the history of Palestine and contextualise the current war.
Like other British imperial possessions, Palestine was acquired on the cheap and under false pretences, official corruption sealing a deal doomed to end in perpetual violence.
“Zionism will fail, the experiment to which the noble Earl referred will fail, the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country – Arab all around in the hinterland – may never be remedied…what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”
– British Government, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922, p. 1025
Biden’s position on Israel-Palestine does not constitute any real shift from that of Trump and thus similarly gratifies the desires of Christian Zionists.
I had no sense of this significant support for Israel in the USA.
In my last post I explained how Netanyahu played a crucial role in bolstering Hamas in order to “divide and conquer” the Palestinians and delegitimise the Palestinian National Authority — the continuation of a strategy which Israel had been pursuing, in various forms, since the 1980s.
Later in the piece, he quotes Yasser Arafat, who was the leader of the PLO at the time I was closest to what was going on in Palestine., more than thirty years ago.
“Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organisation antagonistic to the PLO. They [Hamas] received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorisations, while we have been limited, even [for permits] to build a tomato factory.”
When asked what he thought of “these sons of Palestine who blow themselves up and spread death among Israeli civilians”, Arafat answered: “Israel does not allow us to live a normal life. Youth who have nothing to eat, who don’t see any future in front of them, are easy prey of the Islamist movements, which have large amounts of financing at their disposal”.
.
Last but not least a video of Gerald Kaufman, Labour Member of Parliament speaking in Parliament, the year 2009, the event an Israeli attack on Gaza. For my sins, I was heavily involved in the British Labour Party in the 1980s and met Gerald, always immaculately attired several times, once by chance for a coffee at Euston railway station. At the time he was a sworn enemy, being a fierce critic of Tony Benn, to whom I gave cautious support! Anyway, he was charming company and we parted on amicable terms. Fifteen years on this brave speech retains all its relevance.
And, lest I forget, I must register deep gratitude to my dear friend, Steph Green, who has sent me regularly in the last months both links and her own insightful commentary on the continuing crisis in Gaza. I hope I have done her efforts to keep me alert some justice.
“We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.” The United Kingdom’s Labour Party suspended Member of Parliament, Andy McDonald for reciting the above in a speech at a pro-Palestinian rally.
As an antidote to what some might see as a lapse into ahistorical sentimentality from an avowed irreconcilable atheist – my previous post, Bah Humbug – I recommend viewing this powerful video or reading the transcript of the pastor’s sermon. His impassioned call transcends religious and secular divides. It is a heart-rending appeal to our shared, common humanity.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. The copy may not be in its final form.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Christ Under the Rubble.
We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.
More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways, day after day. One-point-nine million displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.
The world is watching. Churches are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on.
We are asking here: Could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny, too?
We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called free lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing the political cover. And yet another layer has been added: the theological cover, with the Western church stepping into the spotlight.
Our dear friends in South Africa taught us the concept of the “state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.
Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against us — our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the empire. Here we confront the theology of the empire, a disguise for superiority, supremacy, chosenness and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover, using words like “mission” and “evangelism,” “fulfillment of prophecy,” and “spreading freedom and liberty.”
The theology of the empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It speaks of land without people. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. The concept of land without people, again, even though they knew too well that the land had people — and not just any people, a very special people. Theology of the empire calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, a “miracle,” or “a divine miracle,” as they called it. It calls for us Palestinians now to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan. Why not just the sea?
I think of the words of the disciples to Jesus when he was about to enter Samaria: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of the Samaritans. This is the theology of the empire. This is what they’re saying about us today.
This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it’s the color of our skins. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of a political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. So they say if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant,” then so be it. We are not humans in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, no one can tell us that.
The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling. They always take the word of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we’re not treated equally. Yet, on the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, lies, their words are almost always deemed infallible.
To our European friends: I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this. We are not white, I guess. It does not apply to us, according to your own logic.
In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the empire has the theology needed. It is thus self-defense, we were told. And I continue to ask: How is the killing of 9,000 children self-defense? How is the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians self-defense?
In the shadow of the empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten — have we forgotten that the state they talk to, that that state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans? Have they forgot that?
We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear, friends: Silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action, all under the banner of complicity.
So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell before October 7th, and the world was silent. Should we be surprised at their silence now?
If you are not appalled by what is happening in Gaza, if you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.
If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace. Some have not even called for a ceasefire. I’m talking about churches. I feel sorry for you.
We will be OK. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we, the Palestinians, will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far maybe the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But we will be OK.
But for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this? Your charity and your words of shock after the genocide won’t make a difference. And I know these words of shocks are coming. And I know people will give generously for charity. But your words won’t make a difference. Words of regret won’t suffice for you. And let me say it: We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you to look at the mirror and ask, “Where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?” …
In these last two months, the psalms of lament have become a precious companion to us. We cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?”
In our pain, anguish and lament, we have searched for God and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus himself became the victim of the very same violence of the empire when he was in our land. He was tortured, crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain, “My God, where are you?”
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.
And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is not to be found on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. He’s in a cave, with a simple family, an occupied family. He’s vulnerable, barely and miraculously surviving a massacre himself. He’s among the refugees, among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is to be found today.
If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble. When we rely on power, might and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.
Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed and the displaced. This is his manger.
And I have been looking and contemplating on this iconic image. God with us precisely in this way, this is the incarnation — messy, bloody, poverty. This is the incarnation.
And this child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says, “Just as you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did it to me.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them. He is the children of Gaza.
We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.
So this manger is about resilience. It’s about sumud. And the resilience of Jesus is in his meekness, is in his weakness, is in his vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this is very same child who rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires, to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness. This very same child accomplished this.
This is Christmas today in Palestine, and this is the Christmas message. Christmas is not about Santas. It’s not about trees and gifts and lights. My goodness, how we have twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was, by the way, in the U.S.A. last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights and all the commercial goods. And I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their lands. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.
Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message. It is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized, he is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.
This message is our message to the world today, and it is simply this: This genocide must stop now. Why don’t we repeat it? Stop this genocide now. Can you say it with me? Stop this genocide —
CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Let’s say it one more time. Stop this genocide —
CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear, O God. Amen.
CHATTING CRITICALLY 