Rage and clarity as Palestinians detail devastation in northern Gaza and British complicity
A wounded Palestinian girl in Kamal Adwan hospital during the ongoing Israeli military operation in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, 17 December 2024
Oscar Rickett reports in Middle East Eye on 18 December 2024:
Mai Annan, a Palestinian woman from northern Gaza, is talking about what is happening to her home.
“The screams of the women after the young men were executed, and they are pleading, ‘No, please no,’ this sound will never leave me,” she says, describing the actions of Israel’s military. “Those cries haunt me every night. I can’t sleep. I can’t forget the massacre we lived through.”
Behind her, all we can see are piles of rubble. We are in a room in London, capital of a country that helps support and arm Israel, which has been waging war on Gaza since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October. Annan, who leads the Reviving Gaza mutual aid project in the north, is on a video screen, the ruins of northern Gaza behind her.
She tells us her family were trapped under heavy bombardment and gunfire for five days. She says that under Israeli siege, 30 of them hid in one bathroom.
Annan recalls another day, earlier in the war: 19 December 2023. “The Red Cross came and called for us. They told us the army had executed everyone in the building next to us… The sole survivor was my cousin, who had been shot twice in the shoulder,” says Annan. “What I’ve shared may sound ordinary to you, but I lived it.”
UK complicity
At a meeting hosted by the British Palestinian Committee (BPC) and the UK Gaza Community (UKGC) in London, the room was quiet, and heavy.
None of this sounded ordinary. But there was a sense among those present that the politicians and media in the countries supporting Israel’s war, Britain included, were intent on having it seem that way.