Fleabite

Tisha B’Av Edinburgh vigil for Palestinians
Sunday 3rd August. 2-3pm
Duke of Wellington Equestrian statue.9 Waterloo Pl, Edinburgh EH1 3BG

We, a group of Jews in Scotland, are bearing public witness, on Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, to the ongoing atrocities afflicted on Palestinians.

Genocide proceeds in Gaza, with the Israeli blockade of food, medicine and other essentials causing famine. On this, a fast day, we protest for the starvation of Gazans. The children starving today, even if, god willing, they survive will have irreparable damage caused to their growing brains and bodies. The destruction of the Temple is mirrored in the destruction of Gazan neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals and mosques. The many antisemitic massacres over the millennia, are echoed in the over 1000 Palestinians who have been murdered in the West Bank since October 7th, with no accountability for the settlers and soldiers who killed them.

We also wish for the safe and soon release of the hostages.

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Polished and slightly expanded/edited version of the below is now at https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2025/07/18/on-off-opinion/

***

The on/off refers to a gimmick i tried where i wore a high vis cycling vest to signify the parts that were from 2003, vs the more contemporary parts.

ON
Rafah, 16th March 2003.

The world, my world, narrowed to a single point. The war, the wars, that had filled my thoughts raged on around. The Iraq war buildup. The brutality of the occupation of Palestine that for the past two months had crowded all else from my head, with its desperate importance – all that blurred to non existence.

OFF

London, 7th October 2023

The Anarchist Bookfair is over, I’m still buzzing but exhausted from a day running a stall and workshops. An old friend, Israeli but based in UK for many years realises I haven’t seen the news and carefully tells me what he knew so far, including that one of the kibbutzim attacked is the home of old friends of his family. As it turned out, the grandfather was killed, the rest escaped BH. We shared our horror at both the images coming out, and what we feared the IDF would now do to Gaza.

One of my partners says “well, they were having a rave next to a concentration camp”

ON

“My back is broken.” The last words Rachel Corrie ever said. I took her head in my hands to stabilise her spine. She had been run over by an Israeli army bulldozer whilst we had been trying to stop the IDF destroying houses in Gaza.

OFF

London 20th October 2023

A British Jewish friend’s 4 year old nephew was killed in a kibbutz on October 7th. Other Israeli connections also lost people they knew.

Friends in Israel, many refuseniks and long-term Palestine liberation activists, tell me how shaken the left in Israel is by the Global Left’s lack of condemnation of October 7th.

For me, after 4 days in hospital with neutropenic sepsis I manage to escape and rush to Swiss Cottage to join an anti war demonstration by Jews and Israelis outside the Israeli ambassador’s house. We sing a Hebrew prayer for peace, sung weekly in synagogues, and often amended by the left to include the whole world.

Oseh Shalom – yoshvei tevel version (30s)

ON

The world consisted of 4 people. I held Rachel’s head. On her right and left Greg and Will knelt beside her, focusing all they could to will her to survive. Four friends, one of whom’s life force was leaking out as we held her, told her we loved her and how awesome she was and how she was going to be ok.

OFF
Glasgow, 28th October 2023

Before the massive weekly march for Gaza I hear more than one speaker, to great applause, legitimise October 7th. I spin around, images from the massacre flashing before my eyes as I bolt out of the cheering crowd.

ON

We desperately tried to keep our dying friend with us, but her body was breaking apart and there was nothing we could do. Helplessly I observed the thin skin around her eyes and ears blackened with blood from the bleeding in her brain. The depth and regularity fading from her breathing.

OFF

Around me there are many, non Jews as well as Jews, who seem able to be against both the attacks by Hamas, and the unfolding genocide perpetrated by Israel. Yet also increasingly in person and social media are minimisation, denial and justification for October 7th and ongoing hostage crisis. When I challenge this I’m told I’m defending genocide and that I should think about Palestinian children being bombed.

At a flashmob occupation of GoMA I help affix a long banner that drops all the way through the stairwell stating “Silence is Violence. Permanent Ceasefire Now” But when I express my discomfort at the chant leaders insisting on “When a people is occupied, resistance is justified” without any clarification that they’re not referring to the massacre of just weeks ago, I’m told that maybe I shouldn’t come to any more.

ON

In less than an hour she would be declared dead and this tiny world would be the centre of global attention, as international media filled with the news of an American girl killed defending a Palestinian home. Suddenly my world would be talking live on TV channels from every continent, a call with a USA congressman, a packed out press conference to local and global media.

OFF

20th November 2023

My friend’s mum in Gaza died today. Her heart medication has been impossible to get because of the Israeli blockade. We didn’t talk much, but she always smiled and made me tea when I visited him. Last week 2 of his cousins were killed, and his home was badly damaged.

As well as Palestinian friends, I’m in close touch with my family and friends in Israel. Many are involved in mutual aid projects for the thousands of Israelis traumatised, grieving, and displaced by the war who the government has abandoned. The hostage movement hosts regular mass protests against Netanyahu, demanding hostage negotiations instead of war.

My cousins are not political in either direction, and my emails with them reflect that. This was the hardest one I had to write:
Dear Barbara.
Mum says your grandson is now in the IDF in Gaza. I wish him a safe and speedy return home to you. It must be frightening for you, I can’t imagine.
…
I think “Is my cousin now shooting at my friends in Gaza?”

ON

But at that moment there were just four of us in the world, and one was dying as we held her. Four kids from USA and UK whose life paths had happened to intersect in Palestine. Four kids in the most dangerous place in the Gaza Strip, and one of us was fading fast and there was nothing the rest of us could do about it.

OFF

June 2024
I think they’re all destroyed now. Those homes where I found nothing but hospitality, humour, compassion. Where, even in 2003, people were exhausted, desperate, living under privations even then. Attempts at building decent living conditions destroyed regularly. The farm greenhouses, nurtured into existence over months, bombed flat in seconds. Regularly people shot just going about daily life, such as the man with learning difficulties, a street cleaner, who was shot smoking a cigarette outside his mother’s house in Rafah shortly after Rachel Corrie was killed, but with no international outrage. I walked the streets, many knew I was Jewish (as were perhaps a quarter of international solidarity activists in Palestine) and the only threats from Palestinians to my life was perhaps giving me obesity due to how difficult it was to stop them feeding me! Even though none of them had much. I will never ever forget my 3 months in Rafah. You taught me so much about ways of retaining humanity and relating to other humans, under unimaginable conditions. Your lives are not worth less than Israelis. Your children are as deserving of conditions in which they can thrive, not starve and be terrified. I am so so ashamed of what Israel is doing. That I once loved that country. And even my friends and family in Israel itself aren’t safe because they are all disposable to this cold, hate filled, murderous ideology. I don’t think many of the people with whom I shared endless pots of sweet tea with maramiya are still alive, or in any way healthy. All those family homes I slept in are destroyed. The kids I knew would have been parents by now – did any of their children survive, and if they did how is their physical and mental development after famine? How is their emotional health after endless fleeing and learning new definitions of “safe zones”? I’m so sad and angry and frustrated. We have failed to stop a genocide, and our government has actively supported it.

ON

This is what War means. This is the detail in every casualty statistic. People holding their loved ones as their soft flesh disintegrates from the sudden penetration of the hard metals of war; tanks, guns, bombs, shrapnel. Bodies and lives broken. For what?

OFF

Glasgow, 6th October 2024

For weeks in the synagogues (and we’re a very small community, less than 0.1% of population of Glasgow, with only 3 synagogues) has been advertised the communal vigil for October 7th, which many people in the community feel personally connected to. I was working, and hosted my own alternative memorial event the next day, but many friends went
“there were super aggressive people with Palestinian and Lebanese flags screaming the entire time, playing super loud music, siren noises, megaphones, literally drowning everything out, and yelling stuff like calling all the people who were at the vigil genocidal swine, rats, etc. This woman was trying to talk about how her brother was murdered on October 7, and you couldn’t hear her because people were yelling horrible things over her. All the speakers, Rabbi Rubin, MPs, other people, yelling into the microphone to have their voices heard over all the noise and chanting. It was actually horrible, like everyone just felt really attacked and angsty.”

Birmingham, December 2024

With 2000 attendees, Limmud is easily the biggest gathering of Jews in the UK, so this must have felt like an easy gig for the Israeli ambassador, hardright Tzipi Hotovely. Yet the organisers kept it under wraps until just 4 hours before she was due to speak. A few of us mobilised immediately, networking, sending messages, and making easily hidden signs to hold up. They’d put her in the showcase main conference room, with seats for 1000, but only about 80 were in the audience. And after the introduction, as she tried to start speaking we stood. I was even more nervous than I am tonight, but as I turned I saw that over half the audience was also on their feet, unfurling A3 sheets accusing her of genocide, calling for a ceasefire, and enumerating the numbers killed. After we were escorted out, elated at our success, we went to the neighbouring room, set up or 200 but standing room only as people had piled in to hear from Gazan and Israeli peace activists. The tide is turning!

ON

Each war death is a unique human being, just like your mother, father, sister, brother and child. Communities deemed “war zones” by too powerful others living remote lives moving infantry pieces over plans of “strategic areas”. A little to the left and suddenly that village is ground underneath the caterpillar tracks of War. The tanks roll through. The fighter jets race overhead. Communities and lives are wrecked.

OFF

June 2025

Israel has now attacked Iran. As usual I message my family and friends, all of whom are terrified, and if they can, staying in shelters, though many Israelis don’t have one. “Everything is terrible and we had 3 nights of this. In Gaza they had so many more and no shelters”

I see posts celebrating Iranian missiles, and expressing how “They” deserved it, when a hospital in Israel is hit.

A friend of a friend is killed in Be’er Sheva. Naomi stood in protest vigils for the hostages and against the war every day since October 7th. She was a librarian, and volunteered in reading books to blind people.

A refusenik friend, who’s always been very clear about the privilege she has within Israel that helped her to refuse, tells me:
One of the soldiers who died in an explosion today, in Khan Yunes, Shahar, Munab, there’s a picture of him, holding a sign saying “We don’t have children for unnecessary wars”. And yes, he was in the army. He was also Ethiopian, and it’s his only gateway into Israeli society. And he should have refused, but he still held that sign and they’d just buried him. This is shit. A 17 years old boy who holds this sign understands something…

ON

What possible question can this be the right answer to? How can destruction this brutal birth anything worthwhile? What dehumanising of other human beings, what racism must we hold to ever justify such slaughter?

OFF

Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine created fertile ground for the hate-filled rightwing rhetoric of Hamas. Just as hundreds of years of antisemitism culminating in the holocaust created fertile ground for a rightwing, supremacist Zionism. And that in turn was the result of Nazism finding fertile ground from the humiliation and economic destruction of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles following their defeat in World War One. We need to have the humility to realise that our own politics are in large part formed by our own contexts. We like to think we’d refuse conscription and take the months in prison instead, but we don’t know what its like to have to make that decision at 18 after being raised in a highly militarised society.

Let us address the root causes of this fertile ground for rightwing, everywhere we see it, including the Reform voters in our own city. Lets understand that if a group as historically leftwing as the Jews can fall for rightwing ethno-nationlism, given the right context, anyone can. We can undercut this shift to the right by fighting alongside ordinary people for better living and working conditions,.

And I’d like us to show that Jews don’t need to be fearful in the here and now, that Jewish safety is taken seriously right here. That all peoples’ lives are sacred and that we stand against all brutality and dehumanisation. In this way we create a world that is just, free and peaceful for all.

Fight War Not Wars!

After the talk:

Although most people seemed positive, i had some negativity and folks calling me a zionist. In answer to that i wrote this:

I self define as “post zionist” both as i believe that this is what we are now seeing within Jewish communities, where any arguments for zionism are destroyed by the actions of Israeli state, and to describe my personal trajectory. But i don’t think labels are very useful, especially not “zionism” which means so many different things to different people. I am more interested in what people believe than any label. Especially given the urgency of ending the genocide and terrorisation of Palestinians elsewhere. I do discuss Palestinian oppression with Jews who have mainstream, pro Israel politics, and i think that’s really important. It involves lots of honest and difficult conversations and being open to expressing nuance. Mainstream Jews are genuinely very cynical and nervous of antisemitism within Palestine solidarity movement, and any evidence of that scares them back to a rightwing fervently pro-Israel position.

(As you know i also take part in direct actions such as the arms factory blockades, and many other acts of Palestine solidarity civil disobedience and pro BDS actions.)

It can feel as if the Palestine movement wants Jews but only the “good jew” kind who come without any criticisms or the subjectivity that we are more likely to have. For instance I know few non Jews who are personally connected to any Israelis, whereas most UK based Jews do have personal connections. The dehumanisation of Israelis that is a natural trauma response to watching the horror in Gaza, is more likely when you don’t know any Israelis. Most Jews were raised to be super, deeply aware of hundreds of years of antisemitic pogroms, the Holocaust (I’m within the majority of Jews in UK who lost (distant) family members), and the specifics of antisemitic racism (and i am *not* talking about criticism of Israel which obvs i don’t think is necessarily antisemitic) I feel that makes a huge difference to our perspectives, even those of us who are solidly for Palestine liberation. For me, it’s meant I’ve struggled when I see dismissal and even approval of Israelis being killed. I also just haven’t witnessed this about the civilians of any other country which is perpetrating terror, eg Russians. With my speech i wanted to show that all war is horrific and that nobody deserves to be killed because of where they were born. I am not criticising all Palestinian armed resistance, I’m specifically talking about that which targets Israeli civilians. And as i also said on the night “Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine created fertile ground for the hate-filled rightwing rhetoric of Hamas”

I don’t know what people want from the Jews born and living in Israel now. They come from a variety of situations and many do not have another citizenship. Many many fled from countries such as iraq, Yemen, under the antisemitic backlash that  followed 1948. I have a friend who’s family is “old yeshuv” and has lived in Palestine for hundreds of years. I hear lots of oversimplifications, ignoring this reality.

Personally i think there should be a completely equal state with equal rights for everyone. Probably a single state over the whole river to the sea if we have to have a country at all. But I also strongly feel that it’s not up to me, from thousands of miles away, to have a say in that, beyond opposition to the current apartheid, occupation and genocide. And it feels so urgent and important to end the oppression of Palestinians that tbh i think detailed questions about what i want instead is a distraction, as well as not being any of my business.

I do regret including the song. Its a reclaimed version of a prayer for peace for the Jewish people, with “and peace for the whole world” added. Because every Jew knows the original, it feels very powerful to sing for peace for everyone. We sang it loudly at the Israeli ambassador, intentionally showing that we are anti-war Jews. It just feels very beautiful to be building an anti-militarist, non-zionist, anti-supremacist Judaism. It was my misjudgement to include it without a lot of explanation to a non Jewish group. The reference to “Israel” in the original far predates the modern nation state, and is a reference to “the Jewish people”, which again Jews know that but i didn’t think about how it would come across to non Jews.

Unprecedented for a “two go on an adventure” trip, it is not sunny. Soon after the ferry left kennacraig the rain started, and now an hour after landing in port askaig, its still coming down. The weather definitely made our planned long trek to an claddach this evening much less appealing, more so when we clocked a cosy bar/hotel at the harbour. I was feeling shy but, buoyed by our previous experiences on islands, we went in and asked if there was anywhere close by they could recommend to pitch a tent. Immediate friendly response from first son, then mother (who runs hotel) was to check if someone was already there, and then invite us to pitch on the grass next to their little concrete slipway in front of their house, behind the hotel!

As my PTSD and disassociation subsides, I am rediscovering feelings and emotions. I lost a dear friend, a sweet sister, to suicide at the weekend. This is my first bereavement in years, and the first I have actually gone through any proper grieving for. For the dear dear friends who died before, my numbing just deepened and I struggled to cry at all.

So I feel like someone plunged into the ocean, having never been to the seashore before.

The waves keep washing over me, though their hues have changed over the days. Initially the rawness was frequently tinged with denial. I felt that I could return to some previous saved game state and alter her passing. Telling someone about her death, talking about her in the past tense, even using her name in a facebook post made it too real and was to be avoided. But then the reality would hit, and tears would flood out of me, accompanied by guttural moans. It almost felt like being possessed, because of how involuntary this was.

Before I began my healing journey I would do anything to avoid letting these feelings out, for they felt bottomless, that they would overwhelm me, and the vulnerability was terrifying. Additionally, many of the times when I would have felt distress and sadness in the past it was not safe to do so, because I was still around my assaulter, or because I was in warzone. I got very good at pushing them down. However a few years ago I realised that it had become impossible to filter which emotions I could suppress, and I was losing the good uns with the bad. I was not experiencing life because it was all grey without emotions to colour it. In order to feel joy, I had to feel pain. And I made a conscious decision that I would begin opening myself up to those feelings too, and trust that I wouldn’t lose myself forever in a pit of despair, but that my body and mind would find a path to stumble through to some other side. I began to cry. I’m still not good at it – like an immobilised muscle that is very slowly strengthening I can manage only a few minutes at a time and feel utterly exhausted afterwards. But I don’t fear feeling it anymore, as I know there will be another side, and it will probably be a washed clean (temporary) peacefulness.

And so now when I feel the buildup of pain, I let it come. It is still a conscious effort, with me telling myself over and over “it is safe to cry, it is not a burden on whoever’s around me, it is consented to, it will pass and there will be another side” until the tears finally, blessedly, break and I’m engulfed. Which feels weird – instead of pushing pain down I am facing it head-on. No longer am I fleeing from my own shadow.

Observing, as well as experiencing, grief, here is what I have noticed.

When I’m depressed I comfort eat. In grief I am having to make a conscious effort to eat at all. And when I do, its been easy, moist foods. A friend cooked soup for us on Monday, and otherwise its been beans on toast, boiled eggs or cereal. I think the difference is that when I’m depressed I feel empty of feeling and so hunger and eating are louder and more compelling against that flat landscape. In contrast, ear-splitting grief drowns out other feelings and exhausts my capacity to feel them. There is no satiation in eating, no pleasure of taste, and little hunger drive. I understand better now why so many cultures and religions emphasise the importance of bringing food for the grieving.

I was due to work a 12 hour shift the day after finding out about her suicide. My first impulse was to keep that shift. I need the money, but that was just an excuse. I realised that the “new, post-PTSD, me” correct decision was to cancel it and prioritise self-care and grieving. Additionally would I have the concentration required to safely give out medication to patients? It was the latter that sealed my decision. And I went to Edin instead to spend the afternoon with 20-30 of Danielle’s friends. This was definitely the right thing to have done. I was making her death real, being around people who were also mourning her, sharing memories, making sense of what had happened, and crying, a lot, in public (unprecedented!). I went home exhausted but was aware of how healthy and necessary the day had been. Refusing to let myself grieve for those I’ve lost before has not kept them with me, and nothing will bring Danielle back.

Emotions come in waves, lasting from minutes to hours. None lasts longer than that. Initially frequent visitors included denial, anger and guilt. Gradually they have been replaced by deep sadness, missing her very much, and slowly accepting that she did what she needed to do. I feel these one or two in a row and then go to “numb” as some kind of emotional refractory period.

Sometimes I don’t want to talk about anything apart from Danielle. Other times I need a break from that. She is never far from my thoughts. But I don’t want to share them always. I am super lucky to have been with people who have been open to hearing, but not been pushy if I don’t want to talk about her. I’ll be thinking about her, but talked out, and not want to explain whatever is going on in my mind.

Last night I even went out on a date. I warned the person in advance about what had happened and that I would be subdued. But I honestly felt that I needed a break from constant 24/7 grieving. I needed daylight and fresh company and a change. I was very lucky that my date was familiar with grieving processes and a total sweetie about it. I have been having a big family crisis as well, and that was also on my mind. But it was a relief to at least partly get away from all that.

Today I crashed again though. As if the sadness that didn’t express itself for 12 hours or whatever had time to make up for. I still feel like taking that break and going outside of myself for that time was healthy. Pre-new-me would only have done that – kept myself busy and distracted and with a full to-do list and schedule. However I think a little of that is probably necessary.

For my own reference as much as for anyone who’s managed to follow my stream of consciousness this far, here’s what I wrote on facebook about Danielle.

Beautiful spot to waken and breakfast, on the tip of the little peninsula.

Next stop tarbert. Pretty port village. Stopped at only place we could see and struck gold. The bar at the hotel at the port has amazing food and pot of tea for 2 was £3! My burger was freshly made in house. Very very yummy. And we charged phones and hand washed a day of clothes each too.

The local shop didn’t have camping gas, and hardware shop closed as its the weekend. We have the Kelly kettle as well as the gas stove so its not an emergency. Did restock some food.

I struggled with the next hill – I think the burger was sitting heavy in me, and for 1st time this trip I had to push up the hill! Landscape now mountainous with lots of small lochs and rocky outcroppings. Apparently was the setting used for Jupiter in 2001!

Down off the higher ground to the coast, and stunning white beaches. Swam in the clear water, mountains and islands all around coming out of the blue ocean.

At the entrance to a campsite we were beckoned to a burger van by the scent of frying fish and enjoyed a super good Cullen skink and then outstanding fried locally caught herring and mackerel coated in oatmeal.

More miles of stunning coast, machair, beaches, flowers, cliffs, and interesting sea, feature rich with islands and peninsulas.

Tonorrow, the uists!

Off on installment 3 of “Two go Island Hopping” with E, my semi regular partner in crime. Been wanting to get to Outer Hebrides for years, and finally yesterday I saddled up my noble steed for 12 day trip. Deliciously familiar to have camping gear, food for 4 days (we’ll restock as we go) and feel that sense of self sufficiency, independence, and awaiting to find what adventures are around the next corner :)

Managed to get cheap trains to Garve, but only by leaving Monday evening. So we stayed in a cheap hostel in Inverness and I popped across to the shop so we had 6 boiled eggs for breakfast! Very very crowded train took us to garve for midday.

Very hot with slight headwind cycle across from garve to ullapool. The pub we were planning on a tea and ice cream break was closed so we had to manage it all on the 2 cups of tea we’d had at breakfast!!! O_o

E’s fitness and cycling endurance continues to improve and she is a much stronger cyclist than our previous trips. The route was very scenic but the traffic was fast and not always good at leaving us wobble room as they passed.

Ullapool is pretty village making the most of its stunning location in a bend in a sea loch. And the cafe gave us a free tea refill after we glugged down our pot!

Newish ferry now doing ullapool Stornoway route. Very swish observation lounge. Which was good as there were lots of cetaceans to observe! Harbour porpoise before we’d gone far. And multiple dolphin schools leaping and playing, especially as we got closer to Lewis. Shared experience with all the other excited observation lounge occupants as another dolphin was sighted.

Bought some bread in the co-op which do actual reductions with end of day bread at 10% of original price. This place is so civilised!

Now in pub in Stornoway. We only count having been on an island having consumed something on it, so this is our official arrival on our latest archipelago. And it seems great so far :)