The military ordered hundreds of thousands of people into a designated “safe” zone. On reaching it, they were shelled by the army and the air force. The generals said there was another safe zone; if the people kept moving, respite would be found. It wasn’t. Again they were attacked. The scene repeated, but now, corralled onto a tiny stretch of beach and trapped against the ocean, there was no way out.
Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza is not a simple response to the Hamas raids on 7 October last year; the roots of the conflict over Palestine are deep within the history of imperialism and a by-product of the capitalist system of exploitation and competition.
Sexism is so fundamental to our existence that we are not even aware of it much of the time.
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, is one of history’s most well-known figures, and one of its most maligned. Mainstream culture vilifies him as a despot.
From secret police records in Russia just before the First World War: “The most energetic and audacious element, ready for tireless struggle, for resistance and continual organisation, is that element ... concentrated around [Vladimir] Lenin”.
The level of suffering in Gaza is more than the human mind can comprehend. As the war enters its twentieth week, it feels increasingly obscene to be going about daily life while an entire people are being systematically destroyed, their lives, histories and culture blown to pieces or buried under rubble.