Topoke: How do you show sympathy for the wretched of the earth?
Standpunkt ist die freie Rubrik von blackaustria.info und steht freier Autor:innen zur Verfügung. Diese Meinungen geben nicht die Meinung unserer Redaktion wieder.
Have you heard?
In some countries of the European Union, taking part in a rally for peace in Palestine, voicing your opinion for Palestine, showing a Palestinian flag or even showing sympathy for the dead can have you arrested and give you a whole lots of wahala.
I for my part am grateful that Austria still accords this democratic right to everyone. And we want to respect the law and not break it. We don’t want to break anything. If there’s anything I would like to break, it would be to break apartheid.
I saw the video of a small child. A baby. Maybe 2 years old. He was sitting on a bed inside the emergency unit of a hospital in Gaza. The little one was shaking all over. A doctor was trying to calm him down and was asking what had happened.
You see, the child was brought in, after an explosion near its home had awakened it from its sleep. He was unable to regain control over his own body. The doctor put his arm around the child’s shoulder, and it immediately burst into tears. The little one began to cry bitterly.
How do you tell such a story, without being labeled a terrorist?
Since the beginning of this last murderous chapter of the “conflict”, more than 1000 children have been killed by Israels carpet bombing of Gaza. The number of bombs that have been dropped on Gaza in six days, amounts to the number America has dropped on Afghanistan in one year. There are more than one million children in Gaza. They have never had a day of freedom and peace in their life, but have lived under constant occupation since birth.
How do you bring context inside a conflict that has been lasting for 75 years without being called a terrorist? Politicians are talking about human animals, mowing the lawn, nuking and leveling the place. The absolute disconnection from the reality of Palestinian humanity and the dehumanization and uncontested collective punishment of a civilian population becoming the norm in mainstream media is frightening.
How do you plead for a ceasefire now? How do you voice your wish for an end to a racist apartheid that has brought nothing but displacement, sorrow, grief, destruction and death?
Do you understand my question?
How do you stand for a martyred people, that has for its part always stood at the side of other martyred people such as the South African Black indigenous population when it was fighting against a racist, brutal and murderous European apartheid regime?
How do you show love for a Palestinian people that has always been part of the struggle of oppressed peoples. The solidarity between the formerly enslaved Africans of the United European States of America and Palestinians goes as far back as Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers, and as recently as George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.
How do you show sympathy for the wretched of the earth, when showing the slightest ounce of empathy can have you qualified of supporting terrorists?
What my short time on the face of this planet has taught me, this E.U. doesn’t care about the plight of the people of the DRC. A holocaust with already more than 6 million official deaths. They only care about the flow of resources.
So I am aware of the silence and silencing that is going on. This is why my support for the people of Palestine cannot be silent, but vocal and visible. Will they call us all terrorists? Nelson Mandela was up until 2008 on the terrorist watchlist of the USA. If standing up for justice, humanity and against apartheid and war makes me like Madiba, so be it.
Ceasefire now! End apartheid! Free Palestine!
Diese Rede hielt Topoke am 21. Oktober 2023 in Wien bei der Pro Palästinensischen Demonstration “Stopp das Massaker in Palästina” der Palästina Solidarität in Österreich .
Bild: Marisel Orellana Bongola
