More Than a Local Protest
ROD WEBB reflects on joining the protest outside the Hastings site of General Dynamics, a company involved in supplying weapons to Israel used in the slaughter of Palestinian civilians
My understanding of the Israel/Palestine issue has been influenced by many factors in my life. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian sect which saw the creation of an Israeli state as fulfilment of biblical prophecy. I subsequently spent many years working in the Middle East, beginning in 1979 with a year teaching in Algeria. The latter led to marriage with an Algerian (who sadly died in 1999), the mother of my two children.
So, I feel I have a broad understanding of the issues relating to Israel and Palestine, and while fully supporting Palestinian rights, I appreciate that the environment within which people grow up plays a fundamental part in our world view. Couple this with well-established flaws in human psychology and it soon becomes clear why this latest chapter in the Israel/Palestine dispute is such a contentious issue.
I was faced with my own psychological dilemma when it emerged that General Dynamics has a site in Hastings; this is a company directly implicated in the supply of weapons to Israel – their weapons being used to indiscriminately kill Palestinian civilians. I remember feeling a strange sense of unease, exacerbated by the call to protest outside the gates of this local employer. Although I believed that supplying such weapons made the company complicit in murder, even possibly liable for acts of genocide, there appeared to be an unresolved internal conflict keeping me from joining the protest.
And rather than sitting down and discussing this with others, I buried my doubts amongst the usual day-to-day preoccupations with other things: my only excuse being that during this time I also had an accident.
It was only when I was beginning to recover that I realised I had to take part in these regular Wednesday protests. And having done so, I was finally able to think more clearly about the implications of my hesitation. It made me realise how most, if not all, of us can be swayed by conflicting beliefs. In my case, there was a conflict between doing what I could in a small way to fight this massive injustice and a sense of ‘not wanting to upset the status quo’. Perhaps I was concerned about highlighting how ordinary, hard-working people – people I could so easily meet in shops and cafes around town – were complicit in something so awful. Or maybe it was facing how easy it was to be complicit, reconciling the everyday with the unthinkable.
It was a cold morning when I stood outside General Dynamics with all the other protesters, many of whom had been there from the start, three of whom have faced arrest. The conviction, the humanity and the shared sense of community was a great way to resolve uncertainty.
But my own hesitation, which I can in no way defend, pales in comparison with that of someone faced with losing their livelihood in standing up for a cause, and it is notable how so many high-profile people won’t raise their voices. My own experience made me realise how frail so many of us are, subject as we are to psychological complexity that we don’t fully understand.
It has reinforced my belief that we should be slow to condemn others: by all means condemn their actions, but always try to retain some compassion for human frailty. Just looking around today, we can see how easily people can deceive themselves into doing nothing in the face of grave injustice.
By chance this morning, I listened to Ilan Pape, the great Jewish Israeli scholar and tireless campaigner for Palestinian rights, talking about how the Israeli education system has indoctrinated a whole new generation of Israelis and how, even in a changed environment, it could take several years to change their stance. The wonderful thing was that he remains hopeful for a just outcome.
For more information on the protest go to hastingspalestinecampaign.org.
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