A silent protest

Facing Death in Rafah 2024

After a long hiatus, I have completed a picture I started last year depicting a couple in Gaza who watch the devastation unfurl around them as they fear they may be next in their family to die under the hail of bombs. This is not a covert protest in support of Palestine Action; it is an overt protest against so much mindless destruction and death at places of violence around the world. In the aftermath of the Second World War, I walked the streets of Leicester and Coventry, and later London, but saw only a spatter of bombed out houses. The devastation and waste of Gaza is worse than anything I remember or have seen, short of the pictures at Hiroshima Peace Museum depicting the final bombs of that war. Only in Hiroshima were more buildings flattened per area than Gaza, and that was with nuclear bombing. 

Today there were many arrests in London of people supporting Palestine Action, a group proscribed by the current Labour government. Most people watching the news look in horror at the mass bombing of the mostly civilian population, but following the desecration by paint of RAF bombers by protesters, even peaceful protests or holding a simple message on a sheet of paper results in arrest and possible imprisonment. Oh England, my England, what has happened to the right to peaceful protest? Since when did a ruling party block and stigmatise people objecting to mass bombing and starvation? I have not labelled my picture with words of protest; the people there speak eloquently enough without my vain words. Let us just trust that Starmer's thought police don't come knocking upon my door to arrest me for a silent protest, for in this country now, it seems even private thoughts can be offensive and be penalised! Heu, patria mea non iam est. [Alas, my country is no more!]