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In the mid-eighties, or slightly before, the revolutionary book titled: “Tea Time At The Revolution” written by a New Zealand academic, Chris Tremewan was published by the World Student Christian Federation. The book came to mind four decades later when I read a recent message from another companion, Stiann de Merwe, from South Africa.
It had a sharp and profound message and spoke to the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of innocent Gazans by a monster Israel army, armed to its teeth with guns and deadly WMDs supposedly in self defense. De Merwe stated: “The powerful have the option to say: Stop the war it’s teatime… For the others it is a moment of breathing awaiting resumption of being canned hunted as trophies for cruelty. Chase all to the “safety of the south” and then bomb and shoot them there as well”.
‘The Palestine News Network’ (PNN) reported how, post tea-time during the war, dozens of people were killed and injured during a series of violent Israeli strikes on various areas of the Gaza Strip. In the south of the Gaza Strip, occupation warplanes bombed a house in the city of Rafah, killing three people, while others remain under the rubble.
The PNN further reported that, “Nine people were killed, and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Tannour neighborhood, east of Rafah… Journalist Shaima al-Jazzar and her family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the city of Rafah…
“The occupation warplanes also bombed a house in the center of the city of Khan Younis, which led to the killing of a woman and the injury of at least eight other people, in addition to the killing of two people and wounding of two others in an attack on the town of al-Qarara, northeast of Khan Younis. The occupation artillery also bombed the eastern area of the city.”
When the Israeli occupation resumed its genocide in Gaza after the cease fire brokered by Egypt and Qatar came to an end, Israel pushed Gaza's terrified residents from one refuge space to another. They had evacuated it for another place of refuge in the south during the fourth week of Israel's ferocious assault on the Gaza Strip.
But, following the end of the pause in fighting on Friday, the Israeli military dropped leaflets in the area of this second refuge, warning people it was to become a "fighting zone" and ordered them to leave. Displaced three times in 50 days, one young girl learned during the pause in fighting that her home in Gaza had been destroyed.
Meanwhile, it came to light that Israeli officials had lied about their attacks on innocent people. Some of the details behind these stories, which described atrocities purportedly committed by Palestinian fighters, were provided by Israeli officials and soldiers as well as search and rescue volunteers.
However, ‘Haaretz’ cross-referenced some of these allegations in a report published and found that they did not add up. The Israeli army admitted that mistakes were made by at least one soldier who fed one of the stories. One of the main topics allegedly riddled with unconfirmed reporting and misinformation was the death of children and babies.
Later, more than 100 innocent Palestinian civilians were brutally murdered in a dreadful Israeli massacre targeting a residential building in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip. The building housed hundreds of civilians as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocide.
The horrifying incident unfolded as a family residential building in Jabalia was targeted by a massively huge Israeli missile strike. The strike resulted in the immediate murder of approximately 100 individuals, the vast majority of them being civilians, including children and women.
Israeli missile strikes also left dozens of others injured, with many still trapped under the debris, adding to the gravity of the situation. The exact number of missing individuals remains unknown as search and rescue operations continue. This latest atrocity is not an isolated incident, as the Israeli occupation forces have repeatedly been committing similar massacres against civilians in their homes or seeking refuge in schools, whether in Jabalia or other regions of the Gaza Strip.
With all these crimes surfacing in the public arena through the media, public opinion is shifting in favour of Palestinians, and is demanding an end to the persistent war crimes that Israel is carrying out against an unarmed and vulnerable Palestinian population. A Gallup Poll reported: “63% democrats disapprove military actions in Gaza; 67% below reject Israel’s military tactics in Gaza; 64% people of colour discard Israel’s military tactics in Gaza.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that in under two months, 15,899 Palestinians were killed, and 41,316 wounded and this included over 10,000 women and children. A large portion of the Palestinian future has been wiped out.
And yet, Palestinians in Gaza have snubbed Netanyahu’s threat that the Israeli army will wipe out the remaining Palestinians from the area. “We will turn the region into rubble” a report quoted Netanyahu promising dispossession, a fresh Nakba.
But the Gazans are increasingly stubborn. “We will never leave Gaza” is their refrain”. Baha’ al-Din a young lawyer avowed in a statement to ‘Palestine Chronicle’: “We will never leave Gaza. Our generation will not go down in history as the one who left the land of their birth”.
Amidst Israel’s ruthless genocidal attacks, the people are even more strongly rooted in their land. Addallah Aljamal, a Gaza-based journalist affirms that they refuse to hand over the legacy of those who died, those who are struggling for justice, and those whose bodies are yet to be recovered from under the rubble.
Despite being warned almost a year ago, Israel’s army pooh-poohed Hamas’ plans to attack Israel. They mistook military strength to even out self-determination and claims to justice with dignity. To the Palestinian resistance fighters, and those who stand firmly with ‘summud’ (Arabic for ‘steadfast perseverance’) as their ideological ground, there is no surrender under contemplation.
In the end, they believe that the land is theirs and the invader must go, and will go. Their moral rights stand on firmer grounds than colonialist, racist, apartheid notions. The Palestinian fighters will not stop for tea-time at the revolution. They will fight till the bitter end when they can claim justice, even if that means they must face bloody genocide.
The dialogues and talks and innumerable conferences held to launch a peace process have faltered, tripped, tumbled, and fallen. There really is no ‘tea-time’ in this desperate and urgent exploration for justice”. The imperialist West seeks a bland reconciliation- akin to a banquet where the powerful share a momentary time of fellowship with the oppressed.
They are clearly oblivious to the fact that justice is both a state of right relationship and a process of restoring right relationship following wrongs. Justice, in this sense, is identical to reconciliation. Put more simply, reconciliation is a concept of justice—the justice of comprehensive right relationships.
