I was about to point out the usual quote from Harold Pinter’s nobel speech in 2005 in relation to the Gaza genocide on the total disappearance of truth in the media - it’s not happening even whilst it’s happening - but then I started to read the whole speech again.
HP never mentions Israel but focuses totally on the USA but throughout what he says also rings true for Israeli actions and threats in Gaza over the last month ( and of course the last century)
The whole speech is valid but HP’s quote from Pablo Neruda ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’ seemed to encapsulate the Israeli genocide against everyone in Gaza:
"And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
> without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets
Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda’s poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians."
He concludes:
" I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man."
cheers
