Steve Pottinger is a poet whose work I have admired and bought for a long time.
The poem of his that is reproduced below was written this week. As Steve said of it in an email:
Early this week – on Monday, to be precise – I fond myself writing another poem. The starting point for this one was the horrific footage of a young Palestinian man, Sha'aban Al-Dalou, burning alive in his hospital bed after an Israeli airstike. It led me to consider the failure of so many politicians and so much of our media to take any kind of stance in opposition to an ongoing genocide, and that – in turn – led me to write.
My thanks to both CultureMatters and Yorkshire Bylines for publishing the poem. Platforms for political poetry are few and far between, and I'm very grateful for what they do. If you've the time to click on the links to their respective webpages.
Steve's own site is here.
This is the poem:
First they came for the hospitals
and you did not speak out
except to say they wouldn't, and anyway, tunnels.
Then they came for five-year-old Hind
and you did not speak out
except to say, regrettable, but anyway, hostages.
Then they came for journalists, professors, poets
and you did not speak out
except to say, awful, but right to self-defence.
They came for schools, mosques, aid workers,
anyone in the sights of a sniper
and you did not speak out
except to say, yeah, but most moral army.
Now they come for starving people in tents
and burn them, and you do not speak out
you do not speak out
you never speak out.When they come for you
expect nothing but silence.
© Steve Pottinger 14 October 2024
I did, of course, get Steve's permission to reproduce it here.
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This poem seems to me to be clearly channeling the now famous quote by Pastor Niemoeller. Not that there is anything wrong with that. An acknowlegement would have been nice, though, don’t you think?
It was in his email
The mistake is mine
So true.
Mistake or not, somethings remain true and as Hannah Arendt pointed out, Fascism is a part of human society whether we like to admit it or not. Something Thomas Hobbes also noted in the human ability to use words to justify murder.
What I am struck by in this powerful poem – phew! – is that how much eloquence is a threat to power. No wonder it is they who live in fear too.
True
PSR wrote: “Fascism is a part of human society”
I think Abdullah Ocalan expressed it more exactly in his pamphlet ‘Democratic Confederalism’: “fascism is the purest form of the nation-state”.
Arendt was a brave woman who is second to no one who was criticised by her mostly male fellow Jews for daring to try to understand Fascism, Matthew.
A Jew who was very nearly deported to the camps herself and certain death, She saw Eichmann at his trial and could not get over how mundane he looked, how he was much like anyone else, how much he looked like one of us. It is this banality of evil that she focused on and made it clear that it was US – society – that let such evils happen. But why?
In other words, such evil has its origination in the individual (in their/our partialities) and if enough individuals will it, you’re going to have a problem – a problem that now exists in Israel and elsewhere. Arendt sought to understand as a means to head off the potential for these things to happen. And one thing she identified was the ability of evil to make the most of inequalities, unfairnesses frustrations and dreams in society and capitalise on those. Fascism is the failure of politics to make peaceful the world, allowing enmities to exist and be cultivated by bad actors – thus we can think of much western political rhetoric in that way without being conscious of it and therein lies the problem.
To get to a nation state Matthew or to justify inhumanity, you have to have individuals who approve of it and they exist all of the time. That was Adrendt’s lesson to the world.
Horrifyingly, there are no red lines Israel will not cross and shamefully our government supports the rogue state’s genocide. I can’t imagine who or what might bring an end to the barbarity.
Biden, the doddery old fool, said the other day:
“There’s an opportunity in my view, and my colleagues agree, that we can probably deal with Israel and Iran in a way that ends the conflict for a while,” Biden stated.
“In other words, that stops the back and forth. We think that there is a possibility of working for a ceasefire in Lebanon. And it’s going to be harder in Gaza. But we agree that there has to be an outcome,” he added.
“And it’s going to be harder in Gaza”. Disingenuous. It would stop in days if the USA, the UK, Germany and others halted arms to Israel. So what is he on about? He talks as though he has no power or involvement in the Middle East when the exact opposite is true. He’s up to his bloody oxters in the slaughter.
A terrible reflection on humanity that the poem had to be written.
In the unlikely event readers did not see it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/17/northern-gaza-israel-depraved-campaign
At the risk of repeating myself: what is happening in Gaza, the West bank and Lebanon is premeditated murder, it is not “killing”, it is murder pure & simple, genocide with the support of most of the Israeli jewish population.
For those with strong stomachs here is a recent Double-Down News video:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/israeli-soldiers
Here is the link for Double-Down News video:
“Israeli Soldiers SICKENING War Crimes EXPOSED”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEo813rYm8g
Very like ‘The Rabbits who caused all the trouble’ by Thurber and just as powerful. We are the ones who are ones who are ignoring or even encouraging the people who are doing this to others.
Starmer is reaping the whirlwind, as the liberal left/centre, the true silent majority in the UK, is walking away from Labour. Just wish there was a visible alternative on the left.
I discussed this with Steve Keen this evening
Quite a lot of us are speaking out about the horrors in Gaza. My home town of Brighton has a ceasefire march every Saturday, and I have kept myself informed by reading articles and watching documentaries. I have signed multiple petitions for ceasefires, for disinvestment by large companies in Israel and for the UK to stop selling arms to Israel whilst they slaughter civilians and children with impunity. The UN has spoken against a seemingly untargeted war. If the UN cannot influence politicians and the right wing media what hope has the humble voter?
None, until it happens.
This is where faith – not necessarily religious, but just in humankind – comes into play. I have ntbing more to offer than that.
Every “red line” that has been set by Biden has been crossed by Israel. Every “red line” that has been crossed by Israel has been supported, or condoned, or tacitly accepted by the UK. I say the UK, but I mean Keir Starmer; the citizens of the UK overwhelmingly do NOT support, condone or tacitly accept Israel’s crossing of “red lines”.
A red line is either a red line or it isn’t.
A red line crossed without consequences becomes a green light.
This poem gave me goosebumps.. partly from shame as other than being horrified by what is going on in Gaza I have done nothing.. other than be horrified. Its also very difficult to do anything else… I have written letters to the Editor.. they don’t get published but neither do anyone else’s as far as I can see on this topic of horror and sympathy and outrage at what Israel continues to do in front of our eyes. Writing comments to articles in the papers that always faithfully recount what Hamas did in Oct 7th but neglect to mention the myriad awful things that Israel has done and continues to do..are deleted under some “press language code” that does not seem to apply equally to comments in favor of Israel. Anyone that criticizes Israel is automatically and anti-Semite which is just not true; we are criticizing (is that too weak a word?) what Israel is DOING not what it is. How the Americans still insist on their “values” and “being a country of laws” I can’t fathom. If it were truly a country of laws this war would have been stopped for lack of weapons global horror as it is shredding pretty much the whole post war international law regime. And where are the judges of the ICC.. I hear they have been/are being intimidated by the US for daring to bring criminal charges against Netanyahu. I thought it was a crime in itself to “pressure the court”
Thank you for a great deal in that
We have news this morning that an Israeli strike in northern Gaza on a multi storey residential building has killed (‘according to Hamas’) 70. The Israelis say that Hamas is ‘exaggerating’ the figures. So its the numbers that matter. Is 30 dead ok? 40 or 50? Just not 70.
Since Blair and his illegal war, I been saying that Westminster governments can’t get any worse, and every time, they do.
I wouldn’t have believed an incoming Labour government could be any worse, however bad they were, than the outgoing Tories.
But they are. That’s quite an achievement so quickly. Enabling mass murder/massacre/genocide (choose your term). They are criminals, pure and simple.
The silence referred to in the (excellent) poem, is not just those who choose to say nothing.
It includes action by institutions, employers, and law enforcement, to actively intimidate and forcibly prevent academics and independent journalists from speaking out, by dawn police raids, confiscation of phones and computers, arrest, & censorious bail restrictions using the blunt instrument of anti-terror legislation. The latest case is that of Asa Winstanley, who joins a growing list,including Richard Medhurst (detained at airport), Sarah Wilkinson (arrested at home in dawn raid), & David Miller (sacked, by Bristol Uni but vindicated by employment tribunal)
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-counterterrorism-police-raid-home-electronic-intifada-journalist-asa-winstanley
It is worth remembering that in terms of international law, resisting occupation is LAWFUL, whilst genocide and punishment of civilians in occupied territory is a WAR CRIME.
We are arresting the wrong people and silencing the wrong voices.
Agreed