Running for Palestine
The Great North Run
The British government’s decision to suspend some arms to Israel has contradictory features. It has produced a furious reaction from the most hardline supporters of the actions of the Israeli government in its ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The main cause of this anger is not really the content of the suspensions but what one signal an element of the ban sends – which is for even the British state to concede some risk of illegality in Israel’s actions. That was enough to generate fury amongst Netanyahu’s allies here and abroad. But despite this, the arms ban is totally inadequate. It affects just thirty of 350 arms licences, a small fraction. It leaves the UK to continue supplying parts for F-35 fighter jets, a key part of Israel’s weaponry, which were used in an Israeli attack in July in a ‘safe zone’, that killed ninety people and injured 300.
For what is now approaching a year, humanitarian organisations have warned about Israel’s actions, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, attacks on civilian and so-called ‘safe’ areas, and targeting of aid operations.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered ‘immediate and effective measures’ to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide but Israel has continued to kill in huge numbers. Indeed, the figure of 40,000 Palestinian people killed, including more than 14,000 children, is almost certainly an underestimate of the real situation given the difficulty of information-flow from Gaza. Ninety per cent of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced. Polio has returned.
What is happening in Gaza has reverberated around the world and created a line of divide between those who oppose Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians and those who defend it. Where one stands on this matter is a defining question on the left.
As the historic scale of Israel’s actions have unfolded so the consequences have worked their way through international politics, from the division between the global south and states such as the USA and the UK, to Biden’s confrontation with sections of the Democratic Party’s base, to the unravelling of parts of Labour’s own electoral coalition in the general election. Millions have marched around the world. Britain is experiencing the biggest sustained mass expression of pro-Palestinian opinion in its history.
When I applied to take part in this year’s Great North Run half marathon my personal motivations and intentions were actually quite unformed and some of them were only apparent to me over time. Perhaps I’ll expand on them at some point. Mostly they are related to being an older dad who wants to be healthier, and an ongoing process of having diabetes and trying to keep it in its box. It was also probably a way proving something to myself as a person in their mid-fifties who is not given to large amounts of physical exercise. I’m not a runner. Or rather, I have not been a regular, consistent runner in any organised way. I used to run short distances in Camden Town about ten years ago. But that’s more or less it. Until this year the furthest I had run was the annual four mile run at my comprehensive school. I make no claim to be any sort of athlete. In fact I’m slow - or ‘steady’ as one friend put it.
In part my motivation is about connection to where I live, as someone who moved to the North East after thirty years of living in London. By training for the run I’ve spent time with the geography of Gateshead and Newcastle, the bridges and riverside, and been able to approach it from a different perspective.
But one thing was clear from the outset was that it was impossible to imagine spending hours every week for several months training for the run, and not using that time for some purpose. That mentality derives from how as socialists we think about where our actions sit within the wider situation at any particular time. For the reasons set out above in my case there was no other candidate for fundraising than to contribute to practical solidarity with the Palestinian people. This is less a type of altruism than a sense needing to put the time to use for a practical form of solidarity, within the context of other political actions.
On Sunday therefore I am raising funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians, and hoping in a small way by doing so to promote awareness of what is happening in Gaza and of course the West Bank too.
Thousands of people will also run this Sunday, many of them not for the first time. Each will have their own story about why they are there. Part of mine is that I would not have had the will-power to spend a fair bit of my spare time training for this event without knowing it was being put to this use.
My fundraiser for MAP is here.
You can support the Palestine Solidarity Campaign here.
