Letter from Evora

 I’m sorry for yesterday’s inadequate post.

I am on holiday (check last but one post to find out who with) but I still see the news and I still get emails in my inbox from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Good Shepherd Collective, the Refuser Solidarity Network (Israeli conscientious objectors) and of course I still see the news.

And while the headlines are full of Trump and his tariffs, as far as I can see no western leaders (including our very own dead loss leader) have condemned what Israel is up to now. Yes they were full of it when there was a ceasefire, but not so much now the IDF are murdering paramedics and bombing babies. Where is the condemnation? And are they going to object to the new incursions into Gaza? No, they’re going to keep on selling them bombs. 

No wonder young people in the shape of Youth Demand are holding planning meetings in rented rooms in Quaker Meeting Houses about ways to stop the genocide (as well as protest about the lack of action to protect the climate.)

Why didn’t the police just knock on the door or ring the bell instead of breaking down the listed building doors? Quakers may be dissenters and demonstrators but they are peaceful, non violent ones. And we are a welcoming and inclusive church. There was no need for the police to act like thugs. Yes, we protest, we hold peace vigils outside arms fairs and nuclear bases and march against genocides, but we are not violent. Look at our history. We do not fight. 

This current UK government cannot tolerate dissent, however. The Tory government brought in laws to stifle it and the current so-called Labour government have let these laws stand.

This is an excerpt from a message to Quaker meetings:

I’m wondering where it’s going to end…The same way things are going in the USA, where someone who wrote a letter protesting about the genocide was arrested by masked officials on the street and taken off to detention away from her home town?

I’m playing with two year old MsX by a lake in Portugal and worrying about the world she is growing up in.