Palestinian children are our own beloved children
This struggle is not about your name.
Western support for Palestine is about image and reputation: "Not in my name!"
Third World support for Palestine is a visceral identification with Palestinians as our own family, as our own selves, our own children, and understanding, from our own experiences of imperialist and colonialist genocide, what they they are suffering and what they are resisting so heroically.
Palestinians are our own beloved people. Palestinian babies are our babies. We grieve with you and rage with you as if they are murdering our own children. We are driven insane by the depths of the evil. We are screaming and screaming. We pour our whole selves into supporting and praying for the victory of the Axis of Resistance and the end of the evil of imperialism. We cannot wait a second longer for its demise. We will work till our last breath to hasten its end. Our whole being is resistance.
We honour Western co-resisters, martyrs like Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and Aaron Bushnell, and those earnestly working to end the genocide, those who take responsibility for their own complicity, those who fight for Palestine because they too see the faces and souls of their children in the broken bodies of Palestinian children. But there is a difference. This doesn't happen to white children, this doesn't happen to Western children. You will never see your child in that position because of their whiteness and Western citizenship.
I will never forget the day when I saw, juxtaposed one after the other on my Facebook timeline, baby pictures of my friend's happy and secure white-passing child in safe surroundings, immediately above a post about a nine-month old baby blown to pieces in Afghanistan. The poignancy and horror of this was compounded by the fact that her brothers were training to be officers in the Australian army, and she defended the occupation of Afghanistan (she had contempt for the Green Party precisely because they wanted to withdraw Australian troops from Afghanistan). I was acutely aware that my future child would look more like the Afghan baby than the Australian one, and not be protected by the citizenship of a white-majority settler-colony built on the genocide and slaughter of many thousands of black indigenous babies (another people my friend had racist contempt for, calling them "Abos").
It is precisely that difference that is killing our beloved Palestinian children. If you don't realise this, you need to wake up and examine your own atttitude, your miseducation since birth, and commit to co-resistance against imperialism and towards liberation and justice for Palestine and all indigenous and Third World people.
“WARNING XXXXX VERY EXPLICIT MATERIAL
Alawa elders Sandy Mambookyi and Chicken Gonagun (who may also be known as Kaludji) lived on Hodgson Downs for most of their lives. In the 1970s, they were asked by historians Peter and Jay Read whether white men ever shot women, children and piccaninnies. They replied: "Women bin run away, they roundem up, shootem.” But babies, they said, were too young to shoot. Sandy continued: "Gottem stick, knockem in the head or neck. Some kid, piccanin', that small one, like a goanna, hittem longa tree.” Chicken added: "Bash 'em longa stone, chuckem longa stone … You know, too small to shoot 'em, too small.”
(Read and Read 1991: 15).
Tex Camfoo was born near the Roper River in about 1922, the son of Jimmy Camfoo, a Chinese saddler, and Florida, a Rembarrnga woman. When he was a little boy, his infant sister was killed by white men in the manner described by Sandy: "They grabbed her by the leg and banged her up against the tree. And my aunty Edna Niluk, she got me and ran away in the hills with me.”
(Camfoo and Camfoo 2000: 1)
Speaking about events in his country, Dinny Nyliba McDinny, a Garrwa/Yanyuwa man respected for his knowledge of history, described in 1987 how babies were killed with a stick: "hit him just like goanna … hold him leg two fella, kill him like a goanna.” (Baker 1999: 76) Dinny had scars on his back from a flogging with a stockwhip on Eva Downs Station in 1955.
In 1987, Nora Jalirduma, a Yanyuwa woman, told how the bodies of babies were doused with kerosene before being burnt: "Baby, he been hit him, kerosene burn him. They used to make big fire on top. Enough people now, [pour on] kerosene now, and burn him.” This incident occurred when her mother was young, about 1890. (Baker 1999: 76) I have read reports of stockmen carrying kerosene in their saddlebags for this purpose.
In 1977, Blue Bob Jayinbadurgi, a Garrwa man, described what happened when his grandfather and grandfather's brother saw a white man for the first time at Manguwarruna, on Seven Emus Creek, near the coast. One brother ran away; the older one was ridden down and shot. The younger brother watched, unseen. The white stockman, Blue Bob said, "found another mob and shot them”. But he didn't burn the bodies straight away - "just leave them - stack them up and leave them”. Then he went across to the Robinson River, about 12 kilometres to the north-west, "shot another few there”, before going back to the camp where the brothers and other people had been living.
The camp was empty except for a baby who was crying. Nearby were the hot coals of a ground oven. Blue Bob described how the white man "put the little kid in there alive, crying, and dug the hole in while he's crying”. Continuing to search, the man "saw another mob of little fellas running about and grab them by the leg, grab them by the leg and hit the tree with it and throw them in the waters and put some in the fire, on the Robinson. This the early days. People been get shot, lot of people.” After pausing, Blue Bob observed: "there would have been a crowd of people today still alive - few here now.” (Borroloola land claim, Exhibit 79: 107, 108, September 1977) Further details are in Roberts 2005: 199-200.
- RESEARCH BY: Tony Roberts in his book 'Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900' - Amazon
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"One time a policeman came there (to the ceremony ground) with his pack-horse and the Yammatji said, ' You better go away or we'll spear you.' "Out near Yinnietharra woolshed, they had a gaol. I saw some people there with a chain around their neck, two blokes together, and they had to work like that. You had to work at that time or you would get a whip on your back. There was policemans there. Old people say them policemans used to hang Yammatjis around there, and throw them in a big hole, and throw kerosene over them, and put them on fire and burn them all up. The big hole was between the gaol house and the shed. It's still there, that big hole. They had no heart. They'd grab'em by the throat and put a rope around it and hang 'em on a tree maybe two or three at a time, and then they'd chuck 'em in that big hole. The Yammatji was not allowed to look when them things was going on, or you'd get thrown in, too. If you started any argument about them people getting killed, they'd hit you on the back of the neck. "The police killed womans and kids and mans. Little kids like my grand-son got chucked on the fire. Screaming. You not allowed to cry for them. Or a mother might have a baby and when it was born the police would chuck it in that big hole.
- by Yamatji Elder Suzy Chubby 1992
- RESEARCH BY: Dr Chris Owen, University of WA, publisher of the book 'Every Mother's Son is Guilty: Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905'“
Sovereign Union