IN 2012 I was fortunate enough to visit Gaza. It was the more liberal days of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and it was possible to get through the Rafah crossing from Egypt.

Rafah still existed then. One day we were hosted for lunch on some trestle tables in a refugee camp, a flattened area where we were shown how slabs were made out of rubble to help the ongoing reconstruction after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

I was sat next to an elderly Palestinian, probably because he spoke some English. He asked me why I was there, about my job and family, where I lived. Out of typical English politeness I asked him, without really thinking, about his family. With no great drama, counting them off on his fingers, he told me that his parents, his brothers and sisters, his wife and children had all, over time, been killed by the Israelis. He was the only one left alive of his immediate family.

The overwhelming majority of us living our relatively comfortable lives have no conception or experience of life during wartime or living under military occupation. I vaguely remember when my grandparents died when I was a child, my parents when I was middle aged. Now as old age creeps up, it is my friends, family and colleagues who have started dying. Each one is a shock, we are traumatised by the loss of someone, one person, close to us.

We do not know how it feels to have your children blown up in front of you, to recover their limbs from the rubble. We do not know the fear of the next bomb falling on you. Sometimes we get hungry, some people in this country know hunger, but as a whole population we have no conception of living during a famine that has been designed to starve us to death or into submission. The resistance and resilience of the Palestinians to survive, care and look after each other in a world of trauma is something we cannot comprehend, only marvel at.

The crime of genocide was created and designed to prevent it happening again. In Israel, as in Rwanda and elsewhere, “the other” is dehumanised so that it is OK to wantonly kill and maim other human beings. But now, as we watch the slaughter and murder of Palestinians on our screens, it is us who are being dehumanised. How can we claim to be human, people who love, hurt, bleed and cry, while our countries still support and defend what is going on?

We need to be clear, statements denouncing Israel, threatening to recognise Palestine, or dropping parachutes of aid are all meaningless gestures. If not to be guilty of collusion Western governments should have been doing everything in their power to stop it — genocide — happening by not selling arms, ending trade, imposing sanctions, whatever it takes. They have the power; they are deciding not to use it.

The publicly quoted figure is of over 60,000 dead, the reality — many buried beneath the rubble, is now that at least 10 per cent of the population of Gaza has been killed or maimed — hundreds, not tens of thousands. If that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, apply 10 per cent to the population of Britain or United States. It’s millions.

In his excellent polemical essay, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad says, there will be an end with everyone who did nothing claiming to be on the right side: “the starting point of history can always be shifted” by the instigators of the violence.  The story is always that it was the barbarians who instigated and the civilised who are forced to respond.

Leaving aside that it is the Israelis acting as barbarians and the Palestinians as the civilised, in Israel’s version of history the starting point is continuously moved — previous actions are omitted in the justification of the latest atrocities. No mention of the Nakba in 1948 or the occupation in 1967. The intifadas, the PLO, Hamas — all arose spontaneously and started attacking Israel. It had nothing to do with the settlement, colonisation and destruction of their homes.

Operations Cast Lead in 2008 and Protective Edge in 2014 were but two among a long list of euphemistically named Israeli military operations. The bombing, starvation and murder were necessary to prevent the evil threat posed by the indigenous Palestinians defending their land.

In the run-up to the party conference season, those of us still in the Labour Party and many beyond will hear the constant refrain of support and elect us — or else. Or else it will be much worse with an alternative ruling party. In the US it was the refrain of the Democrats, us or Trump. They chose Trump. In Europe it is the social democrat plea to fend off the far right. It is not working.

In Britain it is Labour’s one argument — what if the Tories got elected or, god forbid, Reform? Elect us or else, if judged by the explosion of support for “Your Party,” seems to be a declining threat as each month passes.

Disenchanted by Labour’s lack of a meaningful, concrete response, groups of people, hundreds of thousands of young people, people of all or no religion, are taking action in support of Palestine, deciding that at some point you have to stand for something.

Whatever excuses, rationale or version of history is put forward as camouflage, they cannot and will not condone a real, ongoing genocide.

September 6 is the next national demonstration in London and also a Global Day of Action called by the newly formed Global Alliance for Palestine. It will see millions of people across the world standing up for Palestine. Repression is not working. Thou shall not march in the wrong place, chant the wrong things, support the wrong organisations, bang the wrong pots and pans.

It is not the protesters in the wrong, it is the barbarians in power who are refusing to act as human beings. This is a history they will never be able to rewrite; Starmer, Lammy and all the others guilty of not doing everything they could do should be afraid of judgement “one day.” Although the people have already found them guilty as charged.

We do not live in fear as Palestinians do every day of their lives. As a million Palestinians in Gaza City await the arrival of the Israeli tanks we need to stand up as a country declaring which side we are on, on the side of the oppressed.  

Palestine is the defining issue of our time. Our challenge, our duty is to end the fear the people of Palestine rightly feel. What are our leaders so scared of? It is not their lives at risk. It is Palestinians — our fellow human beings — they are condemning to die.