“We must struggle together for a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, in dignity, justice, and full equality.”
Jasr Kawkby is a doctor based in London, originally from Gaza, Palestine. He spoke at the London Friends of Standing Together rally on 6 April. Below is a transcript of his speech.
Thank you all for gathering here to stand with my people in Gaza—together against this most brutal war machine, relentlessly decimating a defenseless population.
This war was set in motion by a horrific massacre committed by Hamas militants, a rampage that saw about 1,200 Israelis killed, mostly civilians, including defenceless women and children, and the kidnapping of over 250 Israelis. Some of those hostages are still enduring the cruelty of their captivity, and their families continue to live in anguish for their safety. I pray for their safe return home.
Condemning this savage attack does not, in any way, ignore the wider context—the decades-long history of grave injustices against the Palestinian people: starting with the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinian villages, on whose ruins the state of Israel was built. Neither does it negate the crushing reality of brutal military occupation, the suffocating siege of Gaza, the vicious and voracious settler-colonial expansion in the West Bank, or the daily humiliation and dehumanization inflicted on us Palestinians.
Nor does it question our right, our duty, to resist occupation. But the October massacre was not an act of resistance. It was a reckless and fanatical assault, one that strengthened and came to the rescue of the most bloodthirsty government Israel has ever known. A barbaric attack against innocent lives under the guise of fighting for freedom, that triggered, in a way that was fully predictable, an even more barbaric war of retaliation under the guise of self-defence.
Now, this genocidal war machine has been grinding Gaza into dust for over 18 months. My heart is heavy with grief, mourning the death of family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues, teachers, schoolmates, shopkeepers. And, with them, the slow and steady death of a place I once called home, taking with it every aspect of life I once knew.
Haunted by brutal visions and images, of grief-stunned mothers clutching the remains of their children. Babies pulled from the rubble, dust-covered, lifeless. Fathers digging with bare hands, desperate for signs of life beneath ruins that used to be home. Entire families erased.
Grief itself has become a privilege. There is no time to mourn. One evacuation after another. Families told to flee to a safe zone, then bombed on the road. Told to hide in schools, only to be bombed in the classrooms. Told to seek refuge in hospitals, only to breathe their last under the rubble.
In wars, hospitals have always been sanctuaries, safe havens. Not in Gaza. To many refugees there, hospitals became their death traps, their graveyards. And through it all, the fear never leaves. Fear that your child won’t survive. Fear that your child will survive, but alone.
What adds to our grief is not only the brutality of the war. It’s the abandonment. The betrayal. Abandonment, not only by western governments, those proud, self-proclaimed defenders of human rights and dignity, who only responded with cold “concern” and calculated, insincere calls for restraint.
Betrayal, too, by Arab regimes, those who claim to speak in our name, to carry our culture, our faith, our pain. They watched their so-called brothers and sisters be slaughtered. Sealed their borders. Offered no refuge. Gave no place of safety. They celebrated Palestinian heroism, cheered on the “steadfast Palestinians” as they treaded water, not once throwing them a rope. Not once offering a lifeline.
They buried their true fear, of being burdened with refugees, beneath insincere, hypocritical claims of not wanting to aid ethnic cleansing. Instead, with their inaction, they aided a genocide. The one thing more haunting than a Gaza emptied of Palestinians is a Gaza where only their corpses remain.
We’ve been abandoned even by God. I always suspected he never existed. But now I know he exists even less.
This rally has been organised by Friends of Standing Together. I must say a few words to this. Some Palestinian voices have called to boycott Standing Together, claiming they are an instrument of normalisation. This is not just intellectually lazy, it is irresponsible and deeply damaging. Such a foolish stance undermines our struggle for liberation and self-determination. It is, yet again, another form of abandonment, this time self-inflicted.
There is nothing normalising about Palestinians and Israelis standing together, shoulder to shoulder. Against genocide. Against military occupation. Against settler-colonial expansion. Against apartheid.
This is not normalisation. This is anti-normalisation in its clearest, most courageous, and most impactful form.
We are in this together. The occupation has not only devastated Palestinian lives, it has poisoned Israeli society from within. Today, Israel is ruled by a supremacist, fanatical, fascist government. This did not come out of nowhere. This is the result of decades of occupation, of dehumanising Palestinians, of normalising apartheid. The rebound is inevitable when oppression rebounds upon the oppressor.
The breakdown of democracy in Israel is the collapse that follows when justice and freedom are denied to others. A state cannot rule over another people by force and remain democratic for itself.
This is why we must stand together, struggle together, against the occupation, for democracy, and for a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, in dignity, justice, and full equality.
This speech represents the view of its author. Thanks to Jasr for his permission to reproduce the speech. Posted 7 April 2025.