017: free, free, Palestine

017: free, free, Palestine, originally uploaded by light paintbrush.

quotidie
017 : 1.17

today i found myself within vicinity of the rally in central London. i ran around the perimeter of the group and managed a few photos before the police decided to tighten up and not let us through to charing cross road. this was the first photo i took, behind the police line. these people were going back to their car, probably to ensure the safety of this little girl. she had a drawing stuck to her placard, with words written in a language i couldn't understand and did not recognize. there was a stickman shooting another stickman with a thick rectangular gun. the only other color that illustarted the black and white drawing was red.

while i was still there in the midst of it, along a midsection of a road together with others that had cameras, phone cameras; and journalists with cameramen, the group started going in my direction. police began to run across, taking position. for a moment, in all the push and shove, i thought i was going to get caught in everything. i ran over to behind the police line and it made all the difference.

i'm not sure if anyone thanked them, the Metropolitan Police. i hope for the chance (in all unharmed-civilian-ity, of course) to thank them one day. i was able to say "thank you" to one, but it was after i'd asked him a question.

i stopped following world events quite a long time ago (forgive the ignorance), but having come across this, i looked it up - for all i knew was that people were dying in Palestine.

and i was just shocked when i'd understood what was happening. what a division. what an unnecessary division. and such irony. nothing else comes to mind except Thomas Hardy's poem Channel Firing :

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

(the voice that speaks in this verse is one of a group of skeletons that had awoken to gunnery practice and promptly thought it was "judgment day". the poem was written april 1914, four months before WWI. i believe hardy wrote this to provoke a better human condition. sadly, it's practical application today shows that he has not completely succeeded in that.)


war is always just an option, and the choice that should never be.

if only everyone prayed for peace within themselves.