Why I took my children to Gaza protests at CCA
I decided that I needed to do more. I also decided that I would include my children in my action, where appropriate, so they could learn about the world and our right to protest. There will come a time when the children of today ask their parents what they did to stop this genocide, and I wanted to make sure I could say I had acted.
I regularly email my MP but they rarely respond, take little action for the people of Palestine and conflate Zionism and Judaism. I have also taken my children to meet our MP, as we want them to understand that our MPs are elected to represent us in Westminster and that we have the right to ask them questions and to hold them to account if they remain silent on injustice.
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So I joined Mothers Against Genocide Scotland, a grassroots collective calling for the immediate end to all genocide across the globe and lasting peace and justice for all oppressed peoples. I immediately found a network of people who felt exactly like I did – compelled to act not in spite of being a mother, but because we are mothers.
Everyone in the group has multiple identities: we are mothers, sisters, aunties. We are women of colour, white women, we are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist, and more. We are many things, and yet, at our core is a connection with mothers who mourn their devastating losses whilst caring for others.
Our activities include protest; mutual learning and solidarity events; fundraising; and political advocacy. The images of children killed by UK part-made weapons stay with us. We do not ignore the news. We mourn together, we organise and we act. We keep conversations about Gaza going in our families, our circles and wider communities.
Some of these are minuscule actions. But every action is a form of protest. There is a socially-constructed perception of motherhood: mothers are selfless, nurturing and non-disruptive. Concepts like 'gentle parenting', women's rights and access to healthcare exist, but we've painfully learned they only apply to certain groups and certainly not to mothers and families in Palestine.
Recently 60 members of Mothers Against Genocide Scotland took part in 48-hour rolling fast as a small act of solidarity with the people of Gaza who are experiencing forced starvation and in protest at the lack of action from the UK government. Each of us who took part described how hard it was to look after our children whilst hungry. Everyone who undertook the fast described the guilt of knowing that we had the privilege to finish any time, and that mothers in Gaza cannot. The amount I would normally spend on coffee and meals for those days, I donated to mutual aid organisations in Gaza.
I know it's a small act but it started so many conversations with people, and since these rolling fasts Mothers Against Genocide Scotland has more than tripled in size.
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The more I read, the more I'm discovering our own complicity. I recently discovered that the Scottish Parliament hosts a cross-party group called Building Bridges with Israel. Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza with its collective punishment of a civilian population. They are also committing war crimes with illegal settlements in the West Bank, this is evidenced by international institutions. Do we really want to build bridges with a rogue state which flouts international law?
Taking my children to national demonstrations or to solidarity events has been an incredibly powerful way for them to learn about the world and about our responsibility in it. But watching the heavy-handed arrests in London of peaceful protestors over the past few weeks and witnessing Police Scotland's arrest last Tuesday has shaken us.
The latest YouGov poll tells us that more than half of people in the UK oppose Israel's actions in Gaza. Of those 55 per cent, an overwhelming 82 per cent believe they amount to the crime of genocide. Many of us have written to MPs and MSPs and gone to their constituency surgeries to ask them to do more. And yet still there are only words, not actions from our Prime Minister and First Minister.
Cat Train is a mother to three young children who lives in East Renfrewshire
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