Interview: We keep us safe, we stop arming israel

Paul Gregoire interviews Tasnim Sammak for Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 11th July 2024:

You’ve been on the frontline of the street movement. What’s been going on in your opinion? Has there been a shift?

Yeah, people within the movement are realising that liberal politics is a scam and they want to achieve real political change that stops the bombing now. They don’t want to do their bit and go home, they want to impact the supply of arms to Israel.

So, we have been picketing the weapons factories and this direction that we’ve pivoted towards has gained popular support amongst marginalised communities, who just a few months ago were weary of attending city marches.

Now police use pepper spray more than once a week and the actions grow even more.

We’re getting up at 5 am-6 am regularly to form pickets at the gates where parts of the F-35 fighter jets are manufactured.

What we know is that if these parts don’t get made, Lockheed Martin can’t make the jets, so it’s worthwhile for us to fulfil this task for Gaza.

And even though we know that Israel has an endless supply of weapons, what we are doing is significant as a placeholder in the absence of work bans on weapons and union-imposed sanctions.

Us standing at these gates says, “We don’t believe in the political system, we don’t believe in the international community or the United Nations and the post-Holocaust humanist order.”

It therefore undoes the governing myths of white society and strengthens power amongst communities who have to now embody international justice because no one is coming: we keep us safe, and we stop arming Israel.

I write many of the political captions for publicising protest actions and I’ve been reiterating this message that we’ve got to be done with appeals to the white liberal nation.

We aren’t saying, “You, the government, hear us and stop arming Israel.”

We are saying, “We, the people, will stop the arms supply. We stop arming Israel, and you will come and attack us, and we will defend ourselves and persist.”

That’s never again: It is a more honest learning from the Holocaust than the promoters of international laws that states bury with the accumulating mass graves.