Visiting Invercargill we joined the local Palestinian Support Network as they protested in the local supermarkets against the selling of Israel sourced products, in particular Obela hummus. They were good people and it was a privilege to join them. But when we went home to family only the eleven year old was interested. You what? You went into a supermarket and took stuff off the shelves without permission? They didn’t try and stop you? He took some convincing. Palestinian protestors become in fact a different species. So that the  puzzle of the other 49993 local people who are witnessing a live-streamed genocide without protest becomes slightly less puzzling – and I’m not being critical of Invercargill here – it is the same everywhere. For some, protest is foreign, as is the issue. Some are scared off by visa requirements. There’s the danger of getting known in a smallish city. Some will have registered the ineffectiveness of the moral outrage protest. After all 100 million people protesting the Iraq invasion had no effect. How many have protested this genocide with no response from the Empire?

As the international protest turns more to the boycott, it does take it into the tetchier and more serious territory of economic interests. Quite simply, if Israel was denied weapons and fuel, the war would stop.. The Israeli economy could be crippled by an economic embargo such as is placed on Cuba, and its identity undermined by education, cultural and sporting boycotts.  If weapons were no longer manufactured because workers, supported by unions, were no longer willing to make them, wars would stop. But it’s not seriously happening. And if it started to, there would be a crunch point which would be very volatile indeed.

It all becomes self interested in a way. The group were pleased with their action and they should be. There is always the energy that results from performance, plus the video on facebook, the comments of passers by, the moral reward from having participated. We exist. It is no different from any performance. So, the performances compete for position in the performance cacophony which is the modern political scene.

So, change is incremental. I do wonder whether the constant simple non-judgemental questioning of the uncommitted would be useful? Do you know what’s happening?  How do you feel about it? Why aren’t you with us? A bit of a door knocking campaign, a collation of the answers into a theatre piece. Trying to puzzle the complex web behind it all.