My Story by Nigel C
I'm a Pākehā (white person) from Aotearoa New Zealand, which means that settler colonialism made me who I am. I've been living in Lancaster and teaching at Lancaster University for 12 years. In the mid-1980s I spent time traveling in the Middle East, including working on a kibbutz (yes, I should have known better). After I asked some questions, an Arabic-speaking Israeli took me with him on a business trip to a nearby Palestinian town, then showed me the ruins of Palestinian village near the kibbutz. 'That village was 2000 years old', he told me. 'We had no right to do that'.
Later I met some young Palestinians on a bus in Jordan, and they took me home to the refugee camp on the outskirts of Amman where their families had been living since the Nakba of 1948. That was my first encounter with Palestinian hospitality, and it was a big inspiration when I started researching and writing about hospitality many years later. As I learned back then, it is so often those who have the least to give who give the most.
Back in New Zealand in the early 1990s I joined a small Friends of Palestine group, run by young students who are still friends - and still activists - today. After too long away, I came back to the issue of Palestine a few years ago, when I helped start a campaign against Lancaster University's increasing involvement with BAE Systems, which we tried to ramp up (without great success) after the 2021Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
The bombardment of Gaza after October 7, the dropping of 10s of 1000s of tons of bombs on people who are literally encaged, is the most horrifying thing I have ever witnessed. The fact that this is supported and enabled by the US, the UK and other western powers, and could have been stopped overnight, is simply unthinkable.
It was amazing to see how quickly people in Lancaster mobilized in response, and this has changed the way I feel about the town and who I want to be with. I prefer to write than to talk or shout, but it is a remarkably supportive environment, so I joined in. As part of a Palestine working group at Lancaster University, I found myself closely associated with the students who started the encampment there, and their courage in the face of strong opposition from university management has been a huge inspiration.
The bravery and dignity of Palestinians in the face of genocide has also been an inspiration for oppressed people worldwide. I want to finish with the words of Tameem Shaltoni, a Palestinian New Zealander: 'Palestine & Palestinians have inspired & radicalised a new generation of young Maori who are reimagining their own struggle for sovereignty & self-determination... The world has no idea what Gaza has unleashed'.