I’m impressed and delighted that the popular Irish author Sally Rooney has publicly declared that she will support and give funds to Palestine Action. This despite the UK Government’s declaring it a “terrorist organisation’ because it has taken direct action to bring pressure on that same Government to make more effort to stop the genocide in Gaza.
For hundreds of years Britain’s governing and propertied elites have chosen to advance their own interests rather than addressing injustices and worse, both at home and in the wider world. We have needed outspoken individuals to draw attention to the situation. Significantly, it has been minority groups like the Quakers, who were continually and often violently persecuted by those in power for rejecting the authority of the Church of England and a “natural” order based on social hierarchy, for being pacifists, and for believing in equality between men and women, to draw attention to the ethical bankruptcy of those elites.
It’s the same tradition of publicly expressing ethical concern that informs the Quaker Huw Lemmey’s recent piece in the London Review of Books, which he concluded by stating that: ‘Resisting the destruction of human life and the perpetuation of a genocide against the Palestinian people is not wrong. It is the law, and this government, that is wrong’ (‘Short Cuts’ London review of Books 24 July 2025 pp. 10-11).
At a time when public opinion in opposition to the Gaza genocide is growing in Israel, despite every attempt by the Israeli Government and mainstream media to hide the appalling death toll and the human suffering being inflicted, it is important that all those opposed to that genocide speak out. We owe a debt of thanks to Sally Rooney for doing so.
