Scales of Justice

High above the Central Court of England and Wales, commonly known as The Old Bailey, standing tall and straight, a sword pointing to the heavens in her right hand, a pair of scales hanging from her left, her feet resting on the globe beneath them, her spiky crown glinting in the August sunshine, stands Lady Justice.

Originating in the ancient world, personified in sculptural form as Justitia, by the emperor Augustus, she now has many ‘sisters’ scattered across the globe. Most hold a sword in varying positions, some carry two sets of scales, many are blindfolded, but our Lady J is able to gaze, sightlessly, across the capital, oblivious of the injustices near and far.

Like many humane human beings on this planet that is our home, witnessing man’s recent inhumanity to men, women and children, my anger degenerates to despair, as Netanyahu’s genocidal regime, pay-rolled by Trump, inflicts its latest form of torture on the Palestinian people – the UK still providing parts for the F35 bombers that carry six one ton bombs, to be dropped on defenceless, homeless families, mostly living in tents! To date, our Labour government remains complicit in the continuing slaughter, its leader finally recognising the Palestinians right to statehood . . .  in September, perhaps? With caveats.

I share one thing with the state of Israel: the month and year of our birth. Aside from that, when learning of the holocaust as a small child,  and as a teenager, a few years later, understanding the complicated politics between the two world wars in relation to its inception, I instinctively felt this new country would be a tinderbox for future trouble in the area, and the wider world. Its violent birth, I reasoned, killing and evicting families who had lived there for generations, destroying one country and building the bones of a new state on the bodies of others, would not make for strong foundations. In doing so – as I saw it then, see it now – it recognised Zionists as ‘the chosen people’, when, to me, we are all equal one to another, and there is one word for discrimination against races, colours, creeds: racism.

From Balfour in 1917, to the need atone for the horrors of WW2 in 1948, to the 6-day war of 1967, the scales of justice, the imbalance was there from the outset. And has continued ever since; the Israeli government, allowed to flout international laws without being called to account. As they do now. Hamas’s brutality giving them the opportunity, the excuse, to be rid of the people on their chosen patch of land.

I had hoped that, after accepting Israel’s right to ‘defend itself’, after the IDF onslaught showed no signs of letting up (even after Hamas had accepted a deal, broken by Israel), the  British government might seize this chance to redress the balance, to tilt the scales back in favour of those who have suffered the most, the homeless, the limbless, the orphaned, the starving people of Gaza, those being pummelled to dust before our very eyes. But, to date, it has been a vain hope.

Which means, from the comfort of our sofas, where anger, frustration and tears are not enough, we watch a list of blatant war crimes being committed, while little is done by those who have the power to cut off all funding to the perpetrators of this genocide.

But, since we are still living in a democracy, if an increasingly shaky one, to vent my anger, I write to my MP, I write to the Prime Minister, I write to the Home Secretary. My MP, Clive Lewis, one of 200 + who signed a letter to the PM requesting a Palestinian state be recognised, sent me an informative reply. And now I write this blog. Which helps no one.

Others,  better known than I, in the arts and elsewhere, are protesting more publicly. The terrific Juliet Stevenson, telling-it-like it-is on the Artists for Palestine UK site; opera singers and ballet dancers refusing to take productions to Israel; 300 leading British Jews, including Michael Rosen, whose children’s book I once illustrated, delivering a letter condemning the proscribing of Palestine Action to Downing Street on August 5th. As well as less well-known ladies for justice, responsible women in their 70s and 80s, a former magistrate and  an eighty-one year old with an OBE for community work amongst them, these upstanding citizens who have found fame in the newspapers after protesting peacefully for the Palestinian people’s right to exist. Man-handled by police, locked up for hours, to be bailed, their movements and contact with friends curtailed until their cases come to court, when they are liable to 6 months imprisonment. 14 years is possible.

And this not in Putin’s Russia, or Netanyahu’s apartheid state where Palestinians are tried in Army courts – if at all – while Zionist settlers roam free in the West Bank to burn, and sometimes kill with impunity, bulldozing homes, their occupants with no recourse to the law, since, after decades of experience, Palestinians know they are never on the winning side. No. These arrests are here in the UK. Our Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, sandwiching Palestine Action between the Russian Imperial Movement and, would you believe, The Maniacs Murder Cult in a post-lunch, three-for-the-price-of-one deal to speed this shabby bill through, becoming law just hours later.

But, since we still live in a democracy, on August 9th hundreds gathered in Parliament Square in support of the Palestinian people and the right to free speech. A large percentage of them, like me, were once 1960s peace-loving, freedom-loving teenagers. Some of which, like me, might have marched, chanting for a Woman’s Right to Choose, or for Gay Rights, but who, on Saturday afternoon, silently sat down with their placards on which were written just seven words: I oppose genocide, and I support Palestinian Action. 532 of them were carried away to be charged under the Terrorism Act 2000.

I recently read a Guardian Long Read piece: Starmer v Starmer, which dissected the differing facets of the Prime Minister’s character. The last paragraph referencing a Palestinian delegation to number 10 earlier this year, amongst which was a teenage girl. The PM, having listened to their concerns, but proposing little in response, the emboldened teenager, addressing Keir Starmer, said, My ambition in life is to be human rights lawyer like you. And I was very disappointed to hear what you just said. We were expecting more. To which, I read, our Prime Minister looked a bit shocked, but said nothing.

At the other end of the age spectrum, a brave eighty year-old woman (whose house was raided by the police while held for 7 hours in a cell), currently on restrictive bail, on the prospect of a jail sentence, said, Even if I die in prison for this, I can’t think of a better thing to die for than the [Palestinian people], who’ve been persecuted for almost my lifetime.

And for all of mine!

WORLD IMBALANCE, first published in Pig Iron 18, Pig Iron Press 1992, and horribly relevant in 2025.