I have just cancelled my direct debit to the Royal College of Midwives because there is no clear way of cancelling membership from the website. It looks like they probably did an Amazon Prime, the notoriously difficult website navigation to cancel membership where it’s so convoluted you end up giving up, or maybe it’s the gold standard way of entrapping subscriptions. I have to hand it to capitalism… its both effective at profiteering and annoying.
So why, dear reader, did I do such a thing? For the past several weeks I and many others have been campaigning for the RCM to state support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the reasonable reason that there is an ongoing genocide and killing at a rate faster than a gravedigger’s cyclical shoveling of earth. They did publish a statement, but it did not call for an immediate ceasefire, something which the Royal College of Nurses, Unison and Unite have called for in accordance with the United Nations.
But the RCM believe they’re more intelligent than that. Their statement said they were supporting midwives in the region without explaining how, and reiterated what the International confederation of midwives have stated on Israel-Palestine, before flourishing the end with a call for a sustainable peace in the region, as though no one had thought of that before, all without calling for a stop of the killing. Peace and continued killing defy the laws of physics unfortunately.
Obviously, I felt the statement was weak, contradictory and patronizingly back patting at a time when every ounce of energy is needed to pressurize the government to do its moral duty. The statement contravened every notion I had of what a union should be, which is to condemn horror and inhumanity, especially for pregnant women and neonates, and I expressed as much to my local representative, when I received no response I took to Twitter, there I was graced with resumed silence.
So I did the only other action I could do and cancelled my membership. Capitalism moralizes issues that are profitable to them, and when that is at risk, it begins to rear its ugly but listening head, from a greed-stoned sleep.
But this was not an action of petty revenge. The reasons why the RCM, in my opinion, did not support a ceasefire are more sinister than just general hesitance and are a greater cause for my cancelled membership.
Since 9/11 and arguably for many decade prior, Islamophobia in media, government and policy have successfully equated Muslims with terrorist, those with working brain cells understand that isn’t reality, but the notion has become an unconscious baseline in the psyche of much of global society. This is endorsed by policy such as Prevent (that teaches me to monitor fellow Muslim staff and patients while at work as a midwife to screen for “radicalization” while never giving clear definitions of what that even means), and frankly crazy politicians such as Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Sajjid Javid, who all perpetuate the stereotype that muslims are inherently and dangerously violent.
Hence, Israel, having spewed rhetoric of Palestinians being terrorists for decades, even though not all Palestinians are Muslim, have had it so easy to invoke this baseline belief and convince the world that this is true, and a logical reason to kill, maim, and torture 1000s physically, and millions emotionally. The world has believed them. The RCM believes them.
By not clearly, loudly, and immediately calling for a ceasefire, by waiting a month to call for a “sustainable peace”, by evading any direct belief or condemnation of the cruelty of the Israeli state, the RCM has permitted the ongoing brutality, genocide and trauma of 2.3 million people, let alone those suffering in the West Bank. If their rebuttal is that no difference would have been made, then they admit they can make no difference in anything vaguely political, which is everything.
Israel is a settler colonial state, this is not a distortion of opinion, but a historical fact, because its birth was the result of forced expulsion of indigenous people, whose land has continually being stolen ever since. By staying averse to critiquing this, they are permitting injustice. You can’t be a union and permit injustice. You can’t be a union of midwives and not advocate for women having C-sections without Anaesthesia due to lack of medications, or incubators being switched off due to lack of fuel. A lack of fuel and medications directly responsible to the Israeli government.
This is not controversial, but the RCM have decided to treat these war crimes as mere details, the only reason I can think of for these vast omissions is racism, and if not racism, then a contempt of international law they feel they are above.
I can no longer give my money to an organisation that has permitted the inhumanity we are seeing unfolding in front of our very eyes with their silence. If I were in Gaza now, I would be hungry, thirsty, tired, traumatized, overwhelmed, scared and catching premature babies from women with amputations and grieving lost children. And still the RCM would not call for a ceasefire. By accepting inhumanity for others, we accept it for ourselves, in that way we are all Palestinians.
I cannot support a union that cannot support me, and actively puts people like me in harms way by their silence, weakness and arrogance. I’m out.
Fatimah Speaks 