I’ve just been reading From Beirut to Jerusalem by Dr. Swee Chai Ang. The book recounts her experiences as a medical volunteer in Beirut just after the Israel attack of 1982, which saw the usual Israeli tactics of bombing as many civilians as possible, while deliberately targetting hospitals and medical staff (again, a standard Israeli tactic), and just before the massacre at Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, in which thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered. Her experiences led her to set up Medical Aid for Palestinians; she made frequent visits back to the camps.

With that as an intro, the following paragraph really struck me, and is worth repeating without comment:

I suddenly remembered I was on a small mission. Before I left London, the representative of a Miners’ Support Group in Yorkshire had called on me and given me twenty-four greeting cards, from twenty-four mining families in her village, to take to the people of the camps. The coal-miners of Britain had been out on strike for a year, stretching from 1984 into 1985. Conditions were very difficult throughout the strike, and many mining families had to sell their furniture and possessions to survive.

During the strike, the British miners had their equivalent of the General Union of Palestinian Women. The miners’ wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers organised themselves into Miners’ Support Groups, and these women ran soup kitchens to feed the community, travelled all over Britain on fundraising tours, and kept everyone’s morale up during the darkest moments. Like the Palestinian women, they formed the backbone of the community.

The British press scorned the ending of the strike as a “defeat”, but my Palestinian friends in Chatila camp called it a victory. Their reasong was simple: any group who could hold out for a whole year under those conditions won a great victory.

So while the British commentators talked of the defeat of the miners, the Palestinians of Chatila camp saluted the miners for their heroic and victorious year-long strike. Perhaps the Palestinians knew too well what struggle was about, better than the British press. One of the women told me the Western press had dealt with the Palestinians the same way they had dealt with the miners.

“They consistently distorted or refused to publish our case,” she said. “However, even if the newspapers won’t print our story, it will still be written: it will be written with the blood of our martyrs.”

The noticeboard of the Women’s Union had been bombed, but they decided to display the greeting cards from Yorkshire on the wall alongside the photographs of their martyrs.

Dr. Swee Chai Ang, From Beirut to Jerusalem, Grafton Books 1989 p196-197

Such a small detail from such a brutal period. It deserves to be better known – please consider sharing it using the buttons below.