Announcing a new music video from Junior Chills, a three-piece band in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They produce songs of strong feeling. This one is about the stupefying lack of media coverage on a marginalized, ignored, dismissed, forgotten, unknown people.
Many still know nothing of refugees who lost their homes, who are still denied a right of return guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They still possess that right denied. It’s another reason for following Junior Chills.
Did I mention that billions of people alive today are unaware that these people even exist. I am ashamed to report being a citizen of a country whose military and intelligence communities dump enormous taxpayer funds into weapon and security systems that stagger the imagination. Are we exceptional? Is that not arrogance?
But the name of their occupiers is on the map, methinks the occupiers doth occupy too much. The population of Israelis in Israel-Palestine is approximately the same as the population of the Philistines (the name they actually give themselves) but would you know that from looking at the map below?
Humiliation is the name of the game, but these people possess joy in the very spite of subjugation. Prisons for the occupied are stuffed with dissenters. Children as young as 12 are imprisoned daily for throwing stones. Perhaps they throw them at low-flying F-16 fighter jets. Call them terrorists and toss them into prison. Then throw away the key. While you are throwing away keys, break into their grandparent’s house and throw away their family home they had to leave in 1948 (more on that in the next paragraph). So yes, I am complicit in this 68-year ethnic cleansing operation by the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But I don’t yield to those who actually believe that ignorance is strength.
“Wake Up World” is Junior Chills’ latest contribution toward bringing attention to the human rights of the people exiled from their homes in 1948. They are refugees to this day. 700,000 were forced from their land in that year alone. I was eight months old that year.
Damien McGee writes, sings and plays guitar for Junior Chills. Here is how he described the protest song in our recent communication:
“It is called simply Wake Up World. I am going to try my best to share it out there as widely as I can to help do my bit to raise awareness of the daily struggle in Palestine…I hope you like it!!”
This is a very powerful musical and visual depiction of the massive injustice meted out every day. The bombs you see exploding in the video killed 2200 people in Operation Protective Shield (a lovely name for an excuse to spew death IMO), 500 were children. Just one of many “operations” that are all pretty much alike. One encouraging note for anyone looking to buy shares in corporations such as Halliburton: every round expended is a round for another round of expenditures. Revolving doors. dick cheneys.
It gives the viewer pause and tears tears from your eyes. The violence depicted in the video is not gratuitous, but know that young innocents were not of concern to those who saw the exterior of the buildings in the crosshairs.
The streaming trails you see in the photograph below spew from two white phosphorous bombs exploding from a height, that height insures horrid deaths and agonizing injuries. Population density is very high in Gaza, there is no safe place. White phosphorous burns to the bone.
billziegler1947 
Good post, Bill, thankyou. In watching Junior Chill’s video I was reminded of a tremendously powerful documentary made by Lyse Doucet of the BBC called Children of the Gaza War, but which, for some crazy reason, the BBC have now blocked on YouTube. They have left this excerpt:
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Hariod, thank you for the kind words. I intend to investigate the story behind the BBC “Children of the Gaza War” short excerpt on YouTube and will write a post on the findings, hope also to provide a link to the entire documentary. I am very grateful for the heads-up!
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I love the song, my Grandather was a Palestinian, thus, I have a right of return when Palestine is fully Liberated from the zionist occupiers.
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Thank for the kind words about the song, and for mentioning your grandfather. It provides me impetus to continue my efforts in bringing liberation to Palestine. There is no statute of limitations for this crime. I was eight months old at the time of Nakba, so every event I remember lines up in a complete one-to-one comparison with every chronology in Palestine.
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