“Hello, I am Thea and I stand here as a committed world citizen,” says Thea Schellekens (69) against thirty activists for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. Then she starts reading aloud: “Youssef, a boy of 19 … Hassan, a man of 21 … Salem, a man of 80 …”
It is half past ten on Friday evening, the sun is now below. The group is preparing for the night: someone folds out a chair, another blows up an air bed, here and there an energy drink is healed. Nobody knows how long the Wake to draw attention to Israeli violence and the famine will last in Gaza. Reading the names of killed Palestinians continues non-stop.
Expressions of protest at the Wake for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Photo Hedayatullah Amid
The microphone is softer, every now and then the passing traffic of Rijnstraat drowns out the endless series of names. “We agreed with the municipality,” says Ineke Palm of the Rotterdam Palestine Coalition action group, the driving force behind the Wake. “To prevent nuisance at night.” That morning she explained to a handful of people what the intention is. They will continue until foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp “is more firmly faced against Israel”.
No debate
The activists did not have much time to prepare. When a debate about Gaza was still in the Lower House on Wednesday, various organizations decided to quickly take action. Who would come to read on Friday was still unknown the day before with the organizers of De Wake. Palm: “We can continue to wait until everything is organized to the last detail, but the people in Gaza don’t have that time.”
Marieke Lutjenhuis, affiliated with doctors for Gaza: “With silent protests like these, my thoughts go to Gaza.”
The lack of political attention contrasts sharply with the stream of news from Gaza this week, where the famine reached a new low point. The World Food Program of the United Nations shared that almost one in three Gazans has not eaten for days and needs more than 90,000 women and children urgently need help. “If the MPs do not return for a genocide, we will do it,” explained Gerard Jonkman, director of the human rights organization The Rights Forum by telephone.
Marja Bode (74) expresses the feeling of many participants in De Wake on Friday in The Hague: “Last week my feeling of powerlessness grew. Here I still have the feeling that I am doing.” She would rather leave reading to her fellow action drivers, she says with tears in her eyes. “I can’t do that.” Every now and then the emotions are also high in others and someone takes over reading. “In the beginning I had a lump in my throat,” says Thea Schellekens. “Now I just try to concentrate on the names.”
The organizers have reported the Wake to the municipality, in the coming period the group may demonstrate for the ministry. In the course of Friday, two police officers pointed out what is not allowed: hanging banners on the ministerial building for example.
The demonstrators present sometimes know each other from earlier Gaza protests. For example, Marieke Lutjenhuis (75), a retired general practitioner in the Schilderswijk and together with her husband Joep, was present on Thursday evening at the protest at The Hague Central that was part of noise demonstrations at 29 Dutch train stations. “But I have a preference for silent protests like this,” she says. “My thoughts then go to Gaza.”
Acclaim
A passer -by, diebichtje Brands (53), will stop for the ministry on Friday morning. She works as a civil servant for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and wanted to see how the Wake is going. “It’s great for words that they have to demonstrate here now, that’s the task of parliament. But it’s no different now,” she says. Brands is affiliated with the group of civil servants and constitution, who since the start of the war in Gaza has holds a quiet protest on exactly this place every Thursday – during the lunch break. And last week she held a ‘hunger strike’ with a colleague. “We went for lunch in the canteen with an empty plate. Soon we will go again.”
Brands notes that she is getting more and more support from colleagues. “The movement is getting bigger and bigger. You notice that there is more room to talk about it during a meeting, or at the coffee maker. That was different at the start of the war.”
The initiator of Ineke Palm does not dare to say how long the Wake will continue. It has been agreed with the municipality that the activists may remain standing for at least two months. “But of course I hope that is not necessary.”