We are destroying our planet. It’s an idea with which we all ought to be painfully familiar. It may sit uncomfortably with our lavish western religion of consumerism,  but it’s something we’ve all got to get used to. If we’re actually going to do something about the environmental disaster that we all of us in our hearts know is coming, then this mandates changes. Some will be more drastic than others, and some must necessarily hurt. What society really needs is a solution that, while meaningful, impinges on our lives as little as possible: a plastic bag tax.

Before the reactionary-minded nanny-state-haters among you balk, let me give you a few statistics. Last year, an estimated 13 billion plastic carrier bags were given away to shoppers in the UK, 217 plastic bags for every English citizen. Worldwide, the figure is closer to 500 billion. Though these bags are called disposable, that is precisely what they are not. Instead, each bag will take around 1,000 years to degrade. They remain as unsightly blots on our landscape, an unhappy reminder of our sheer apathy towards the well-being of our planet.

Consider also how plastic bags are made. Most plastic bags are made from  high density polyethylene, produced from ever-precious crude oil.  Most of these bags are made in south-east Asia, and by the time they reach merry old England, they will have travelled over 8,000 miles, with a massive carbon footprint to boot.

We are all guilty in this matter. We all know that we should recycle that empty wine bottle, reuse that carrier bag, turn off that light switch; but we don’t. We need a persistent nudge in the right direction. As far as plastic bags go, the Irish government has the right idea. In 2001 they introduced a plastic bag tax. Before the levy was introduced Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. After a year, plastic bag consumption had fallen by a massive 90%, saving 18,000,000 litres of oil in the process. These figures speak for themselves.

At last, our government is catching up, with Gordon Brown last week warning supermarkets that if they don’t cut down on plastic bags, he would force a change. My question to Gordon is: why wait?

Supermarkets are monolithic organisations, reluctant to change. They fear that a charge on plastic bags would send their customers scurrying away to their competitors. The fairest way to force change would be to mandate a universal charge in every supermarket, thus levelling the playing field. A reduction in plastic bag usage isn’t going to save the planet, but it would be a step in the right direction.

‘Every little helps’ they say. Well, let’s start with our addiction to plastic bags.

In the early hours of 8 March 2008 Alejandro Ordaz Moreno, a PhD student, was seized at gunpoint as he left a bar in Seville. He violently resisted what he believed to be a kidnap attempt, but his assailants were plainclothes police, and he’s now been charged with assaulting them.

The case highlights how our beliefs and prior experiences shape our interpretations of events. Moreno was born and grew up in Mexico, which has the highest kidnap rate in the world (an estimated 1,200 in 2007). With such a background, it is unsurprising that Moreno interpreted the events of March 8th as attempt to kidnap him, and reacted accordingly.

The police’s violent response to Moreno’s attempt to escape is more understandable when viewed in light of their belief that Moreno was a suspect in a serious and violent sexual assault case. He bore a considerable physical resemblance to the suspect, and was walking through a quiet part of town late at night.  He was going home: they thought he was on the prowl.  This misapprehension guided their violent responses to his escape attempt. In fact, both Moreno and the officers interpreted the situation wrongly, but they were both making valid interpretations of the facts available to them: neither of them should be blamed for the mistake.

I heard about the Moreno case from a friend who emailed me the story, which was published in Spanish in the online edition of the Seville local paper. This ‘peer-to-peer’ reporting is archetypal of 21st century ‘viral media’. Viral media perpetuates an illusion of omniscience: the internet puts the world at our fingertips, and so it’s easy to believe that we have access to ‘the truth’ about an issue. However, our choice of media, and the extent to which we trust it, biases our experience. We must accept that both individuals and nations have imperfect knowledge of the world. That acceptance will foster tolerance of different interpretations of the same events, and of the ensuing mistakes.

The current trend for apportioning blame following any mistake has led our governments to use criminal charges to intimidate their adversaries into accepting the blame. The publication of the IPCC report on the Forest Gate shootings in 2006 coincided neatly with the arrest of the victim on child pornography charges. The charges were quietly dropped 2 months later, but the arrest quelled any public sympathy which might have been aroused by the report’s admission that an innocent man was shot by police. By charging Moreno, the police have given themselves a bargaining chip when dealing with him, and have dissipated public support for him.

This unsavoury and crude approach can only contribute to resentment in the long term.

Sixty years ago this month, the State of Israel was declared in historic Palestine. Less than a year after this declaration, when a ceasefire was declared, Zionist forces were in control of 78% of Palestine. Yet the creation of this State came at unspeakable cost to the Palestinian people, who had been living there continuously for centuries. 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, fleeing from the Stern Gang and the Haganah militias and the newly created Israel Defence Forces.

Many were chased directly from their villages; others fled, hearing of the massacres inflicted upon other Palestinians, such as those of Deir Yassin, where over 100 people, including at least 50 women and children, were brutally and systematically murdered. In order to ensure that those who were fleeing the terror would never be able to return to their homes, 418 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Neither their inhabitants, nor their descendants, have ever been allowed to return home, in direct contravention of UN Resolution 194, which demands that ‘refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so.’

To describe this ethnic cleansing and the brutal destruction of their homeland Palestinians use the word Nakba – catastrophe.

For the first two weeks of May, the Israeli Cultural Society (ICS) is inviting Oxford to join them in celebration of Israel’s 60th birthday. We are appalled. The state of Israel was built on the burning ruins of Palestinian homes, and is ensuring the Nakba continues to this day. Any celebration of its ‘birth’ is an open and defiant justification of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate?

Since its establishment, Israel has continually enacted discriminatory policies towards the Palestinian population both inside and outside its borders. It has prevented internally displaced persons from returning home, and the legal system and government of the Israeli state discriminates against Palestinians on vital issues such as the purchasing of land, building permission, economic assistance for development towns – the list goes on. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate?

The Palestinians of the West Bank have lived under occupation for more than 40 years, an occupation which poisons and stifles every aspect of their lives. Since this occupation began, Israel has attempted to colonise the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, and creating a segregated road system – with certain roads reserved for Jewish settlers, and other, inferior roads for Palestinians. Freedom of movement is severely restricted by the checkpoints, road blocks and barriers which choke the West Bank. The segregation wall, which is just the latest attempt to annex Palestinian land, surrounds cities such as Qalqilyah – population over 40,000 – leaving its inhabitants just one entrance. When they are allowed in or out, that is. The wall separates villagers from their farmland, students from their schools, patients from their hospitals, and tears families and communities apart. And let us not forget the policy of house demolitions, which since 1967 has claimed over 12,000 Palestinian homes, leaving over 70,000 people without shelter and traumatised. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate?

On the 5th of May, camels will be arriving on Broad Street as part of the festivities. Such a superficial gesture ignores and trivialises the tragedy suffered by the Middle East; meanwhile the falafel and shisha pipes, sold to us as Israeli culture, represent Israeli appropriation of Palestinian heritage, which is slowly and stealthilyeroding the Palestinian nation’s link to its homeland and denying it the dignity a society needs to survive.

One event in particular is cruelly ironic – a talk entitled ‘Israeli Medical Achievements – Saving Lives Worldwide’. Why is it, we wonder, that Israel saves lives worldwide, but regularly refuses to allow food aid, fuel and medicine into the Gaza strip? What is Israel, which controls Gaza’s borders, airspace and coastline, doing to save Gazan lives? Just last week, the United Nations reported that it has been forced to halt desperately needed food aid distribution, upon which more than 1.1m Gazans are dependent, because Israeli-imposed sanctions have created massive fuel shortages.

It is with bemusement and outrage that we find ourselves being asked to celebrate 60 years of Israel’s existence. If the ICS wish to celebrate ethnic cleansing, racism, and the daily persecution of an entire nation, we will most certainly not be joining them. Oxford Students’ Palestine Society believe this is a reason for protest, not celebration, and we invite you to stand with us.