Caring about Palestine is so last decade
JVL Introduction
While Palestine and Lebanon bleed, as Keir Starmer joins other western leaders pontificating pointlessly about the need for “all sides to show restraint,” the media’s superficial reporting of the Labour Party conference leaves the public ill-informed about the implications of the government’s neo-liberal, pro-NATO policies.
One article and some follow-up letters in the Guardian remind us of the terrible impact that refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap will have on hundreds of thousands of children, leaving them “really poor, badly nourished and, as a result, almost certainly educationally disadvantaged” (according to one of the letter writers, Felicity Laurence.)
Owen Jones’s film from the conference centre includes illuminating and sometimes comical interviews with defeated ex-MP Jonathan Ashworth, a range of delegates – including one suited youth bearing all the hallmarks of being groomed as a Starmerite clone – and the modest hero of the hour, the as-yet-unnamed heckler who dared remind Rachel Reeves that change should mean an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Which brings us to Palestine. Incredibly, Israel’s notoriously right wing ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, was a welcome guest of Labour Friends of Israel, but all signs of empathy with Palestinians were erased from a party conference which just a few years ago displayed a sea of flags in solidarity. We publish below a thoughtful piece from Vashti’s The Pickle, noting that both Starmer’s and Reeves’ reactions to hecklers were designed to send a simple message – “ caring about Palestine represents a bygone era for Labour.”
NWI
This article was originally published by The Pickle on Fri 27 Sep 2024. Read the original here.
Patronising Palestine
The adults might be in the room, but the room is turning to rubble.
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The Government should stop supplying all weapons. Which are definitely use. In gaza. Lots of innocent people have lost there lives. Due to the use of them. Also close the factory’s that’s makes them. Put people lives before profit.
Being pro-imperialism is so Labour.
Hotovely has said that Jews should be “educated” not to marry non-Jews.
Quite apart from the fact that she has received a hero’s welcome at a party conference where the leader is a non-Jew married to a Jew, what would be the normal term for someone who makes such statements?
What would be the reaction to someone who said Muslims should be educated not to marry non-Muslims?
Or that Christians should be educated not to marry non-Christians?
In today’s “Labour” party, why are some types of racism perfectly acceptable?
“So last century…” would be a description of the scandalous decision to invite Tzipi Hotovely to a Labour event. Her appointment as Israel’s ambassador to the UK was even opposed by the Jewish New’s Jenni Frazer – due to Hotovely’s well known opposition to mixed-marriage. – see link at end.
Sadly, this is not that unusual in Israel with Knesset Parliament member Yitzhak Pindrus actually calling for the murder of people in mixed marriages.
According to the census, Black, Asian and Mixed-Race people in the UK are around 17% of the population but to Starmer & Co, foreign white racists are more important than our feelings.
This is less a case of us being treated as second-class and more like sub-human.
See Hotovely “Israel must reconsider its choice of UK ambassador”
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-must-reconsider-its-choice-of-uk-ambassador/
And Yitzhak Pindrus “Israel: Knesset member calls for murder of people in mixed marriages”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-knesset-member-pindrus-calls-murder-mixed-marriages
&
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210701-israel-knesset-member-calls-for-killing-of-people-in-mixed-marriages/
While I do not demur for one moment from the general condemnation of Hotovely’s virulent racism and disgust at Labour’s hypocrisy, SB’s comment above is factually very wide of the mark.
In fact many Christian sects including Catholics either strongly discourage or forbid marriage outside the faith. In the case of (most) Muslim sects, a Muslim man may take a non-Muslim wife but a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man. And all this is before even considering contemporary gender variations which are almost universally taboo amongst the so-called ‘monotheistic’ religions.