Gaza – still no Opposition from Starmer
JVL Introduction
Here Peter Oborne castigates Starmer for his stance on Gaza and, indeed, the government’s attacks on Yemen, which like Israel’s claims over its destruction of Gaza are called “self-defence”. Starmer refuses to call for a ceasefire, refuses to even allow Labour Party members to discuss what is happening and advises its representatives not to go on the marches calling for a ceasefire.
He shows clearly how the an MP from the Scottish Nationalist Party was able to ask the searching questions that neither Starmer nor Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, managed to do. The overwhelming majority of people in the UK – and throughout the world – want a ceasefire but even this most minimal of demands is too big a step for Starmer.
LL
This article was originally published by Middle East eye on Mon 22 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
On Gaza, Sunak's Tories and Starmer's Labour have merged into a single pro-war party
The real gulf in British politics is not between Tory and Labour. It’s between a hegemonic political class at Westminster, and a decent majority that supports an immediate ceasefire
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A very good article.
However, Starmer refuses to oppose generally. It is not Gaza-specific.
‘When Sunak announced Britain’s “unequivocal” support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, a serious opposition leader would have asked the tricky questions: would the British government back Israel in all circumstances? Even in the event of Israel committing war crimes?’
Starmer had already answered that ‘tricky question’, six days after being elected leader. Here’s extracts from a story in Jewish News (14th February 2020), reporting an interview with Starmer ‘[f]ollowing the Jewish community’s leadership hustings on [13th February 2020]’.
The report later described ‘the Jewish community’s’ event as ‘hosted at Liberal Jewish Synagogue, organised by the Jewish Labour Movement with [Jewish News] and Labour Friends of Israel’. It added that ‘the leadership hopeful was criticised on Twitter after he declined to call himself a Zionist. Other contenders, Emily Thornberry, Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long- Bailey, did’, and continued:
‘Asked why he chose not to, he said: “I do support Zionism. I said that last night. I absolutely support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland.”
“My only concern is that Zionism can mean slightly different things to different people, and as Lisa [Nandy] said, to some extent it has been weaponised. I wouldn’t read too much into that. I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.”
Apparently the Jewish News interviewer did not ask Starmer the ‘tricky question’, but did say that he had ‘opened up about his little-known Jewish family ties’ and had added that, although ‘he ha[d]n’t yet visited the Jewish state, he said he would “of course” like to go – we’re in regular contact with [his wife’s extended family in Tel Aviv] and we’ve got various visits planned, basically to take our kids for the first time.”
What has been laid bare is that Israel is treated with kid-gloves by the West. No other country would attract near universal, at least acceptance, or active championing. It is wrong.
The following is an unpublished letter to the Guardian today, triggered by a photo and accompanying caption on their website today,(24 Jan).
“Your photo (Internally displaced Palestinians move along a coastal road after the Israeli army demanded residents of Khan Younis camp to leave and go to Rafah, 24 Jan), depressing and poignant as it is, has lost the impact to shock through being merely one of hundreds published depicting effects of state depravity published since 7 October. Gazans, denied the essentials of life, are continually being ordered to leave this place and go to that, while their temporary ‘homes’ are obliterated, along with anyone unable to comply with their occupiers’ orders. Israel has chosen the “carpark option”.
When in WWII, German forces temporally occupied France, lethal actions by the French Resistance were rightly approved of and assisted by Western countries.
In Israel today it is the brutal (permanent?) occupying power, whose kill total is now over 25,000 in a month, that is approved of and assisted by the West. Why the dual standards?”
Starmer is too dependent on funding from the likes of Trevor Chinn to be able to adopt an honest criticism of Israeli war crimes.
LABOUR, 2024
We’re already killing Houthis
With lawful explanations
They needed showing
That we mean business
Labour is agreeable. Complicit
The shipping lanes are sacrosanct
Like pilgrim routes for Christians
Previously, we killed Syrians
Libyans, Iraqis, former
Yugoslavians, Afghans
Not the dogs, just the people
Irish
The list is partial
And does not include
Refugees
Asylum seekers
Those who drown off Dover
The cockle pickers in Morecambe
Tribes and revellers
A wedding party waving
From a rooftop
Civilians, accidentally
Palestinians under rubble
Being starved of food and water
Medicines. Warmth and shelter
We supplied the weapons
Lethal, indiscriminate
No excuses
Labour’s set for government
I think Starmer has been very Israel specific – he’s been explicit as an ‘unrepentant Zionist’. That’s pretty focused. There’s no equivocation or nuance.
Very good (and entirely correct).
Interesting that despite Starmer’s order to Labour MPs to steer clear of demonstrations about Gaza, Lisa Nandy led a pro-Israel march at the weekend. Any punishment for that..?
Eddie Dougall
Steady on there old chap. Of course it’s atrocious, but It’s 25,000 in 3 months!
If Starmer ‘refuses even to allow Labour Party members to discuss what is happening’, the message didn’t get through to the York CLP. Last Friday the General Meeting of the CLP discussed and passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Nobody in the room mentioned a ban on discussion, and nobody spoke against the motion, which was carried with I think just two votes against.
I think if there were a formal ban on discussion we would have heard of it, even living this far North!
More depressing every day….seems the truth and humanity holds no sway in this world at the moment…and now there is more sabre rattling for a ‘civilian army’ God help us.
This excellent account spotlights the utter incompetence both of Foreign Secretary Cameron and of the man purporting to “lead” the “opposition”. What is happening in plain sight in Gaza is a gross and vile breach of international law, never mind plain and simple morality and human decency. And that that “leader of the opposition” is unable or unwilling to oppose when presented with what can only be described as ignorance by the foreign secretary (whom he should have buried, as the article suggests) must be picked up by anyone contemplating voting Labour, as plainly he, just like Cameron and Lammy, is totally out of his depth. This article should fill us with the greatest alarm!
I remember the betrayer Nandy when she was host at a highly successful, packed event at the 2018 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. How the worm has turned! Now, in cahoots with, in my view, the evil cabal which has brutally and brazenly hijacked the Labour Party, led by the unspeakable liar, Starmer, she now is contemplating that we in the U.K. seem to be on course for an extremely grim future whichever way one looks at it. The question is: when will the talking shops end, and action begins? As our highly lamented ex Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn rightly proclaimed, ‘We are many, they are few!’. If the verdict tomorrow finds Israel culpable of the crime of genocide, let’s throw caution to the winds, harness that ‘many’ and, United, get Starmer out for a start.
The dishonesty, cowardice and bullying within the present Labour leadership and most of the PLP is of course appalling. Starmer is a pompous charlatan, led by the establishment media, without anything other than authoritarianism.
I heard him say on a tv interview that he’d made a pact with Sunak to keep foreign policyas a whole out of what passes for “adversarial” public discourse while it’s “as you were” for domestic policy. Whether that fulfils the Parliamentary role of either Party is an interesting question is beyond my pay grade. And where does the Privy Council fit into that cozy relationship?