Rachel Reeves’ failure to learn

The outcome of this orgy of destruction has been a sea change in the perception of the Israeli state.  Where populations have been schooled in even a modicum of respect for human rights there has been a catastrophic loss of public support for the apartheid state.  In response Israel has allocated an extra $150 million to its propaganda budget to meet this change in international mood.  

However, the political ‘Friends of Israel’ remain steadfast.  Their friendship remains unbroken and there is no record of resignations from this organisation throughout the genocide These are the sort of friends who urge you to have ‘one for the road’ as you stagger off the bar stool   Labour friends of Israel falls in this category.  

On 8th December Labour Friends of Israel arranged their annual Lunch. They kept the date and venue secret.  Would that it were from a sense of shame, but most probably it was because they were afraid of protests. I found it hard to believe that there were still MPs who would wish to be seen in the company of those who by their silence have shown tacit support for genocide.    

I was mistaken. Enter Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor and the keynote speaker. She too is an indulgent friend who recognises amid the carnage of Gaza where the true suffering lies, namely with the pain or the Jewish community (sic) who were traumatised by the tragedy of October 7th and the capture and imprisonment of the hostages.  Ms Reeves who outed herself as a Zionist, an ideology which she regards as promoting democracy freedom and equality has clearly been well-schooled in Zionist talking points. The theme of antisemitism was a major plank of her talk. But it was of course an exclusive form of antisemitism. It is instructive to see how she perceives it: she pressed the buttons of her audience by talking of her ‘disgust’ at what she called the ‘antisemitism’ in the Labour party under Corbyn.    

I don’t know about you but the most shocking example of antisemitism I remember from those years came when a rising star in the Labour Party showered praise on the fascist sympathiser Lady Nancy Astor. Astor “showed that women could win and be very popular!” she gushed on the BBC. Astor was “a real pioneer” she told Emma Barnett, with “a lasting legacy.”   

Astor did indeed have a legacy where antisemitism was concerned. She once said “there must be something of the Jews themselves which had brought them persecution throughout all the ages. Was it not therefore, in the final analysis, their responsibility?” She also said that Hitler would have to do more than give “a rough time to the killers of Christ” to justify the “Armageddon” that the UK’s entry into World War 2 would cause.     

So, who was the British MP that sang Nancy Astor’s praises in the winter of 2019-2020 you might be wondering? None other than the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves.  

Reeves might have a blind spot for antisemitism among establishment fascist sympathisers, but she is a past master at finding it among Palestinians. She recognised at once that October 7th exposed the antisemitism of Hamas who ‘murder(ed) Jews because they were Jews’. The 77 years of occupation, a word that never crossed her lips, were disregarded. She accused Hamas of breaking the ceasefire (which Israel had implicitly upheld) even though there is no evidence of that in contrast with the innumerable violations carried out by Israel since October this year.  

And she lambasted Hamas, without any supporting evidence, of premeditated rape, torture and mutilation of Israeli civilians.  Clearly, she had been well briefed by those with a prior agenda. Gaza has been flattened by 2000lb bombs, its people displaced, its hospitals lie in ruins, its schools non-existent, the population starving in tents when they are not being flooded out and constantly at the mercy of the Israeli bombs that rain down.  However, Reeves ‘knows’ that the blame for all this lies with Hamas either hiding in tunnels or using hospitals as bases for their operations.    

She names released Israeli captives and waxes lyrical about her meetings with them.  Not a single Palestinian is mentioned by name, nor does she spend much of her long speech talking about their trauma.  

It would have been rather callous to speak to an audience without mentioning something about the nameless, faceless thousands killed in Gaza’s cauldron.  And Reeves is after all a mother who feels pain when she sees other peoples’ children suffering.  But not sufficient pain to hold the perpetrators to account. Although she alludes to the fact that Israel is not beyond criticism, her discussion about ‘reconstruction in Gaza’ veers away from any real demand on Israel. She can rest easy now because there is a ceasefire which Israel breaks with impunity, but that is of no concern to Reeves.  

More children have been killed in Gaza than in any other conflict this century, more bombs have been dropped on Gaza than on London, Dresden and Hamburg during World War Two. Over 1700 health workers have been killed, there are more limbless children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world.  More journalists have been killed than in any other conflict since the American civil war.  However, Reeves knows exactly what the priorities are. She and the government she represents feel compelled to address the issue of antisemitism among Palestinians and the left. The statistics are clear.  Israel’s violence has always been accompanied by an increase in antisemitism, which is not surprising when Israel tells us it is acting on behalf of all Jews and communal diaspora leaders implicitly or explicitly agree. Reeves knows exactly who to blame.  Like the good Zionist she is, she takes aim at the anti-genocide protesters and calls them out as antisemites, citing chants like “death to the IDF” or “globalise the intifada”,  – the latter apparently now banned! These are slogans that note the influence of the Zionist lobby or comparing Israel to the Nazis.  By aligning anti-Zionism with antisemitism, she cloaks herself – a Gentile, Zionist, Nancy Astor fan girl – in the garb of anti-racism, while demonizing people like me and countless other Jewish anti-Zionists as antisemites.  

Having come full circle, she outlines the Government strategy for silencing the voice of the oppressed, namely the Palestinians.  Protest will be curtailed; the NHS (as well as Universities and the BBC) will have an emergency review on antisemitism led by that great antiracist John Mann with mandatory antisemitism training using the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism as a base.   

This is to ensure that ‘patients and staff always feel respected in (the) NHS’. An NHS whose hospitals have taken down a display of artwork by Gaza’s children lest it makes Jewish patients feel “vulnerable, harassed and victimised” (even though there were no complaints from patients, but from UKLFI)  Meantime those who live daily with the knowledge of family or friends in dire distress or worse, must just understand whose suffering counts to the Rachel Reeves’s of this world.  

The cherry on the cake of Reeves’s speech to the LFI was that genocide will be normalised. Yvette Cooper will organise a ‘peace’ conference for Palestinians and Israelis to resurrect the last refuge of this despicable government namely the discredited ‘two state solution’. Not only Hamas, whose crimes pale into insignificance when confronted by Israel’s savagery, will have no part to play, but neither will any other popular Palestinian factions.   

What was important about Reeves’s speech was the clarity with which it laid out the views of this tortured, debased and complicit government.  The sycophantic genuflection to the Israel lobby, the distortions and lies about October 7th, the intensity of emotion about Jewish feelings and the need to reinforce the sense of Jewish victimhood while dismissing insensitively the catastrophic impact of the genocide on so many in the population, an impact which will be felt long after these self-serving politicians have left the stage.  Above all it is a sign that our government is well on the way to normalise genocide and to silence Palestine once again and a reminder that it is our task it to do all in our power to scupper their plans.