As it turned out, the Israeli government did not even bother to find a pretext to break the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, which had been in place since January. And so the aerial bombing of the civilian population of Gaza resumed, with four hundred killed in the first night. According to Al Jazeera, so far nearly five hundred Palestinians have died in just a few days, including two hundred children.
Workers and youth across the world are shocked and appalled at the resumption of the wanton killing and destruction in Gaza and are wondering how this genocide can be allowed to continue, so far without consequences to the Israeli government. Jerusalem has the most right-wing government in the state’s history, packed with anti-Arab racists, bolstered by political parties and individuals who openly boast about the need to crush and eliminate the Palestinian people. This has been known for a while, but how is it that Israel can apparently get away with this slaughter, and how long must it go on?
The Guardian recently carried a special feature about the Rabbi Kahane, the American ultra-Zionist who founded a political movement in Israel before his death. The article, which is worth reading, was entitled, Kahane’s ghost: how a long-dead extremist rabbi continues to haunt Israel’s politics.The author made some very pertinent points, particularly about the virulent nature of ‘Kahanism’ and its open advocacy of violence against Arabs.
Israel seeking to ethnically cleanse Gaza
When today’s Israeli ‘Defence’ Force prevents humanitarian aid reaching the desperate population of Gaza; when it cuts off supplies of fresh water and electricity; when it bombs to smithereens all semblance of a civic infrastructure, it is following policies that could have been written by Kahane. They are the acts of a government actively seeking to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people.
The Israeli cabinet is very much a legacy of Kahane: it is the culmination of two decades of movement towards a more openly racist, apartheid state, one which is now encouraged by Donald Trump to expel the five million Palestinians, including those who live in the West Bank and those hanging on by their fingertips in Gaza.
But what the Guardian article failed to mention, was the fact that the rise of the far-right racists in Israel has been enabled by mainstream politicians in the West. World-wide charities and humanitarian organisations, not to mention international legal organisations are virtually unanimous in describing the one-sided overwhelming military assault on Gaza as a ‘genocide’.
Criticism of Israel is stifled in the Labour Party
Yet we have a Labour leader in Britain who would rather chew off his own right arm than make any public criticism of Israel. When Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said that Israel was “in breach” of international law – which it clearly is – he was swiftly brought to heel by Starmer, so Lammy changed his statement to say that Israel was “at risk” of breaching international law. It would be hard to find a more mealy-mouthed and hypocritical whispered half-criticism – at a time when they ought to be shouting from the rooftops that the killing must stop.
Inside the Labour Party, Keir Starmer and the last general secretary, David Evans, engineered an internal regime so oppressive that all criticisms of Israel were deemed to be ‘antisemitism’. We have had the extraordinary situation where many anti-Zionist Jews have been expelled from the party on the ludicrous grounds of antisemitism. Indeed, for a party supposedly opposed to antisemitism, being Jewish seems to increase a member’s probability of being expelled.
Kahanism has become mainstream in Israeli politics precisely because – and only because – it has been facilitated by ‘mainstream’ politicians in the west, including Labour’s right wing. Supporters and members of the Labour Friends of Israel for example, have a disproportionate influence at the top of the Labour Party, and particularly among MPs.
The Labour Friends of Netanyahu
To all intents and purposes, the Labour Friends of Israel is a mouthpiece of the Israeli government, since there does not appear to be any public criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter. There are sometimes suggestions that its members make ‘private’ criticisms of Netanyahu, or make ‘diplomatic’ noises in the right ears (although we have no evidence of this), but in its public stance it gives the appearance of being the Labour Friends of Netanyahu.
The bulk of the British establishment, from the Prime Minister down, has effectively supported the Israeli assault on Gaza. So the lies of the Israeli press spokespersons are taken as good coin, the BBC is pressurised into using sanitised language to favour Israel – Hamas, for example, has ‘hostages’, whereas Israel has ‘prisoners’ – British bases in Cyprus facilitate Israeli air actions and US aircraft shipping in bombs to Israel. British weaponry is sold to Israel, no questions asked. Thus, the Starmer leadership and mainstream politicians enable a genocide.
History will judge western politicians for their complicity in the brutal and relentless slaughter of Palestinians over the last year and a half. Likewise, the motley assortment of Arab kings, sheiks and military dictators will be judged – perhaps by their own people sooner rather than later – for being no less acquiescent in the attempted destruction of people.
For the moment, it seems, there is nothing but an unending cycle of killing in Gaza, while to the north the “Gazafication” and terrorisation of West Bank Palestinians is growing by the week. One can only look in awe at the resilience of this Arab nation and admire their strength, courage and determination in the face of an overwhelming military assault.
The demonstrations for Palestinian rights will continue and labour movement activists must continue to support them. We must also strengthen our resolve to fight inside the organisations of the working class, particularly the trade unions, that they demand of the government and end to arms sales to Israel. But we should also support inside the trade union movement a boycott of Israeli goods and an embargo on arms exports to Israel.
The full international and regional repercussions of the Gaza holocaust have yet to play out, but they will – right across the region, including in Israel. There may yet be big movements of Arab workers and youth in support of Palestine. Relations between the Arab leaders, fearful of their own workers, and the USA are approaching breaking point. This one-sided war is ensuring that longer term Middle East politics will change irrevocably.
Today, the grim position faced by the Palestinian people could hardly be worse. But we can hope that a significant ‘break’ in the regional political balance will shift events in favour of Palestinian rights. It is a long time coming, and the sooner the better.
Feature picture from Al Jazeera newsfeed
