Yay for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator for Vermont. If we lived in a just universe, he’d be in the Whitehouse now, just as Jeremy Corbyn would be in 10 Downing Street. He’s a secular Jew, but he understood the hardships and problems of America’s ordinary working Joes and Joannas. Clips of his presidential campaign showed him being embraced, and comforting all kinds of people, including theologically conservative, blue-collar Christians from the American south, worried about unemployment, healthcare and the destruction of the domestic industries that were their livelihoods.
In this video, addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie tells him clearly not to insult the intelligence of the American people, and states, over and again, that it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to
point out that in a little over six months that his extremist government has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and wounded over 78,000, 70 per cent of whom are women and children.
point out that his bombing has destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving almost a million people, half the population, homeless
To note that his government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, electricity, water and sewage.
To realize that his government has annihilated Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing 400 healthcare workers.
To note that his government has destroyed all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no educational opportunities.
To agree with virtually every humanitarian organisation in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which so many thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.
He states clearly that anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But please, he says to Netanyahu, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use anti-Semitism to distract attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts.
It is not anti-Semitic to hold you (Netanyahu) accountable for your actions.
We have been able to use today’s announcement as an opportunity to spread the message, with Johnbosco on BBC Radio Sussex and Times Radio.
YOU can quite rightly feel pleased and proud of these victories but there’s still work to do!
Labour is not planning to create a publicly owned ROSCO (ROlling Stock COmpany) to take on new fleets when needed. Currently, private rolling stock companies are extracting hundreds of million per year from our railway. Read our blog ‘Riding the ROSCO gravy train’ on our website.
YOUR campaigning can continue to make a difference.
The cost of travelling by rail has increased substantially in real terms since privatisation. And it’s no wonder: over £30 billion has leaked out of the system in the last 3 decades, mostly going to line shareholders’ pockets.
Under public ownership, we could be saving enough to bring down bills by 18% instead of hiking them every year.
YOU are passionate about public ownership, not only of public transport, but also water, NHS, energy, Royal Mail – and other public services. Public services should be run for people not profit.
So THANK YOU SO MUCH for all you do to fight for public services in public ownership. Whether you donate or not, every action you take adds strength to our movement. Together we can win so much more.
Public ownership is talked about as a solution much more these days: YOU DID THAT!
In solidarity,
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate, Imogen and John – the We Own It team.’
Starmer’s announcement is welcome, but I’m not entirely convinced. He’s still convinced, like all Thatcherites, that private enterprise is the solution for everything and state ownership and management is utterly dreadful and inefficient. I’m not surprised that he’s said that he isn’t going to create a state-owned rolling stock company, as nationalising anything runs very much against his grain. And I really don’t trust him to honour his promise, not after he’s broken so many in the past. But it’s a start.
Related to this, the Groaniad has put up a piece with a headline that was is needed is complete rail nationalisation. Exactly. And we could have had that, along with the nationalisation of the other utilities and the NHS, and so much more, if Jeremy Corbyn had got into No. 10. And the reason he didn’t was partly because the left-wing press joined the confected lies and smears of the right-wing press that Jezza was a terrible anti-Semite for not backing the Israeli state’s brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Over the past few years the Groan has published a number articles supporting policies that were very much part of the Corbynist platform. It’s too bad they didn’t do it when he was head of the Labour party.
Also related: the Torygraph has also, apparently, published an article with a headline quoting Starmer as saying that if he loses his seat, he’ll work in a Kentish Town bookshop. I don’t know which bookshop he means, as I didn’t read the article, but I look forward to him serving customers behind the counter.
Rather than high-tailing it into the House of Lords which is where failed politicos and their donors usually end up.
Bravo and respect to Margolies and Queen’s awesome guitarist, who says in the YouTube title of this video ‘my heart and soul bend in respect to this courageous woman’. In this video, the respected thesp introduces herself as an Australian citizens, speaking on behalf of the Australian Jewish council. She declares that she has not been as embarrassed a Jew due to the conduct of Israel as she has now. It is as if Hitler had won, and changed Jews from a good, humane people who did unto others as they would have them to unto them into genocidal monsters. Of course she condemns Hamas and its atrocities, but this has gone far beyond proper retaliation. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel for what it is doing in Gaza, and she calls on Jews worldwide, especially rabbis, in their synagogues and elsewhere, to demand a ceasefire.
Margoyles has condemned the Israeli state’s abominable mistreatment of the Palestinians for a very long time. She was a contributor to a volume attacking it nearly two decades ago, half of whose other contributors were Jews like herself. And when Israel subjected Gaza to the horrors of Operation Cast Lead, she spoke out against it as ‘a proud Jew, and an ashamed Jew’.
Away from her denunciations of Israeli atrocities, she is part of a Jewish LGBTQ charity, Gay Y*ds, which attempts to tackle homophobia and prejudice in the Jewish community. As for Australia, apparently the Ozzie slang term ‘cobber’, for ‘mate’ or ‘pal’, comes from the Hebrew ‘cobar’, meaning ‘comrade’. In the 19th century Jewish Australians joined their Christian compatriots in condemning the slave trade and the enslavement of South Sea Islanders on the plantations in Queensland. In one public meeting against it, the protesters were addressed by Rabbi Davies of, I think, the Sydney synagogue, as well as Anglican, Methodist and Baptist priests, ministers and pastors. Now Jewish Ozzies are once again joining the rest of the world in condemning another human rights abuse.
A day or so ago pro-Palestinian protesters painted graffiti over the Labour party’s headquarters, doubtless in protest at Starmer’s continuing support for the Israeli state and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. GB News has posted a video about this, and the response of Lord Walney. Walney has blamed the far left, of course, and according to the blurb for the video said it shouldn’t be allowed. I haven’t watched the video, but I was struck by its thumbnail. This had the line ‘Democracy has failed!’ Well, I always had the suspicion that GB News didn’t believe in democracy. This is the broadcaster that flouts Ofcom regulations against employing politicians as news presenters. And it has been described by one Labour MP as having two points of view: right, and far right. With this latest headline from them, I’m left wondering if they’ve got a portrait of Oswald Mosley down in the basement. I suppose it’s a good thing that there’s no longer a TV closedown, as there was when I was growing up in the 1970s. The TV companies went off at about 10.30 or so. Just before then, there was the Epilogue, which I think consisted of a clergyman or other spiritual person giving us his thought for the day. Then I think you had the national anthem and that was it. Programmes are over, it’s time for bed. If GB News ended its broadcasting like that, I wonder if instead of ‘God Save the King’, we’d have the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel Song, and a photo of Mussolini.
But I think they have a point – democracy has failed. It’s failed because the three main parties don’t believe in it. Leaving aside the controversy over Scotland’s hate crime laws for a moment, neither Labour nor the Tories actually want to give the British public what they want. Poll after poll shows that severely normal Brits want a fully nationalised NHS and trains and the public utilities taken back into public ownership. A majority of Brits also want arms sales to Israel to stop. But neither party wants to enact such policies. Despite the massive profiteering of Thames Water, one of the Tory ministers appeared on TV the other day to say that nationalisation wasn’t the answer. Well, of course not. It would prevent their corporate chums from screwing their customers and then screwing the British taxpayer to bail them out. The Tories have been passing legislation after legislation to make public protests and demonstrations difficult, and both Blair and the Tories also set the legal foundations for secret courts. These are tribunals where, if it is deemed in the interest of national security, the trial may be held behind closed doors with the defendant not informed who his accuser is or the evidence against him.
Democracy is being stifled thanks to Labour and the Tories. It’s time to consider voting for the other parties, like the Greens and Independents, who may offer the voting public what they really want and need.
There’s been a watershed in Israel’s war in the last week. The Al-Shifa hospital was left in complete ruins; the main source of news from Gaza, Al-Jazeera, has been banned; Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus; and it deliberately targeted an aid convoy, killing 7 people, and having the effect of stopping vital aid to the people of northern Gaza. This is on top of everything we have seen in 6 months of genocidal war, with an estimated 33,000 Palestinians dead, including at least 200 aid workers and many journalists.
The killing of the aid workers – most of them nationals from countries allied to Israel – has created furore in those countries. These stories have hit the headlines in a way that the deaths of so many Palestinians did not. Here in Britain, there has been talk for weeks of David Cameron wanting an arms embargo – now it is openly discussed among Tory MPs. Even Joe Biden has had to threaten Netanyahu, as the US government continues to supply arms.
This is the weakest and most isolated that Israel has been since the war started. It is becoming a pariah state, its crimes more openly on display. We need to push home our opposition to arming Israel and our support for a ceasefire and justice for the Palestinians.
We should also be aware that one very important element in Israel’s isolation and the crisis for our politicians is the level of protest seen here in Britain and worldwide. Biden is suffering a major loss of support in primaries across states he could once count on. In Britain support for ceasefire and stopping arming Israel is high. The demand to stop arming Israel is becoming much more central to the movement. The Tories and Starmer’s Labour are isolated on these questions. Our demonstrations are vital to that, and they must continue.
Our next national demo is 27th April. But in the intervening weeks we are calling for local days of action including demonstrations with widespread local action this weekend. On 13th April there will be a regional London demo, as well as one in North Wales. There will also be a Yorkshire demonstration in Bradford on 20th April and many more to be announced.
If you can organise one in your locality or region – working where possible with our national partners but also with local trade unions, Muslim groups, community groups etc please contact office@stopwar.org.uk so we can help coordinate.
Palestine & the Unions: The Next Steps for the Movement
The global movement against the genocide in Gaza is having an enormous impact. The pressure on governments to stop arming Israel is huge and we must keep it up. On Thursday 18 April we’re bringing together representatives from across the UK and beyond to discuss how trade unionists can continue to deliver effective solidarity to the Palestinian people. Join us for this crucial discussion.
Susan Abdul Salaam from the New Union of Jerusalem will be joining us live as will president and founder of the Amazon Labor Union, Chris Smalls, from the US. PCS General Secretary, Fran Heathcote and RMT President, Alex Gordon make up a esteemed line-up.
Our next Workplace Day of Action has been called on International Workers’ Day – Weds 1st May! We’re calling on workers in all sectors to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people and call for an immediate ceasefire.
Can you organise a lunchtime rally, canteen meeting or a wear a badge for Palestine day in your workplace? We’ve got six weeks to build as much action as possible around the country. Start organising now!
We’ve also got a confirmed date for our postponed Trade Union Conference – that will now take place on Sat 8th June at Resource for London on Holloway Rd in London. Please put that in your diary.
I caught a brief headline on the internet newsfeed yesterday about Starmer getting a bit flustered because a mayor somewhere had urged people not to vote for the Labour party but instead vote Green. This was round about the same time when Guardian journalist and author Owen Jones had written in his column that he had resigned from Labour and urged others on the left to take their vote away from them. Instead they should vote for the Greens or independent candidates. This was because Starmer had reneged on all the promises and pledges he’d made when seeking the Labour leadership. Most of you out there no doubt remember how he set himself up as a continuity Corbynism candidate. He’s said all the guff when he was with Corbyn in government how he admired him, and had pledged to support the renationalisation of the utilities and the NHS, restoration of the welfare state, greater rights for workers and so on. And the moment he got his backside on the chair, or possibly throne as he may see it, as head of the party he set about breaking all of them. The last straw, or last straw but one for Jones, was when Starmer declared he was going to follow the Tories self-imposed fiscal limits, and so keep to austerity. I have mixed feelings about Jones and the Guardian. Jones, I think, was one of those who joined in the fake accusations of anti-Semitism directed at Corbyn, as did the paper he worked for. The Guardian is popularly supposed to be far left, but it’s a Liberal paper that has urged its readers to vote Liberal/ Liberal-SDP Alliance/ Lib Dem far more often than it has Labour. What gives the impression that it’s a far left or at least Labour paper is its concentration on minority rights – anti-racism, feminism and gay and trans rights. But it’s economic outlook is firmly Blairite neoliberalism.
Jones has joined Mike, myself and many others in leaving the party and advising others, who really want genuine change, to put their votes to alternative, genuinely left-wing candidates and parties. Mike has been advising people to think very carefully about who they want to vote for after Labour threw him out for refusing to go on a training course about anti-Semitism, run by the people who had falsely accused him of it. This was Labour Friends of Israel or the Jewish Labour Movement, people who falsely conflate Jewishness with Zionism and anti-Semitism with the mildest criticism of Israel. The kind of people who joined Maureen Lipman in accusing Ed Miliband of being a monstrous Jew-hater almost on a par with the Hitler, about to hit British Jews with a hideous wave of persecution comparable to the bastard’s Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy. This was because Milliband, hardly any kind of firebrand, had made a few mild and reasonable criticisms of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. Oh, yes, and Red Ed was also Jewish, though I think he was largely secular rather than observant. Not that it matters to these fanatics. I forgotten the precise figures, but about three fifth or four-fifths of the people expelled from the Labour party are Jews who dare to criticise Israel. Which should tell you that their claims to stand up for British Jews against anti-Semitism is just so much balderdash and codswallop.
Starmerism is just Blairism reheated. He follows Blair in his frantic enthusiasm for Thatcher, even waving the union flag and proclaiming his patriotism as she did. And he’s followed Blair in thinking that he could move to the right and appeal to Tory voters, press barons and donors and need not worry about the working class vote, as they would just have to put up with it as there was nowhere else for them to go. That’s no longer true. The Green vote has been growing. In Bristol they’re challenging the Labour party for control of the council. There are alternative socialist movements backing Corbyn in his constituency, aspiring Muslims politicians are standing as Independents. I don’t know, but the Trades Union and Socialist Alliance may still be around, as well as the Socialist Party, formerly the Socialist Workers’ Party, and they may be worth voting for. I’ve heard friends say they’d even vote Communist in preference to Labour, not because they’re Commies, but simply because they think they’d be preferable.
To the right of the Tories, meanwhile, are Reform and various other right-wing outfits, like Laurence Fox’s Reclaim and the New Culture Forum. These are also laying claim to the White, working class vote. Reform are especially – and ludicrously – hungry for a piece of the Tories’ action, with Richard Tice claiming that only his band of dements and not Sunak have a chance of defeating Labour. These fringe parties could very well chip away at the votes of the two main parties. For all the assumption that a Labour victory is certain, I think it’s very far from inevitable. This could be a very interesting general election.
This is an appeal for donations by the Stop the War Coalition. I haven’t given, but I’m putting it up here in case there are people out there who may wish to do so.
‘The attacks on the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movement have sunk to a new low. The Prime Minister called those who demonstrate for peace a ‘mob’, while the former Conservative party chair and like-minded Tory MPs are spewing Islamophobic comments. Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle have whipped up a level of racist abuse not seen since the dark days of Enoch Powell.
Make no mistake, these are serious attacks on us all. The Rochdale election result shows just how out of step the two main parties are. But the more threatened they feel the more vicious the attacks will become.
It is more important than ever that we make our movement strong and resilient. We will not be cowed. This is why we must ask for your help. Building a strong anti-war movement requires staff and resources. And it costs.
Just a few days ago 100 starving Palestinians seeking emergency food rations were gunned down in cold blood by the Israeli army. Yet it is those who call for peace who are demonised as violent extremists.
The racists and warmongers know they are losing ground. They know the vast majority in this country do not support them. They know it is becoming untenable to defend Israeli actions. They deflect from their own failures by trying to silence us. We must call this out.
We need to say it loud and clear: it is not those who call for peace who are the extremists. With the generosity of thousands of individuals like you we can make our voice heard.
I found this a few days ago on Middle East Eye, which puts the alleged genocidal implications of the Palestinian chant into very sharp perspective.
‘Many Western politicians demonise pro-Palestinians who chant “From the river to the sea”.
But they keep silent when Zionist Israelis use the slogan, which is at the heart of the ideology of Israel’s ruling Likud party.
“The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
—Likud Party Platform, 1977
Source: ‘It’s Time to Confront Israel’s Version of “From the River to the Sea”’ by Rashid Khalidi in The Nation
I dare say you’ve seen the various spluttering in the media and online. There’s been frothing outrage on the Islamophobic right after the events of Wednesday night. At the same time as the abortive debate on the SNP’s motion for a ceasefire in Gaza, there was a Stop the War protest outside parliament as well as other protests outside MP’s constituency offices. As a result, GB News and other right-wingers have been accusing MPs, and particularly the Labour party, of cowardice for supposedly giving in to Islamist demands. GB News in particular has been ranting about how Britain is now under Islamist mob rule, a stance echoed and repeated by others on the nationalist/populist right.
There are several criticisms of this view which clearly demonstrated it to be completely false.
Firstly, it wasn’t an Islamist protest. It was a protest against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza, present as a reprisal for Hamas’ butchery of the kids at a music festival. As such, it naturally involved a large number of Muslims. Which is pretty much as you’d expect, as Muslims are keenly interested and deeply upset by the treatment of their coreligionists in Israel and the Occupied Territories. But the Palestinians aren’t just Muslims – they’re also Christians, and there are any number of videos on YouTube of Christian clergy and lay people being abused, spat at and struck by bigoted Israelis. This is the face of Israel that the Israel lobby and the official Jews of the Chief Rabbinate, Board of Deputies, Jewish Chronicle and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism don’t want westerners knowing about. They want you to believe that the only people persecuting Christians in the Holy Land are Muslims. It’s true that Christians are persecuted by Muslims, but they’re also persecuted by Israeli settlers and quite often the people literally standing between Christians worshipping in church and an mob of Israeli fanatics intent on destruction is the Muslim doorman. The secular Israeli state also persecute the Orthodox Jews of Jerusalem’s Old Jewry. These are the descendants of 19th century Jewish immigrants to the Holy Land, who came to practise their faith in the land of their ancestors. They reject, however, Israel as a secular state and, like their brethren and sisters overseas, believe that Israel will only be restored by divine will under the Mashiach – the Messiah. You can find videos on YouTube of them being tormented and beaten up by the IDF. If you want to know how Israel really treats the Palestinians, I strongly recommend reading the blogs and books produced by Israel-critical Jews, like Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni and so on. Also, the marchers for Palestine included a number of severely normal White Brits. The Islamophobes have made much of Starmer being confronted by ‘Islamist’ protesters on the train and on the station in Edinburgh. Well, I’ve seen the video, too, and most of them looked White to me.
Now I do think that the right does have a point when it comes to the massed protests outside MPs constituency offices. It does look like intimidation after MP David Freer announced he was resigning because of the abuse and threats he and his family suffered. This comes after the murder of Amess by an Islamist fanatic, as well as the attack on Lib Dem MP a few years ago by a nutter with a Samurai sword in which the MPs assistant was tragically killed, as well as the assassination of Jo Cox back in 2015 by a native British rightist. I agree with the Stop the War Coalition that such protests should not be banned, as it would isolate MPs from public opinion, but believe it was wrong to do so in this case. Not least because it hands ammunition to a government determined to curb any kind of public protest.
Secondly, the Labour party doesn’t appear to have given in, whatever it looks like from outside. From what has been said by critics of Labour’s behaviour towards the SNP motion, it appears like the opposite, carefully crafted to look like a call for a ceasefire. According to a message I put up from the StWC yesterday, Starmer presented the motion after a phone call with Israeli PM Isaac Herzog. Herzog is in no way a peacenik, and I’ve come across several quotes from him indicating that he has an absolute and unyielding hatred of the Palestinians. It looks like Starmer deliberately added his amendments knowing that this would upset the SNP and they’d walk out. Damo Kernow, the man from the ancient British kingdom of Cornwall, has put up several videos about this. He notes that Labour’s amendment stripped out any criticism of Israel and removes the stipulation that the ceasefire should be immediate. He also notes that the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, allowed the amendment to go ahead despite breaking parliamentary rules he declared were antiquated. These were rules that had last been amended in the 1980s during the IRA bombing campaign. Hoyle has very strong pro-Israel views, and proudly tells the world how his grandfather was one of the founders of Labour Friends of Israel. This now looks less like parliament caving in to Muslim opinion than a carefully crafted piece of sabotage designed to look like genuine support for a Palestinian ceasefire. Which is what you’d expect from a master of lies and deceit like Starmer. As the Native Americans used to say in Westerns during their pow-wows with the cavalry, ‘White man speak with forked tongue’. Well, definitely not all White men, but definitely in the case of Starmer. He’s made a career out of it.
But I don’t doubt that there were Islamists among the marchers. Any kind of left-wing protest attracts firebrands and extremists. I was at secondary school during the St. Paul’s riots in Bristol in 1980/81. Our school fortunately wasn’t affected, but I do remember a White guy standing on the stone square supporting the trees lining the school entrance, ranting down a megaphone trying to incite the kids to join the rioters. Mahyar Tousi put up a video showing a group of Muslims waving the black banner of Jihad, while telling the cops and everyone else that it was merely the shahada, the Muslim creed. It wasn’t, and waving an enemy banner is outlawed, so they should have been arrested. But these are the bigots and extremists, who I’ve no doubt comprised only a small minority of the crowd.
And the statement that Britain has now fallen and is now under the Islamist heel is more than a little exaggerated. Last time I looked, King Charles was still ensconced on the throne, not a caliph. Rishi Sunak is still PM – unfortunately – and not a mullah, as in Iran. I live in Bristol, which is a multicultural city with its fair share of mosques, as well as Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras. I haven’t seen any rampaging Muslims hordes up my way, nor from anywhere else in the city. I’ve mentioned how Patrick Christys, one of the esteemed fixtures of GB News, more Grievous Bodily than Great British, put up a video calling for sharia law to be banned. Well, last time I looked, sharia law had no official standing and only five per cent of Muslims wanted it introduced. Over 70 per cent of Muslims polled believe Islam was compatible with British society. But Grievous Bodily News has form when it comes to alarmism and scaremongering, so it’s no surprise that they’re doing it now about the protests for Gaza.
I do think, however, that we also need to be very cautious and suspicious of some of those marching. I’ve no doubt that the Islamists are trying to exploit massed Muslim opinion against the war in Gaza in the same way some Marxist sects used to practice ‘revolutionary entryism’ and deliberately infiltrate conventional, social democratic parties like Labour in order to disrupt and radicalise it. The critical event that mobilised specifically Muslim politics in Britain, according to the scholar Alfred Kepel in his book, The Revenge of God, was the confected outrage over the Satanic Forces. This was falsely accused of blasphemy by the Ayatollah Khomeini as a cynical political gesture to take the spiritual leadership of the Islamic world away from Saudi Arabia. It has led to death threats and attempts on the lives, some of them all-too successful, of the author, Salman Rushdie and his publishers. I can remember the mass book burnings in Bradford, and the rantings of its leaders, Mohammed Akhthar and Kalim Zaddiqie. Akhthar’s pamphlet, Be Careful With Mohammed, was a full-scale attack on Christianity and western secular democracy, and exaltation of Islam as absolutely perfect. It ended with a short section ‘What Western Intellectuals Think of Islam’, containing a series of quotes condemning the religion from various writers and public figures. As for Zaddiqui, He was filmed in a BBC documentary, The Trouble with Islam, telling his congregation that ‘British society is a monstrous killing machine, and killing Muslims comes very easily to them’. When he was challenged, Zaddiqui muttered some nonsense about the publication of Rushdie’s notorious book marking the beginning of ‘a holocaust of Muslims’. That was 30 and more years ago, and it’s no more come true than Alex Jones’ telling the world that Obama was going to become a dictator and put ordinary, White Christian Americans in FEMA camps. I don’t doubt that some of the Islamists who joined the marches are considering ways in which they can spread their disaffection and hate amongst bog-standard ordinary Muslims who simply want peace and dignity for the Palestinians.
We cannot let the forces of hate use the marches to spread fear of the Islamic threat on one hand, and Islamist disaffection on the other. The marches are not Islamist mob rule, and are not to be presented or used as such.
I got this message earlier this evening from the Stop the War Coalition giving the details of their forthcoming events against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But in many ways the most important piece is the top the article giving an entirely different perspective on the Labour Party’s motion for a ceasefire in Gaza which prompted a walkout by the SNP. I put up a message I’d received this afternoon from Karin Smyth, which stated that the amendment went further than the SNP’s motion. This strongly gives the impression that the motion was made in good faith. However, according to the STWC, Starmer only tabled it after making a phone call to Herzog, the Israeli prime minister. This indicates that it was made in bad faith in order to prompt the SNP to walk out, and thereby scupper the amendment. If that is the case, then it’s another object lesson in why Starmer shouldn’t be PM: he’s a deceitful schemer who lies, and, like the Tories, engineers the lies so that they appear to be the opposite of what they actually do.
Newsletter – 23/02/24
A Smokescreen to Hide the Genocide Behind 🫣
Following Wednesday’s disgraceful scenes where Keir Starmer, after a phone call with Israeli PM Isaac Herzog, colluded with the Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle to sabotage the SNP’s motion calling for a ceasefire, it appears that both the government and its loyal opposition have decided to aim their fire at peaceful protestors.
It is obvious that the current attempt to equate the right to protest with intimidation is an attempt to deflect from the horror in Gaza and the British political establishment’s support for it. The millions of people in this country that have taken to the streets for Palestine over the past five months represent majority opinion in this country. In the words of YouGov last week: “public desire for Israel to stop and call a ceasefire stands at 66%”.
We issued a statement earlier today strongly condemning any proposals to ban protest outside parliament, council buildings and MPs’ offices with a commitment to campaigning energetically against them:
“The recent cycle of protests calling for a ceasefire have seen record numbers of people protest. Despite bizarre attempts to demonise these huge marches for peace and an end to mass killing as threatening, ‘hate marches’, they have been entirely peaceful with less arrests per person than at major music festivals.
Calls to limit the right to protest from centres of decision making are an attempt to insulate politicians from public opinion. As such, they are an attack on democracy not a defence of it.”
There is a massive movement in support of the Palestinians across Britain and real anger that politicians have, for the most part, stood by as we witness a genocide in Gaza. We will continue to campaign and mobilise until there is a ceasefire and justice for Palestine. The next National Demonstration will be on Sat 9 March. Make sure you’re on the streets.
Ukraine: How To Stop This War – Online Meeting Tomorrow
Two years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands are dead, countless more injured, homes and infrastructure destroyed and millions displaced – and the risk of nuclear war has increased. This war must end.
Stop the War is pleased to be co-hosting an online rally with CND to discuss the disastrous impact of the war and the crisis it has created with an outstanding line up of speakers including Jeremy Corbyn, Lindsey German, Vijay Prashad, Kate Hudson, Yurii Sheliazhenko, Tom Unterrainer and Medea Benjamin. Don’t miss this important event tomorrow.
Stand With #PalestinianWomen in Your Workplace on #IWD24
Our next Workplace Day of Action which will coincide with International Women’s Day 2024 is just two weeks away! On Friday 8th March we are calling on workers across the country to take action in their workplace or trade union in solidarity with Palestinian women. Women and children have been forced to bear the brunt of Israel’s genocide in Gaza so it’s vital that we highlight their plight on #IWD24.
We hope you will join us as the push to take the struggle for justice for Palestine into the workplace continues. We must puncture the enforced silence around Palestine that many people find in their places of work. Can you organise a lunchtime rally, canteen meeting or a ‘wear a badge for Palestine day’?
We’ve had a stream of events coming through already and we’ll be compiling a full list in the run-up to 8th March – Let us know what you are organising by emailing: office@stopwar.org.uk
It is with regret that we’ve decided to postpone our Trade Union Conference on 2nd March due to the weight of activity currently taking place. We will be rescheduling the conference for a date in April/May. We will be in touch as soon as the date is confirmed. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. All ticket-holders have been refunded.’
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 