“There was never much talk about politics before but now everyone cares, lots of people are speaking up,” he said last week. “We’ve been brought up in an environment where we were blindly supporters of Labour, old and young. But now people are opening their eyes a bit more.”
The issue that has opened the eyes of Muslims in Walsall and elsewhere across the country is Labour’s failure to explicitly demand a permanent ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. The party’s position has shifted in recent weeks but, with more than 25,000 casualties in Gaza and a growing humanitarian catastrophe, it is too little and too late for many Muslims.
The anguish and anger felt by Muslims in the UK over the Israel-Gaza war could spell trouble for Labour at the next election. An opinion poll carried out in November by Savanta found strong support for Labour among Muslim voters, with 64% backing the party. But more than 40% said Keir Starmer’s response to the war had made them less likely to vote Labour, while 20% said it had made them more likely to do so. One in three Muslim voters rated the conflict among their top three issues in deciding who to vote for.
Western critics of Israel’s apartheid policies and far-right government are frequently accused of antisemitism, but leftist and left-liberal Israelis have been decrying the country’s descent into fascism for years. In this article, Alberto Toscano argues that fascism is embedded in the logic of Israel’s colonial project.
Green-lit by Western governments and described by myriad human rights law experts as demonstrating clear ‘genocidal intent’, the State of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’s Al Aqsa Flood October 7 attack has also elicited talk of fascism in multiple quarters. In a collective statement, the Birzeit University Union of Professors and Employees has spoken of ‘colonial fascism’ and of the ‘pornographic call to death of Arabs by settler Zionist politicians across the political lines’; in their own declaration, the Communist Party of Israel (Maki) and the left-wing coalition Hadash ‘put the full responsibility on the fascist right-wing government for the sharp and dangerous escalation’; meanwhile, Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro described the onslaught on Gaza as the ‘first experiment to deem all of us disposable’ in a ‘global 1933’ marked by climate catastrophe and capitalist entrenchment. Even quoting these lines probably falls foul of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has served as an important instrument in efforts to curtail peaceful international solidarity activism against Israeli apartheid, especially in the guise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
And yet the recognition of an incipient fascism in the latest Netanyahu government and even Israeli society at large seems, if not mainstream, certainly prominent in public discourse in Israel itself, not least in the wake of protests against the recent judicial reforms aimed at eviscerating the vaunted autonomy of Israel’s Supreme Court. Four days before the Hamas attack, the newspaper Ha’aretz published an editorial under the heading ‘Israeli Neo-Fascism Threatens Israelis and Palestinians Alike’. One month earlier 200 Israeli high school students declared their refusal to be conscripted thus: ‘We decided that we cannot, in good faith, serve a bunch of fascist settlers that are in control of the government right now.’ In May, a Ha’aretz editorial opined that the ‘sixth Netanyahu government is beginning to look like a totalitarian caricature. There is almost no move associated with totalitarianism that has not been proposed by one of its extremist members and adopted by the rest of the incompetents it comprises, in their competition to see who can be more fully full fascist,’ while one of its editorialists described an ‘Israeli fascist revolution’ ticking off all items in the checklist, from virulent racism to a contempt for weakness, from a lust for violence to anti-intellectualism.
These recent polemics and prognoses were anticipated by prominent intellectuals like the renowned historian of the far Right Ze’ev Sternhell, who wrote of ‘growing fascism and a racism akin to early Nazism’ in contemporary Israel, or the journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery, who escaped Nazi Germany at age ten, and who, not long before his death in 2018, declared that
the discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.) The rain of racist Bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call ‘Death to the Arabs’ (‘Judah verrecke’?) is regularly heard at soccer matches.
…
But the fascism ‘godfathered’ by Netanyahu cannot just be reduced to fundamentalist settlers and their stratagems of dispossession (including the deep tendrils into the state of Smotrich’s settler NGO, Regavim, and its lawfare against Palestinian land and property rights); it is also firmly anchored in the business interests and legislative maneuvers of billionaires who, in Israel as in India or the US, are happy to combine national-conservative mobilisations against decadent metropolitan ‘elites’ with the ruthless defense of profit and privilege. In a recent interview, the Israeli Holocaust historian Daniel Blatman observed:
Do you know what the biggest threat is to the continued existence of the State of Israel? It’s not Likud. It’s not even the thugs who run wild in the territories. It’s the Kohelet Policy Forum [a reference to a conservative, right-wing think tank supported by wealthy U.S. donors]. […] They are creating a broad social and political manifesto which, if adopted eventually by Israel, will turn it into a completely different country. You say “fascism” to people and they picture soldiers cruising the streets. No. It won’t look like that. Capitalism will still be extant. People will still be able to go abroad – if they are allowed into other countries. There will be good restaurants. But a person’s ability to feel that there is something protecting him, other than the regime’s good will – because it either will or not protect him, as it sees fit – will no longer be there. Israeli society was ripe to receive the present government. Not because of Likud’s victory, but because the most extreme wing pulled everyone after it. What was once extreme right is today center. Ideas that were once on the fringes have become legitimate. As a historian whose field is the Holocaust and Nazism, it’s hard for me to say this, but there are neo-Nazi ministers in the government today. You don’t see that anywhere else – not in Hungary, not in Poland – ministers who, ideologically, are pure racists.
Its insights notwithstanding, this passage also painfully demonstrates what liberal Israeli polemics against the rise of fascism bracket. Namely, Palestinians. Soldiers do cruise the streets in Israel and occupied Palestine. Millions of people ruled by Israel cannot go abroad. Or indeed return home. The ‘pure’ racism voiced without compunction by the likes of Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir is a product of the racism that structures and reproduces colonial domination, for bad faith liberals as much as for giddy fascists.
Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on January 29, 2024. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“Some of the very governments that announced they will cut off funds to UNRWA over these allegations have, in the meantime, continued to arm Israeli forces despite overwhelming evidence that these arms are used to commit war crimes.”
Amnesty International on Monday joined the growing global chorus denouncing Israel’s allies for suspending aid to the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency even as they continue to support the Israeli military’s war on the Gaza Strip, risking complicity in genocide.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general and the former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said that while Israel’s claim that a dozen staffers at the refugee agency played a role Hamas’ October 7 attack is “serious and must be independently investigated,” the “alleged actions of a few individuals must not be used as a pretext for cutting off lifesaving assistance in what could amount to collective punishment.”
“Some of the very governments that announced they will cut off funds to UNRWA over these allegations have, in the meantime, continued to arm Israeli forces despite overwhelming evidence that these arms are used to commit war crimes and serious human rights violations,” said Callamard. “Rushing to freeze funds for humanitarian aid, based on allegations that are still being investigated, while refusing to even consider suspending support for the Israeli military is a stark example of double standards.”
“Instead of suspending vital funding to those in need,” Callamard added, “states should be working to halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups and pushing for an immediate and sustained cease-fire and full humanitarian access to help alleviate devastating suffering.”
“The humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels, and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering.”
The United States announced last week that it would temporarily cut off UNRWA funding as it reviews Israel’s allegations against the low-level agency employees—a decision that came just hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to Gazans, tens of thousands of whom have been killed or wounded by Israeli bombs and shells in less than four months.
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said that “defunding UNRWA at this critical time overtly defies” the ICJ’s ruling.
Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, similarly warned Monday that “the consequences these cuts in funding will have on the ground contradict the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice.”
“The humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels,” the group added, “and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering.”
Just over a week before the Biden administration decided to suspend its UNRWA contributions, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department described the agency’s work as “invaluable” and “lifesaving.”
Jan 17—9 days before ICJ trial:
State Dept. Spox Matt Miller: "UNRWA has done and continues to do invaluable work to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza at great personal risk to UNRWA members…over 100 UNRWA staff members have been killed doing this lifesaving work." pic.twitter.com/ckTHFhU2zc
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that the UNRWA “has played and continues to play an absolutely indispensable role in trying to make sure that men, women, and children who so desperately need assistance in Gaza actually get it.”
“And no one else can play the role that UNRWA’s been playing, certainly not in the near term,” he added. “So that only underscores the importance of UNRWA tackling this as quickly, as effectively, and as thoroughly as possible, and that’s what we’re looking for.”
At least a dozen countries—including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—have joined the U.S. in suspending aid to the UNRWA, the most critical humanitarian aid organization in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip.
The moves have put the UNRWA’s operations in jeopardy, with the U.N. chief warning that the agency’s current funding levels won’t be enough to meet all of its requirements in February. The agency has no strategic financial reserves.
Amnesty said the countries that have suspended aid to the UNRWA thus far provided more than half of the agency’s budget in 2022.
Several major nations, including Norway and Spain, have refused to join the U.S.-led freeze of aid to the UNRWA, which the Israeli government has been targeting for years and is hoping to push out of Gaza entirely. The UNRWA quickly fired nine of the 12 workers that Israel accused of taking part in the October 7 attack and has launched an investigation.
On Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country will not suspend UNRWA funding, which he said helps “alleviate the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
Albares also pledged to continue pushing for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the release of hostages, and a lasting diplomatic solution.
“We will not resign ourselves to watching more innocent women, men, and children killed in Gaza and more suffering of Palestinian families,” he said. “We will not resign ourselves to keep watching the suffering of the families of hostages. The violence must stop.”
Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Security footage shows Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff during a raid on Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank, on January 30, 2023. (Photo: Screengrab via CNN)
Ibn Sina hospital’s medical director said the Palestinian men were “executed in cold blood.”
A team of Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff raided Ibn Sina hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and assassinated three Palestinians, claiming without providing evidence that they were using the facility as a hideout and planning an attack inspired by the Hamas-led October 7 assault.
Journalists on the ground report that there was no apparent attempt to arrest the three individuals, whom the Israeli military identified as Mohammed Jalamneh, Mohammed Ghazawi, and his brother Basel Ghazawi. Ibn Sina’s medical director said the three men were “executed in cold blood.”
Al Jazeera reported that “Hamas confirmed that Jalamneh was one of its members.”
“The Jenin Brigade, which includes a number of Palestinian armed resistance groups, said in a statement that two of the three men were members of Islamic Jihad,” the outlet added.
A hospital spokesperson told The Associated Press that 18-year-old Basel Ghazawi “had been a patient in the hospital since October with partial paralysis.”
Security footage from the hospital shows Israeli forces dressed as civilian women and medical workers moving through a facility hallway and waiting area with assault rifles drawn.
لحظة اقتحام قوة خاصة من جيش الاحتلال تتنكر بلباس الطواقم الطبية مستشفى ابن سينا في #جنين واغتيال الشهداء محمد جلامنة وباسل ومحمد الغزاوي pic.twitter.com/6TwHEPb9NI
Citing Palestinian officials, AP reported that the Israeli forces “opened fire inside the wards” of the hospital, located in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Palestinian health officials “condemned the raid and called on the international community to pressure Israel’s military to halt such operations in hospitals,” AP added. “A hospital spokesperson said there was no exchange of fire, indicating that it was a targeted killing.”
Hospitals have special protections under international law, but Israel has treated them as legitimate targets for military operations since October 7, endangering wounded patients and medical personnel by raiding and shelling the facilities at will.
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, sardonically described the Israeli forces’ Jenin hospital raid as “rule-of-law Western style” and rejected the notion that “you can kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying, brand him/her terrorist, and then vilify as antisemites the ancestors of everyone who questions your right to kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying.”
Al Jazeera‘s Charles Stratford, reporting from Ramallah, said Tuesday that “the Israeli army often surrounds and in some instances has attacked the three Palestinian hospitals in Jenin during nightly raids on the city.”
“But this is the first time they have entered a civilian medical facility in what seems to have been a well-planned, targeted assassination operation that Palestinian authorities are calling another violation of international law,” said Stratford.
The CCC said: “The international perception of the UK’s climate ambition suffered from mixed messages following announcements on new fossil fuel developments and the prime minister’s speech to soften some net zero policies. The committee urges a continued visible presence at future Cops and even greater domestic climate ambition to reinforce the UK’s international standing.”
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Responding, co-leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer, said:
“Through its drive to ‘max out’ on North Sea fossil fuels, the UK government has blown any pretence of global leadership on tackling the climate crisis. Ministers have been forced into admitting that their energy security defence of the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill was nonsense because oil and gas corporations sell to the highest bidder on the open market.
“So at odds with the government’s target of reducing emissions is this dangerous Bill that it has led to the resignation of Chris Skidmore who chaired the government’s Net Zero Review.
“We need to call time on all new licences for fossil fuel exploration, accelerate the move towards renewable energy and implement a large scale home insulation programme. That is how the UK can show climate leadership.”
Rishi Sunak offers huge fossil fuel subsidies to develop fossil fuel extraction in UK.
