Month: June 2024
‘Another day, another war crime’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/another-day-another-war-crime
Blood can be seen in the aftermath of the Israeli strike on a U.N.-run school that killed dozens of Palestinians in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, June 6, 2024 More than 30 killed by Israeli strike on UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians
MORE than 30 people — mostly children — were killed by an Israeli strike on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians today.
Israel defended the latest bloodshed among Palestinians seeking refuge by claiming that Hamas was operating from within the UN refugee agency (UNRWA) school in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza.
It did not provide evidence for its claims, as is usually the case with such attacks.
A CNN analysis indicated that the weapons used in the pre-dawn attack were US-made.
It is not the first time that air-strikes have targeted the school.
The attack followed Israel’s announcement on Wednesday of a new military campaign in central Gaza, saying that there would be no pause in fights amid ceasefire talks.
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Peace and Justice Project founder Jeremy Corbyn, who is defending his Islington North seat as an independent MP, said he is “appalled by the ongoing loss of life,” telling the Star: “Another day, another war crime.
“What kind of world are we living in when this kind of horror becomes part of our weekly or even daily routine?
“How have we allowed these atrocities to become so normalised?
“A school is a place of learning, growth and joy. In Gaza, they have been turned into a place of death, trauma and grief.”
Mr Corbyn vowed to continue to speak up for a ceasefire, the end to arms sales to Israel and “the only path to a just and lasting peace: the end to the occupation of Palestine.”
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/another-day-another-war-crime
British-Palestinian independent candidate urges voters not to lend their support to pro-Israel Labour MPs
Tanushka Marah VOTING for Labour MPs who have failed to back a ceasefire in Gaza is supporting complicity in genocide, a British-Palestinian independent candidate says.
Tanushka Marah, who is standing in Hove and Portslade, told the Morning Star that Labour MPs who abstained in last year’s ceasefire vote in the Commons have blood on their hands.
She was selected by pro-Palestine and socialist groups to challenge Peter Kyle, a member of Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet who has held the constituency for nine years.
The shadow science, innovation and technology secretary is a vice-chairman of Labour Friends for Israel and has consistently defended the pariah state.
He was named in a Declassified UK investigation this week as among the quarter of MPs who have accepted funds from pro-Israel lobbyists.
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Morning Star: Fight the far right to commemorate the D-Day heroes
Republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-fight-far-right-commemorate-d-day-heroes
Royal Marine commandos moving off the Normandy Beaches during the advance inland from “Sword” beach, June 6, 1944 WITH the Tories and Labour exchanging blame over Channel crossings, we mark 80 years since a Channel crossing of a different kind.
On June 6 1944 British, US and allied troops crossed the Channel to open a second front against the Nazis in Europe, something the Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the war against fascism for the previous three years, had long urged.
Veterans are arriving in Normandy for commemorations of this heroic chapter in Europe’s liberation. Modern hostilities overshadow celebration of the anti-Nazi alliance of the 1940s, with the US and Britain criticising France for inviting Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, though they themselves have never been excluded from World War II memorials while laying waste to countries from Vietnam in the cold war to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya more recently.
These diplomatic divisions raise a question we should be asking our own politicians. Have you any right to claim the inheritance of anti-fascist victory if you are dismantling its achievements?
The world war against fascism was the crucible of international institutions as we know them today. The United Nations was established in a joint declaration by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China on January 1 1942: it formalised the alliance against the Axis powers Germany, Italy and Japan, and a condition of membership was to declare war against Nazi Germany and its allies.
The foundation of the UN and new treaties like the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (on the conduct of war) and 1951 (on the treatment of refugees) expressed hope that a more civilised world order would stop any future descent into Nazi barbarism.
These agreements are not perfect, and powerful countries have often ignored them. But their existence is a legacy of the sacrifice made by those who gave their lives to smash fascism on D-Day, or at the battles of Stalingrad or Berlin, or among the heroic resistance movements that sprang up across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Politicians talk now as if the rules are outdated: the refugee conventions were drawn up by people who couldn’t conceive of the scale of “irregular” migration today. It isn’t true: World War II and its aftermath saw huge population displacement, the uprooting of millions of people. The Refugee Convention of 1951 set out universal obligations to refugees because of these horrific experiences.
Those obligations are ones governments across Europe, including ours, are trying to erase. The end of EU search-and-rescue operations, the active persecution of civil rescue crews by states like Italy, have fatally undermined the binding responsibility to aid anyone in distress at sea. The odious Nigel Farage clearly approves, having insulted brave volunteer lifeboat crews by calling the Royal National Lifeboat Institution a “migrant taxi service” for presuming to save people from drowning.
Farage has never yet been elected, but his ability to call the tune at Westminster is as great as ever if the first leaders’ debate is anything to go by: with Labour’s Keir Starmer calling Rishi Sunak, the PM of the Rwanda deportations scheme and the Bibby Stockholm prison barge, “the most liberal prime minister we have ever had on immigration.”
This is gutter politics, and a betrayal of what the D-Day heroes fought for. But so, at home, is the systematic destruction of the NHS and welfare state built after defeating fascism, fruits of a victorious people’s war and a recognition that fascism had emerged from a Europe wracked by poverty and unemployment.
It is no coincidence that today, with living standards falling, public services failing and the brazen theft of our wealth by an ever smaller corporate elite, the far-right politics of grievance and hate are on the march across the continent.
The real commemoration of D-Day must be to mobilise against them. For peace and socialism, against fascism and war.
Republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-fight-far-right-commemorate-d-day-heroes
Rights campaigners claim Israel has used phosphorous shells on residential buildings in Lebanon
A shell that appears to be white phosphorus from Israeli artillery explodes over a house in al-Bustan, a Lebanese village along the border with Israel, on October 15, 2023 ISRAEL has broken international law by using white phosphorus incendiary shells on residential buildings in southern Lebanon, Human Rights Watch alleged today.
This coincided with United Nations agencies warning that over one million Palestinians in Gaza could face starvation by the middle of next month if there is no end to the current Israeli military offensive.
In a damning new report, the global human rights group says there is no evidence of burns injuries caused by white phosphorus in Lebanon, but that researchers have “heard accounts indicating possible respiratory damage.”
Human rights campaigners point out that it is a crime under international law to fire white phosphorus munitions into populated areas.
Israel maintains that it is used only as a smokescreen and not to target civilians.
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