Israeli soldiers drive a tank near the Gaza Strip border, in southern Israel, February 19, 2024
WEDNESDAY is a fresh moment of truth for British politicians. For the second time, they will have the opportunity to vote in the House of Commons for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Since they backed the Israeli aggression by a majority last November, the genocidal assault on the Palestinians has only intensified.
More than 100,000 people have now been killed or wounded, nearly 5 per cent of Gaza’s total population. Of the dead, more than a third are children.
To date, the British government has not just acquiesced in this. It has enabled it — with arms supplies, logistical support, diplomatic backing and political indulgence.
It is complicit in genocide. So too is the Labour Party, which under Keir Starmer’s pro-imperialist leadership — it is the only issue on which he never wavers or changes course — has been hard line in its backing for the British and Israeli governments alike.
Labour amendments betray Gaza’s murdered and oppressed civilians and uses classic asymmetric language to value Palestinian life less than Israeli
Keir Starmer – after days of posing to try to bring Muslim and other decent voters onside by mouthing ceasefire language – has yet again betrayed the two million people in Gaza suffering violence and starvation and the more than 100,000 people murdered and maimed by Israel.
While the ‘mainstream’ media speculated whether Starmer would order MPs to support the SNP’s motion demanding a ceasefire, which is being debated in Parliament tomorrow, more realistic observers knew it was inevitable that Starmer would do the minimum he hopes will fool voters opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while protecting the interests of the pro-Israel right.
And so he did: Labour has tabled amendments to the original motion that gut it of its impact and has gone as far as making the motion more about Hamas’s supposed guilt and the feelings of Israel and its supporters. And the amendment uses the classic tactics of politicians and ‘mainstream’ media to present Israeli lives and suffering as more valuable than Palestinian.
In Starmer’s worldview, Palestinians are not being murdered by Israel – their lives are just ‘lost’, as if to a natural disaster and not to a campaign of mechanised mass murder. The sheer number of their deaths is presented as ‘intolerable’, but the loss of Israeli lives to Palestinian resistance is ‘horror’. Israelis have the ‘right to assurance’ against attack, but there is no mention of a Palestinian right not to be murdered by the occupation regime. Israel ‘cannot be expected’ to stop fighting if Hamas does not stop – but there is no acknowledgement that Hamas’s violence takes place against a backdrop of decades of wanton violence and oppression by the occupiers. Israel must be ‘safe and secure’ – but a Palestinian state only merits ‘viable’.
The SNP motion is an exemplar of directness and simplicity and rightly focuses on the many tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered by Israel, as well as on the forced displacement of 1.5 million Palestinians into Rafah, where they remain under constant bombardment and the threat of an all-out ground assault:
Labour’s lickspittle version calls resistance ‘terrorism’ but does not mention the Israeli terror state’s genocide and other war crimes, or the fact that so many are dying in Rafah because they were forced to cram there under bomb and bullet – and clearly hasn’t even been proofread, calling for ‘the UN Security Council to be meet urgently’:
Starmer is trying to mask his support for Israel’s war crimes and hoping that the millions in this country disgusted by that support will be fooled. His disregard for the true plight of Palestinians and his complicity in the war crimes being perpetrated against them by Israel is beyond contemptible.
Stella Assange speaks to the media outside the Old Bailey on January 4, 2021 in London. (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)
“This could very well be the final hearing for Julian,” said Stella Assange on the eve of the critical U.K. High Court session.
Stella Assange, the wife of Julian Assange, said Monday that the jailed WikiLeaks founder will likely die if he is extradited from Britain to the United States, where he could imprisoned for the rest of his life for publishing classified documents including numerous files exposing U.S. war crimes.
Assange’s final appeal is scheduled to be heard on Tuesday by the U.K. High Court. The Australian publisher’s supporters are calling it “Day X,” and his wife told the BBC that it “could very well be the final hearing for Julian.”
“There’s no possibility for further appeal in this jurisdiction,” she explained, adding that Assange could still seek an emergency injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
Assange said her husband—who is 52 years old and suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—is very weak and “in a very difficult place.”
Live from the Royal Courts of Justice where Julian Assange's most crucial court hearing takes place this week – Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 Feb, with latest news and developments, interviews and more
Imprisoned in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison since April 2019, Assange could be sentenced to as many as 175 years behind bars if convicted of all the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges against him.
WikiLeaks published a series of document dumps inculding “Collateral Murder” video—which shows a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians—the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs, which revealed American and allied war crimes.
In 2016, The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Assange had been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since his first arrest on December 7, 2010, including house arrest, imprisonment in London, and nearly seven years of political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the British capital.
Nils Melzer, the U.N.’s top torture official from 2016 to 2022, repeatedly said that Assange’s treatment amounted to torture.
Alice Jill Edwards, the current U.N. special rapporteur on torture, is imploring the U.K. government to decline Assange’s transfer to the U.S. because she says his health is likely to be “irreparably damaged” by extradition. Edwards cited conditions in U.S. prisons including the use of prolonged solitary confinement and excessive sentences as causes for concern.
Countless human rights defenders, press freedom advocates, and elected officials around the world have called on the U.S. to drop charges against Assange and for the U.K. to refuse his extradition.
“All eyes are on the U.K. High Court during this fateful hearing, but it remains to be seen whether the British judiciary can deliver some form of justice by preventing Assange’s extradition at this late stage,” Rebecca Vincent, campaigns director at Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement Monday.
“Regardless, none of this is inevitable—it remains within the U.S. government’s power to bring this judicial tragedy to an end by dropping its 13-year-old case against Assange and ceasing this endless persecution,” Vincent continued. “No one should face such treatment for publishing information in the public interest.”
“It’s time to protect journalism, press freedom, and all of our right to know,” she added. “It’s time to free Assange now.”
A protester pretends to celebrate outside Shell’s London headquarters. (Photo: Greenpeace U.K./X)
“They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices,” a Global Witness investigator said of a new analysis.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, one group has clearly benefited: the five biggest U.S. and European oil and gas companies.
BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies have made more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits since the war began, according to an analysis published by Global Witness on Monday.
“This analysis shows that regardless of what happens on the front lines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine,” Global Witness senior fossil fuels investigator Patrick Galey said in a statement. “They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices.”
The world’s five largest listed oil companies have made profits of $281 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine
🗣️“…regardless of what happens on the frontlines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine.” Says our @patrickgaleyhttps://t.co/EzghPq4dFz
Big Oil’s profits were fueled in part by high wholesale gas prices, which were already elevated before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and skyrocketed afterward. All five companies covered by the analysis reported record profits for 2022.
This bonanza came as the conflict killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been devastating for millions of people, from ordinary Ukrainians living under the shadow of war, to the households across Europe struggling to heat their homes,” Galey said.
During 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Big Oil of “war profiteering.”
Global Witness calculated that BP and Shell have raked in enough since the war began—at £75 billion—to pay all British household electricity bills through July 2025. Chevron and ExxonMobil have made a combined $136 billion while Total has netted $50.4 billion.
These massive profits also come as the climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, continues to escalate. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years. Yet instead of using their record profits to invest in renewable energy technology, the five major oil companies have cut back on their climate initiatives and handed massive payouts to shareholders.
“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet.”
Of the more than $280 billion the five companies have brought in since the war began, they returned what Global Witness said was an “unprecedented” $200 billion to shareholders. At the same time, Shell rescinded a promise to curb oil production by 2030 and said it would fire around 200 people employed by its green jobs division. BP, meanwhile, slashed its emissions reduction target from 35-40% of 2019 levels by 2030 to 20-30%.
The money paid to shareholders is also money that could have been paid to help communities adapt to the climate crisis or recover from the damage it has already caused. The $111 billion that the five companies paid to shareholders in 2023 alone is 158 times more than the money pledged to climate-vulnerable nations at COP28, and the €15 billion that TotalEnergies rewarded shareholders with was more than the €10 billion that France needed to recover from droughts and storms in 2022.
Galey said the companies were now “spending their gains on investor handouts and ever more oil and gas production, which Europe doesn’t need and the climate cannot take.”
“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet,” Galey said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addresses the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 17, 2024. (Photo: Ricardo Stuckert via Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva/Facebook)
The Brazilian president’s move comes after the leftist leader was declared persona non grata in Israel for comparing its genocidal war on Gaza to Hitler’s extermination of Jews.
Brazil recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv for talks on Monday after Israel’s foreign minister declared Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva persona non grata for condemning the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Israeli state broadcaster Kan reported that Lula recalled Brazilian Ambassador Frederico Meyer amid the escalating row over comments the leftist leader made over the weekend in Ethiopia. The Brazilian news site Carta Capital reported that Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieria called Israeli Ambassador Daniel Zonshine for a meeting on Monday.
This, after Lula told attendees at the African Union (A.U.) summit in Addis Ababa on Sunday that “what’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.”
“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers,” Lula continued. “It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children.”
“It is important to remember that in 2010 Brazil was the first country to recognize the Palestinian state,” he said. “What is happening in the Gaza Strip and with the Palestinian people did not exist at any other historical moment. In fact, it existed when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip:
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler… pic.twitter.com/npJVAMO9FQ
Lula asked: “Who will help rebuild those houses that were destroyed? Who will repay the lives of 30,000 people who have died, 70,000 who are injured? Who will return the lives of the children who died without knowing why they were dying?”
According to Palestinian officials, at least 29,092 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed, 69,028 wounded, and more than 7,000 others left missing and presumed dead under the rubble as a result of Israel’s 136-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave of 2.3 million people, around 90% of whom have been forcibly displaced.
Lula’s remarks were well received by A.U. summit attendees, who issued a statement condemning Israel’s “brutal” war on Gaza.
“Gaza is being completely annihilated and its people are deprived of all of their rights,” declared A.U. Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat, who added that he “condemns the Israeli operation, which is unparalleled in the history of humanity.”
Mahamat underscored his support for South Africa as it leads a Gaza genocide case at the International Court of Justice, which found in a provisional ruling last month that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Israeli leaders were incensed by Lula’s remarks. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said da Silva had “crossed a line.”
“The words of the president of Brazil are shameful and alarming,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called Lula’s comments “shameful and grave.”
Katz summoned Meyer for a reprimand at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where the Jewish Brazilian diplomat—whose country sent 20,000 troops to fight the Nazis in World War II—was paraded before a list of Jews killed by the Third Reich.
“We will not forget and we will not forgive,” Katz told Meyer. “In my name, and in the name of all Israeli citizens, tell President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he retracts his statements.”
Persona non grata is Latin for “unwelcome person.” Legally, “it refers to the practice of a state prohibiting a diplomat from entering the country as a diplomat, or censuring a diplomat already resident in the country for conduct unbecoming of the status of a diplomat,” according to the U.S. State Department.
Celso Amorim, a former foreign and defense minister who now serves as Lula’s chief adviser for international affairs, called Katz’s declaration “absurd.”
“It only increases Israel’s isolation,” Amorim told Brazilian journalist Andréia Sadi. “Lula is sought all over the world and at the moment, Israel is persona non grata.”
Palestine defenders in Brazil and beyond embraced Israel’s rebuke of Lula. The Arab Palestinian Federation of Brazil said on social media that it’s “an honor for Lula’s biography” to be “persona non grata in the colonial occupation that calls itself a country.”
