The Labour leader Keir Starmer has reaffirmed his opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza in a major speech today. Starmer made the speech to set out the Labour Party’s position on the ongoing situation in the Middle East amidst deep divisions in his party.
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Starmer’s speech has received a mixed response.
A spokesperson for Labour’s left wing faction Momentum said: “For all the fine words, Keir Starmer hasn’t shifted one inch: his speech today still backs Israel’s war on Gaza and opposes the ceasefire demanded by everyone from the UN to Save the Children.
“Thus Starmer backs a pause in hostilities – then a resumption of Israeli bombing which has already killed more than 3,000 children. To call this ‘humanitarian’ is an insult to the Palestinian people.”
Deputy leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: “Keir Starmer siding with the Conservatives by refusing to call for a ceasefire. He says that he’s not saying this to start “a new round of arguments or hand wringing.” If there’s any justice, they won’t get away with this. The UK population calling: we need a ceasefire now.”
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer call for ‘humanitarian pauses’ … but not a ceasefire
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that temporary breaks or “specific pauses” in the violence could allow British nationals and hostages to be freed and aid to be supplied to the Gaza Strip.
But the government has continued to back Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and resist calls for a ceasefire.
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[Zionist] Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has also resisted calls to support a ceasefire, said on Wednesday evening that the amount of aid and essential utilities going into Gaza was “completely insufficient.”
In a statement, he called for supplies to be “urgently ramped up” and added that “we support humanitarian pauses.”
However, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal hit out at Sir Keir, telling him to “stop playing games with people’s lives.”
He wrote on social media platform X: “Aid cannot be safely delivered without a ceasefire. Nor can infrastructure be repaired which is necessary for life.
“If you care about the lives of innocent Palestinians, then call for a ceasefire now or you remain complicit.”
Rachel Reeves engages in a New Labour tradition of plaguarism in her book. Tony ‘c********r’ Blair and Alastair Campbell engaged in huge plaguarism in drafting the Dodgy dossier and were also found out in short order.
Shadow Chancellor denies plagiarism, but at least twenty sections are identical to Wikipedia entries or slightly reworded
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarised wikipedia in her book. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s new book is littered with examples of text lifted exactly, or very nearly, from Wikipedia, according to the Financial Times.
The paper identified at least twenty examples, with some exact and others only slightly modified, including this lengthy passage:
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarises wikipedia. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.
Ironically, a theme of the book is others taking credit for the work of women.
The publisher admitted that sections had been included without modification, but ‘allies’ of Reeves denied plagiarism. Her spokesperson said to the FT:
We strongly refute the accusation that has been put to us by this newspaper. These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.
Starmer won the membership election to succeed left-winger and Palestine solidarity veteran Jeremy Corbyn last weekend.
His first act as leader has been to declare the party’s allegiance to the Israel lobby, and to signal an impending purge of the left wing of the party membership under the pretext of combating “Labour anti-Semitism.”
Throughout his four and a half years as Labour leader, Corbyn was incessantly defamed with a manufactured anti-Semitism crisis by the the Israel lobby and by the right wing of his own party.
“Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party,” Starmer claimed in his victory speech, giving full credence to the smears against his predecessor.
“On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry.”
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The Israel lobby was jubilant, with one major group gloating that they had “slaughtered” Corbyn.
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“Within hours of the result, Keir Starmer called me to discuss anti-Jewish hate in the Labour Party,” wrote former Labour lawmaker Ruth Smeeth, in a Times of Israelblog post.
On Tuesday, Starmer wrote another simpering apology to the Israel lobby, published in both the Evening Standard and the anti-Palestinian newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle.
“Once the coronavirus pandemic is over,” he wrote, “I will be closing the Labour Party’s offices for a day and inviting representatives of the Jewish community to come in and facilitate a day’s training for all members of staff on anti-Semitism.”
I didn’t invite him or even know who he was, says disgusted imam of South Wales Islamic Centre after outrage over Starmer photo stunt
Skwakwbox’s image of Keir Starmer attempting to ‘mosque-wash’ his comments supporting and encouraging Israeli war crimes against Gaza at South Wales Islamic Centre, Oct 2023.
Keir Starmer’s attempt to mosque-wash his support for Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians has backfired enormously, after Muslims reacted with outrage to his appearance in the South Wales Islamic Centre – and the centre’s imam disowned him and said he didn’t even know who he was when Starmer turned up.
In a conversation related on a socialist WhatsApp group, the imam said that he had not invited Starmer – Starmer’s team had called the centre and said he wanted to visit – and had no idea beforehand that it would be cynically exploited for a photo opportunity. Moreover, he was asking the mosque committee to put out another statement about the visit and would never ‘betray the Palestinians’ by knowingly associating with a supporter of Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians.
The message relayed from the Muslim scholar who spoke to the imam was as follows:
Starmer has been trying to repair his relationship with the Muslim community through a surprise visit to a mosque in Wales. The following was shared by a scholar friend of mine this morning:
I spoke to the imam of the South Wales Islamic Centre, Shaykh Muhammad (Egyptian), over the phone about these images which are being used by Keir Starmer as propaganda and PR to dilute and sanctify his statement in support of war crimes and genocide. I don’t know this imam personally; I didn’t know anything about him and had not spoken to him before this telephone conversation.
I shared my thoughts on Keir Starmer and the South Wales Islamic Centre propaganda before my conversation with the Centre’s imam. My thoughts on this issue have not changed. We all know that mosque imams in the UK are employees of mosque committees and have zero decision-making powers.
Since my phone conversation with the Imam of South Wales Islamic Centre was private, I asked for his permission to share on Facebook and with others the details I am going to share now, and he granted me his permission to do so. He was crying and upset as he explained to me the following:
1) South Wales Islamic Centre did not invite Keir Starmer. He was in Wales and his people made a phone call to South Wales Islamic Centre expressing their desire to come and visit the Centre.
2) The imam did not know who Keir Starmer was before he met him at the South Wales Islamic Centre. He’s Egyptian, can barely speak or read English and doesn’t follow local politics. He was also not aware of what Keir Starmer had said in support of genocide and war crimes. He wishes he had researched online before agreeing to meet him. Even if he had, he doubt that he would have found anything in Arabic. [It seems that the old issue of imams who are not familiar with the local context has still not been resolved. With notable exceptions, Al-Azhar graduates have not always been known to be politically and socially literate and aware. So, I was not surprised]
3) The imam was unaware that this visit would be exploited for propaganda and public relations. He was shocked when the angry phone calls starting coming in from various communities, and disappointed to see how the pictures from the visit were being used by Keir Starmer on social media for propaganda purposes.
4) He will ask the mosque committee to meet and draft ANOTHER statement to clarify what happened and state South Wales Islamic Centre’s position.
5) He cried as he explained that he would never betray Palestinians by associating or collaborating in the propaganda of anyone who supports war crimes and genocide against them. I believe everything he told me. The South Wales Islamic Centre and its committee should clean this mess.
Keir Starmer is complicit in Israel’s murders and starvation of Palestinian civilians and in the whole oppression, occupation and apartheid inflicted on the people of Palestine. No amount of white-, mosque- or any other kind of wash can cover or erase that.
