Keir Starmer

Israeli Politician Quotes Hitler to Argue for Resettlement of Gaza

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dizzy: It’s difficult to argue that they are not Fascists when they commit the very crimes created immediately after WWII to address Fascism, to ensure “never again” and quote Fascist Adolf Hitler. It’s difficult to see that supporting countries are not aiding and abetting and complicit in genocide and war crimes when such blatant calls for such crimes are and have been made.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Israeli far-right Zehout (identity) political party chairman Moshe Feiglin gives a joint press statement with Prime Minister and Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu (unseen) in Ramat Gan, near the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on August 29, 2019. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

“In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler’s conduct? In a society that feels complete impunity due to America’s protection,” one foreign policy expert said.

Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a “Hebrew Gaza.”

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel’s next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel’s Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

“We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it…” Feiglin said, adding, “As Hitler said, ‘I cannot live if one Jew is left.’ We can’t live here if one ‘Islamo-Nazi’ remains in Gaza.”

Feiglin’s remarks earned widespread condemnation on social media.

“In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler’s conduct?” asked Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “In a society that feels complete impunity due to America’s protection.”

Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of the pan-European leftist political party DiEM25 Yanis Varoufakis wrote that “the evidence of genocidal intentions is mounting” and asked, “When will the ICC [International Criminal Court] act?”

Israel has killed at least 37,337 people and injured 85,299 in its war on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas carried out a lethal attack against southern Israel, killing around 1,100 people and taking more than 240 hostage. Prior to the attack, Israel had maintained a 16-year blockade of the narrow enclave.

South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing the vast destruction of its bombing campaign as well as statements made by high-level Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, that portray all Gazans as complicit in the October 7 attacks. Several human rights experts and scholars have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide.

This is not the first time that Feiglin, who served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015, has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

“We need a different prime minister who is willing to stick his neck out to win. Zehut will provide, whenever elections happen, such a candidate,” he told supporters in January, according to Middle East Eye. “For us, the war in Gaza is not merely a defensive war. It’s a war of liberation, the liberation of the land from its occupiers.”

In an October 2023 interview with Al Jazeera, he also advocated for the “complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it… Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon.”

Zehut’s 2019 platform included the cancellation of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, according to Haaretz.

“Don’t talk to me about international law, because there is not such a thing. You know, the minute you use the word ‘Palestinian,’ you stop saying the truth. Because there is no Palestinian nation, and they know it,” Feiglin said that same year.

Other currently governing Israeli politicians have also called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in January that the Israeli government should “encourage the migration” of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Later the same month, Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended a right-wing conference calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingIsraeli Politician Quotes Hitler to Argue for Resettlement of Gaza

Youth Demand disrupt Labour’s election battle bus

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Youth Demand! protest on Labour's campaign bus, Wrexham 15 Jun 2024.
Youth Demand protest on Labour’s campaign bus, Wrexham 15 Jun 2024.

Three Youth Demand supporters have disrupted Keir Starmer’s election battle bus. They are demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the incoming UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.

At around 9:15am the group climbed onto the battle bus as it was parked up for Labour’s campaign rally in Wrexham. The group stood on the roof of the bus holding Palastinian flags and a banner reading ‘Youth Demand an End to Genocide’. They could be heard chanting “Keir Starmer you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”.

One of those taking action this morning is Jazz, 22, a support worker from Manchester who said:

“I cannot remain silent whilst our government continues to fuel genocide in Palestine and with the climate crisis. Both the Tories and Labour have shown that they don’t give a shit about those suffering in Palestine and in the global south. Their lack of humanity is disgusting. 

By voting Labour you are still voting for a party that refuses to stop buying and selling weapons with Israel. We refuse to inherit a world of suffering, Labour will not get away with their inhumanity. We cannot vote our way out of this – we must act!”

Also taking action is Chester Powell, 23, a student from Leeds, who said:

The Labour Party refuses to call for an end to the buying and selling of arms with Israel, arms that are being used to enact a genocide. We can’t vote our way out of this problem so I’m taking part in civil disobedience to force necessary change. 

How can I have a hope for the future when the people in power only seem to be concerned with winning the next election. I can’t have hope that either of the major parties have any interest representing ordinary people over big business. Neither seems to show any empathy for the Palestinians as they are slaughtered in the thousands, so young people like myself must show them what having a spine looks like.”

Continue ReadingYouth Demand disrupt Labour’s election battle bus

Labour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people :: 2

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An earlier article on this topic.

We are in the middle of a general election campaign in UK. Labour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner made these remarks in mid February 2022. She made these statements – calling for innocent people to be killed and harassed by police, calling for human rights to be totally disregarded. She was then and continues to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. It is totally correct that these remarks are highlighted and discussed now. She is representing the Labour Party in the most senior position except one when making these remarks. Keir Starmer, leader of the UK Labour Party is often referred to as a human rights lawyer. WTF? Do these Fascists really think that they’re fit to govern?

Deputy Labour Party Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people.
Deputy Labour Party Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people.

I have conducted a great deal of independent research into the London explosions of 7 July 2005 and the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005. While not all of it has been published, I am confident that I have an excellent understanding of these issues and what actually happened. I would expect to have a far better understanding that Angela Rayner although Keir Starmer may actually have been involved in the cover-ups.

24 June 2024.

To clarify: I’ve found a Morning Star article from 2022 that indicates that Angela Rayner made these comments in late January 2022. The sequence would therefore be
1. Angela Rayner makes these comments in late January 2022.
2. I post on the issue 15 Feb 2022.
3. Dianne Abbott – then elected as an MP, not technically an MP currently since Parliament is in recess – raises the issue so that the media pays attention.

25 June 2024

Added the link to the Morning Star article above. There is also a Morning Star Editorial: ‘Shoot first and ask questions after:’ a reactionary taunt that protects no-one published 18 February 2022. 

1/12/24 I’ve realised that the significance of this is that the Labour Party are going out of their way to attack me yet again. [ed: … and while hiding yet again.]

Continue ReadingLabour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people :: 2

Andrew Feinstein: what’s wrong with the Labour manifesto

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Andrew Feinstein is challenging Keir Starmer by standing as the independent candidate for Holborn & St Pancras.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/andrew-feinstein-whats-wrong-labour-manifesto

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer at the Mornflake Stadium, home to Crewe Alexandra while on the General Election campaign trail, June 13, 2024

From muzzling Palestinian rights to embracing austerity and outsourcing the NHS, Labour’s ‘tough choices’ always seem to hurt normal people while sparing wealthy donors — that’s why I am running to unseat Keir Starmer on July 4

…[T]he Labour Party launched its election manifesto — a dispiriting Thatcherite promise to continue endless austerity, soaring inequality and forever wars.

I announced my bid to become the independent MP for Holborn and St Pancras three weeks ago. Then, I was convinced that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party would offer little to improve the lives of this constituency’s amazing and diverse communities, or meaningfully restrain Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Having read this manifesto, I am more convinced than ever.

Starmer’s election campaign has traded on a series of stock phrases, all of which are profoundly misleading. Starmer promises to bring about “change,” but repeats tired economic shibboleths of the George Osborne variety.

He also claims to have remade the party “in the service of the working people.” In fact, the party is financially reliant on donations from big business and billionaires and its MPs rake in donations from the private-sector companies who circle the NHS.

The party’s long-feted New Deal for Working People is so disappointing that the party’s largest affiliated union, Unite, has refused to endorse the Labour Party manifesto.

But the most galling of all of the current Starmerisms is his invocation of “tough choices.” Starmer deploys the line to explain why the country cannot afford to pull half a million children out of poverty by ending the two-child benefit cap: a decision now confirmed by the manifesto.

Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, Starmer sadly explains, has made it impossible for the sixth-richest country in human history to lift children out of poverty at a cost little under £2 billion a year, a relatively measly sum in a country with a GDP of £2,274 trillion.

As the Labour Party manifesto makes clear, there have been plenty of hard choices made by the party — but all of them to the detriment of the poor and to the benefit of the mega-rich and big business.

Starmer makes the “tough choice” not to substantially increase funding the NHS, to end child poverty or reverse the swingeing cuts of the last decade; but only because he fails to make the “tough choice” to tax billionaires marginally more, even though the 10 richest people in the country are now richer than they have ever been.

…

I’m especially angry that the Labour Party, like the Tories, has promised to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP: a real-term £7bn a year increase by 2029. This is almost double the entire £4.7bn a year the party intends to spend on its Green Prosperity Plan to tackle the imminent existential threat of climate change.

What sort of security does this really buy? The party’s offer on Palestine is, frankly, an outrage; the manifesto speaking out of both sides of its mouth. So while it recognises that “Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people,” it then makes Palestinian statehood contingent on a meaningless word salad.

“We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign state.”

So much for an inalienable right, which requires Israel to feel “safe” before Palestinians get statehood — just as Israeli leaders claim that Israel will only feel safe when Gaza is cleansed of its citizens because there are “no uninvolved.”

This offer significantly dilutes the party’s previous commitment to recognising Palestinian statehood on the first day of government — something first brought in by Ed Miliband, appearing in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos. If there was any hope that Labour would be any better than the Tories on Gaza once in power, this should dispel it once and for all.

Both the Lib Dems and the Green Party, by comparison, have committed to immediately recognising Palestine. The Labour Party now joins the ignominious company of the Tories and Reform in refusing to do so.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/andrew-feinstein-whats-wrong-labour-manifesto

Continue ReadingAndrew Feinstein: what’s wrong with the Labour manifesto

DAVID LAMMY’S BIG IDEA: NOTHING WILL CHANGE UNDER LABOUR

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UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party's support for and complicity in Israel's genocide of Gaza.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.

https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammys-big-idea-nothing-will-change-under-labour/

The man who wants to be foreign secretary is reassuring elite audiences that UK foreign policy will not seriously change under a Keir Starmer government – a strategy confirmed in Labour’s election manifesto.

David Lammy and Keir Starmer in Normandy. (Photo: Labour Party / Flickr)

“Labour has been clear throughout this conflict that international law must be upheld”, David Lammy recently told parliament, referring to Gaza.

The opposite is the case: Keir Starmer, Lammy himself and other Labour figures, have largely given Israel a free pass in committing whatever crime it wants in Gaza free from any censure by Labour.

Starmer said last October that Israel has the “right” to cut off water and power from Gaza.

Then last month, the Labour leader repeatedly refused to say in an interview with Channel 4 if he would enforce the arrest warrants for Israeli ministers being sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Lammy, who is a lawyer like Starmer, also appears to have a problem seeing where international law needs to be upheld. 

Lammy has not overtly supported the ICC prosecutor’s call to arrest Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant. Rather, he has told MPs that the ICC’s decision to seek warrants “is an independent matter for the court”.

Last October, after Israel bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, killing over 50 civilians, Lammy stated that “it’s wrong to bomb a refugee camp but clearly if there is a military objective it can be legally justifiable. It’s for Israel to explain its actions”.

But Lammy did do something remarkable recently. On 27 May, he nearly condemned Israel directly.

He said: “We condemn the appalling strikes on a supposed ‘safe zone’ in Rafah. The Labour Party have opposed an Israeli offensive in Rafah for months.”

As far as I can tell, this was the first time Lammy has condemned Israel after nearly eight months of slaughter in Gaza.

Ceasefire

A month into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Lammy abstained on the British parliament’s vote calling for a ceasefire. He also indicated that shadow ministers who voted in favour of the motion would have to resign.

…

Why are Lammy and Labour so supportive of Israel, despite the extent of its atrocities and British public opposition to the attacks on Gaza? 

One reason is that Lammy is Washington’s man in Labour and cannot be seen to upset policy-makers in the US who consistently facilitate Israel’s onslaught on Palestinians. 

Lammy has constantly signalled that Labour foreign policy under his leadership will deviate little from Washington’s priorities, and he has been a regular visitor to a string of elite, establishment fora in the US.

The other reason is that Lammy is, like 20 percent of his fellow Labour MPs, a recipient of funds from the Israel lobby. Since becoming an MP in 2000, he has accepted donations from the Israel lobby on numerous occasions, the value amounting to £32,550, Declassified has found.

Lammy is also a supporter of the Labour Friends of Israel group, which works to promote the interests of Israel within the Labour Party.

…

Lammy’s strategy has also been on show in his recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine, a publication of the US establishment think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. 

…

Lammy refers in his article to Israel as one country he sees as a “vital partner” for Britain. This, after it has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians and is accused of genocide. 

Lammy is being advised by Ben Judah, a former columnist at the Jewish Chronicle and senior figure at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based establishment body that “galvanises US leadership” in the world.

Don’t expect serious foreign policy change under Labour or any real commitment to human rights or international law, even when lawyers are in office. 

https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammys-big-idea-nothing-will-change-under-labour/

Zionist Labour Friend of Israel David Lammy, shadow Foreign Secretary.

DAVID LAMMY: WASHINGTON’S MAN IN LABOUR

DAVID LAMMY: FRIEND OF ISRAEL

Continue ReadingDAVID LAMMY’S BIG IDEA: NOTHING WILL CHANGE UNDER LABOUR