Protesters demand arrest of Netanyahu ahead of UN visit (Photo: Wyatt Souers)
Hounded across the world for war crimes, Netanyahu attempts to defend Israel’s genocidal campaign across the region
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained on the defensive throughout his speech to the United Nations today. Taking the stage amid jeers from the assembled delegates, who stormed out in protest, Netanyahu claimed that he had originally decided to skip the General Assembly but after hearing “lies and slander” against Israel, decided to “set the record straight.”
Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has resulted in a death toll of over 41,000 people. Israel’s expansion of this genocidal onslaught into Lebanon has resulted in a major escalation, with the Zionist state’s bombs killing more than 700 in Lebanon since Monday. On the same day as Netanyahu’s speech, Israel launched a series of airstrikes in Beirut, and bombed a compound of Al Aqsa Hospital in Gaza, killing at least one person.
“The UN is watching with great alarm,” the airstrikes in Beirut, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
“Israel seeks peace, Israel yearns for peace,” Netanyahu proclaimed to the UNGA.
“We face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against these savage murderers, [who] seek not only to destroy us but also destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror,” Netanyahu stated in the familiar war-mongering tone that Israeli officials have become known for since October 7.
Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal. In August, International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan urged ICC judges to rule on his request for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan had applied for arrest warrants back in May for the two top Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But these warrants, if issued, would not apply in Israel’s biggest ally, the United States, which is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC.
As Israel’s aggression continues to isolate it on the world stage, people of conscience in the United States, Israel’s largest military and financial backer, attempt to isolate it in the belly of the beast.
Thousands of people also marched to the United Nations on September 26 to protest Netanyahu’s visit to the UNGA. The protest was organized by the Shut It Down for Palestine Coalition which includes organizations such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, the People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, and Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition. “When a war criminal comes to our city, we don’t stay home, we don’t stay silent. We go out to the streets, every single day that he is in this city, and we make it known, Netanyahu, the people are coming for you,” said Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement to an assembled crowd of thousands in Midtown Manhattan.
Later that day, a crowd of thousands protested outside the Loews Regency New York Hotel where Netanyahu was staying ahead of his UN speech. Demonstrators were met with brutality and arrests from New York police.
CAMPAIGNERS called for the government to reverse cuts to the winter fuel payment today, with energy bills set to rise by 10 per cent from next week.
Regulator Ofgem announced it will raise its price cap starting next Tuesday, pushing bills up from £1,568 to £1,717 for a typical household.
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition warned that energy bills will be 65 per cent higher than in winter 2020/21.
Millions have already fallen into energy debt, with Ofgem data revealing that the total owed has spiralled into a record-breaking £3.69 billion.
This winter, some 1.2m pensioners in poverty and 1.6m disabled people will miss out on winter fuel payments, making it more and more difficult for them to cover the rising bills.
The Labour government has announced cuts to the payment, previously available to all pensioners, limiting it to only those receiving means-tested benefits.
Comparison service Uswitch estimated that 752,000 older people will not use heating at all this winter as a result.
People outside Southwark Crown Court, south London, in support of Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer who are due to be sentenced at the court after being found guilty of criminal damage for throwing tinned soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in 2022, September 27, 2024
HUNDREDS of activists held a silent protest outside Southwark Crown Court today to demand the release of political prisoners and the removal of paid lobbyist and “extremism adviser” Lord Walney.
Activists from groups including Just Stop Oil (JSO), Palestine Action and Extinction Rebellion transformed the road into a photographic exhibition of political prisoners around the world.
Campaigners are demanding that Attorney General Richard Hermer agrees to a public meeting to discuss ending the jailing of those taking peaceful action.
Inside the court, Judge Christopher Hehir, who handed five JSO activists prison sentences totalling 21 years in July, jailed another two activists from the group.
Phoebe Plummer received two years and Anna Holland 20 months for throwing soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery.
Twenty-month community orders were also handed to Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall for slow marching along a west London road for 20 minutes.
Earlier this year, protesters’ rights were eroded when they were stripped of their ability to rely on beliefs and motivation as a defence.
There are currently 41 peaceful protesters locked up in the midst of the prisons crisis, with 20 held on remand and 21 sentenced for a year or more for non-violent protest actions.
Many trials have taken place amid lobbying by “independent adviser” Lord Walney, who has been calling for groups such as Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil to be banned.
Pro-Palestinian protesters take part in a Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration as they march to the Labour Party conference venue on September 21, 2024 in Liverpool, England. [Ian Forsyth/Getty Images]
It’s difficult to comprehend the horrors of what’s happening in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond in the Middle East. The heartbreaking scenes of dirt-encrusted toddlers screaming as they’re pulled from the rubble of what was once their homes; the small children carrying plastic bags containing the remains of their slain siblings; the white-bandaged bodies of whole families laid out next to hospitals in their hundreds; the shaking youngsters trying to hide as Israeli soldiers fire indiscriminately at anything that moves. Surely, feeling a deep, painful empathy for the victims of such savagery, especially the children, is part of what gives us our humanity.
This isn’t the same for everyone, of course. Not for the perpetrators, who use their cutting-edge western-manufactured machines of death to extinguish these innocent lives. Nor, in most cases, for politicians here in Britain. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, these scenes are even the set up for a joke.
During the new prime minister’s triumphant speech at this week’s Labour Party conference, a heckler dared to challenge the Dear Leader on his lack of empathy for Israel’s victims. After Starmer said that, “Every child, every person, deserves to be respected for the contribution they make,” Labour member Daniel Riley, 18, shouted in response: “Does that include the children of Gaza?”
“This guy’s obviously got a pass from the 2019 conference,” quipped the smug Starmer, in a reference to years when Labour was led by pro-Palestinian Jeremy Corbyn. The more sycophantic element of Starmer’s congregation, stronger than ever thanks to Sir Keir’s purges of the left, lapped up the jibe.
It’s become a cliché to respond to such things with variations of “imagine the response if Corbyn had said something like that about Israeli children,” but sometimes you can’t help but be stunned at the double standards. Corbyn would never have said such a thing, but if he had it would have been frontpage news; irrefutable proof of his alleged anti-Semitism.
But they weren’t Israeli children. They were Arabs. And in mainstream western discourse, they don’t count. They don’t suffer. They don’t have dreams. They’re abstract numbers, if that.
They’re just Arabs, unworthy of our empathy.
To really hammer home the hypocrisy, the words “genocide” and “apartheid” had already been banned from the Labour conference. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign was forced to remove both words from the title of its fringe meeting. Some activists responded by painting the words “genocide conference” on the windows of the venue.
In many ways, the Labour government, elected in July after 14 years in the wilderness, is an improvement on their Conservative predecessors regarding Palestine. But that’s a pretty low bar. Starmer may have banned his MPs from attending the huge protests against the war on Gaza, which often numbered hundreds of thousands of people, but he didn’t go as far as former home secretary Suella Braverman, who branded them “hate marches”.
Pro-Palestinian protesters campaign near Downing Street in London, UK, on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. [Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
And despite Labour’s top team repeating the mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” like a broken record whenever the issue comes up, it has at least (and belatedly) called for a ceasefire and the establishment of a Palestinian state (however problematic that demand in itself is).
The Labour government has also drawn the ire of Israel for dropping its opposition to the International Criminal Court’s bid for an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. A further schism was seen when the UK resumed its £21 million funding to the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. Again, it was a low bar.
Much has also been made of the new government’s decision to block arms sales to Israel (although this is limited to a pitiful eight per cent of exports). Unsurprisingly, the Palestine solidarity movement says it’s not enough. And so do the British public: in May, 55 per cent of the British public wanted arms sales to Israel to be suspended until the war against the Palestinians in Gaza ends.
Even less surprisingly, it was met with fury from Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was “sending a horrible message” to Hamas. Starmer responded to Netanyahu’s comment during an interview on LBC Radio over the conference period. “No, he’s not right about that,” he tried to reassure the audience. “We had to comply with international law and our domestic law in relation to that. I’ve always been clear, I support Israel’s right to self-defence, I’ve been robust about that… I’ve taken blows in relation to that – there’s no doubting that support – but it’s got to be done in accordance with international law.”
In other words, “I’m really sorry, and I’m not saying you’re committing war crimes, it’s just that it would be a bad look for a former lawyer to end up in The Hague.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy was also questioned on LBC during the conference about why the other 92 per cent of arms sales to Israel had not been banned, including the export of parts for F-35 fighter jets, which Israel has used, among other things, to bomb heavily-populated refugee camps in Gaza. Lammy said that a full embargo would limit Israel’s ability to fight the Houthis in Yemen “and other proxies”.
“I think that would be a mistake,” he added. “It would lead to a wider war and an escalation that we here in the UK are committed to stopping, so I’m afraid I disagree with that position.”
In Lammy’s eyes, war is peace.
By coincidence, two of the arms companies currently selling their merchandise to Israel for use in Gaza were also at the conference. According to Private Eye magazine, BAE Systems, which makes parts for the F-35, hosted a high-profile meeting with defence secretary John Healey. A separate event, featuring armed forces minister Luke Pollard, was sponsored by US arms firm Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman makes parts for the F-35, the F-16 and the Apache helicopter. All are being used to massacre civilians in Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider region.
To ensure compliance with the Zionist narrative, Israeli politicians came to the conference themselves. Among them was opposition leader Yair Golan, who has said that Palestinians should “starve to death” until the hostages are released. He was granted audiences with several ministers, including Lammy, and attended a meeting hosted by Labour Friends of Israel.
Nevertheless, the conference did at least spark some hope for the Palestine cause, albeit inadvertently. During its opening weekend, 15,000 protesters gathered in Liverpool to send a message to Labour over its appalling support for the occupation state.
And that’s where the hope is. The Labour government won’t stand up to Israel’s devastating behaviour without pressure. If what we’ve seen already isn’t enough to make them change this attitude, I’m not sure what would. If Israel invaded London, Keir Starmer would probably still be trying to sell them the weapons to do it with.
Labour has pretty much always backed wars that align with the needs of the British and now US empires, from the First World War to Vietnam. It wants to preserve the British state, its crown and its interests, albeit in a way that slightly improves life for its working-class base. It’s currently in the interests of the British ruling class to cling to the coattails of the United States. The US, in turn, needs Israel as its outpost in the Middle East. This is all hardwired into Establishment politics.
Politicians who deviate from such norms, such as Corbyn, are vilified. That’s not how we do grown-up politics in this country, don’t you know?
Starmer is no radical. He’s not really much at all.
His main use was to seize back control of the Labour party from the left and return it to the hands of the Establishment. He did this by standing on a left-wing manifesto during his leadership election only to abandon it, ally himself with the right of the party and purge the left once he assumed the leadership.
His domestic agenda is hampered severely by his unwillingness to tax the rich to repair the devastation left by the Conservatives. Instead, he is removing winter fuel allowances from pensioners and maintaining benefit restrictions on anyone with more than two children. These, he keeps saying, are “tough choices”, even though they are the easiest choices for him, as he is so scared of upsetting the rich and powerful.
He’s desperate to be seen as an effective manager for the British state, which means maintaining the easy ride enjoyed by the wealthy and aligning himself with US-led geopolitical interests. Moreover, the British Establishment that Starmer works for is fully behind the US and its Middle Eastern proxy, Israel.
Just as a middle manager at a fast food company would enthusiastically and unquestioningly promote its unhealthy products, despite their harmful effects on consumers, Starmer is hardwired to enthusiastically and unquestioningly execute the will of the people with real power over Britain. That’s not the electorate.
Tales of children suffering in Gaza are as irrelevant to him as children suffering under his benefit restrictions in Britain. Elderly people freezing in makeshift shelters in Lebanon are as irrelevant to him as elderly people freezing in Britain because they can’t afford to pay their energy bills.
And all the while, Starmer enjoys the patronage of the powerful. His bewilderment at a recent outcry over major donations of cash, designer clothes and tickets to football matches and concerts to him and his top team reveals his belief that he should be reaping the rewards of his subservience as much as any effective manager.
The Labour party conference showed us a government that will continue to stand firmly behind Israel, no matter what the state does or the wider horrors it looks set to unleash. Mild reprimands aside, Labour under Starmer will not abandon the apartheid state without huge pressure.
That’s why real opposition to Israel’s crimes remains in the hands of those outside parliament who take to the streets, occupy their universities and speak up loudly in defence of Palestinians. The Labour leadership’s limited concessions to Palestinian rights would not have been made without that pressure from below. It’s only when actions like these begin to challenge Starmer’s tentative grip on power that he will be forced to offer any sort of meaningful opposition to Israel’s barbarism.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
We also know that the company behind it invest themselves in the worst of the worst. However, for a final sting in the tail, look no further than what this hedge fund does with some of the cash it makes.
Labour Party: £4m in slush funding…?
As openDemocracy revealed:
The Labour Party’s largest-ever donation came from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers.
While the £4m donation by Quadrature Capital is the sixth-largest in British political history, it is noteworthy not just for its size, but also its timing.
Of course, no one should really be surprised that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is accepting donations from hedge funds registered in tax havens. However, there were further revelations from openDemocracy. These include the fact that Quadrature had investments in fossil fuel, arms, and private healthcare companies.
However, the donation got its reward for Quadrature.
Interesting. Labour's new climate envoy Rachel Kyte is co-chair of climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms. Quadrature gave Labour £4m on 28 May, at the start of the…
dizzy: The on-the-take shower of sihts that currently govern us probably see nothing wrong with a rich offshore hedge fund buying a plump government role to promote it’s own interests. Years ago it was called corruption.
