Andrew mitchell with prime minister Rishi Sunak (Flickr)
Britain’s foreign minister has played the lead government role in defending the indefensible – the UK’s support of Israel as it engages in the mass killing of Palestinians.
Andrew Mitchell has consistently defended and apologised for Israel’s war on Gaza since it launched its brutal campaign following the Hamas attacks of 7 October last year.
His support, delivered in numerous parliamentary debates and questioning, is part of the UK government’s extraordinary backing of Israel.
This includessubstantial military activities not reported by Britain’s mainstream media, defence of Israel at the United Nations and ongoing negotiations to increase trade between the two countries – all taking place as Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians.
Mitchell’s tireless assistance to Israel while it accused by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of “plausibly” conducting a genocide, has covered numerous aspects of Israel’s war.
‘Wrong and provocative’
In particular, the foreign minister has led the vociferous UK government rejection of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ.
Mitchell has said that “South Africa’s decision to bring the case was wrong and provocative”. Indeed, he has dismissed the charge of genocide against Israel as “hideous”.
In parliament, Mitchell has repeatedly said the case is “unhelpful and we do not support it”. He has added: “We do not believe that calling this genocide is the right approach. It is wrong to say that Israeli leadership, and Israel as a country, have the intention to commit genocide”.
From a small group of seasoned protesters, a lively and creative coalition of Jewish groups has come together to form a growing, visible bloc in solidarity with the Palestinians on all the protests against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. RUTH LUKOM reports
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Our newly formed Jewish Bloc — including, among others, the Black-Jewish Alliance, Na’amod, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Jewish Voice for Labour and Jewdas as well as individual Jews and activists who have come together — is now a recognised presence. No longer a curiosity.
We are getting an entirely different and sometimes quite moving response to what we have previously encountered. It is a combination of gratitude and relief as we have vindicated what everyone knew in their hearts: that what they were reading and hearing in mainstream media about British Jews being united on Israel and Palestine was a lie.
As more groups joined, our Jewish Bloc began organising more methodically. Someone knew a graphic designer and they came up with our watermelon/star logo, which has been picked up everywhere.
Before a mass demo, we talk online and arrange a meeting place which is put on to our Jewish Bloc logo and then circulated. Our numbers have grown — up to 1,000 on one demo. The people joining us are a combination of longstanding activists and other Jews who are horrified and angry at Israeli brutality but still wary of the mass protests because of the raw emotions, fear of hostility or uneasiness about the “river and sea” chants.
Since December the Jewish Bloc has met up each month with other comrades and friends for a Shabbat dinner, where we eat, drink, sing and dance with our group banners draped around the room.
But that’s just in London.
Around the country, in all the major cities, Jews are demonstrating as Jews. In Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, Jews have joined the Palestine demos and organised vigils. Says Carla Bloom, a member of Na’amod in Brighton: “We demonstrate to all and sundry that it’s possible to be an ‘out’ Jew and not support Israel. We encourage other Jews to have the confidence to speak out against Israel — because the pro-ceasefire argument is strengthened when ‘even’ Jews espouse it.”
And Misha in Scotland says: “I will often march with a wider community group of Jewish people at the protests, or will visibilise myself as being Jewish through holding different signs. To believe in and act for Palestinian liberation is what my Judaism requires of me.
“The mainstream narrative, perpetuated by both global and mainstream British Jewish institutions, holds the belief that all Jews are zionists. I identify as Jewish at the demos to resist this narrative: to show that there is Jewish solidarity for Palestine; that there is a global community of Jews who stand in solidarity with Palestine and we are no less Jewish for this.”
1 in 3 children under 2 years of age are today acutely malnourished in the north, according to nutrition screenings conducted by UNICEF and partners
NEW YORK, 15 MARCH 2024 –31 per cent – or 1 in 3 children under 2 years of age – in the Northern Gaza Strip suffer from acute malnutrition, a staggering escalation from 15.6 per cent in January.
Malnutrition among children is spreading fast and reaching devastating and unprecedented levels in the Gaza Strip due to the wide-reaching impacts of the war and ongoing restrictions on aid delivery.
At least 23 children in Northern Gaza Strip have reportedly died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks, adding to the mounting toll of children killed in the Strip in this current conflict – about 13,450 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Nutrition screenings conducted by UNICEF and partners in the north in February found that 4.5 per cent of the children in shelters and health centers suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent therapeutic feeding and treatment, which is not available. The prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under 5 years of age in the north has increased from 13 per cent to as high as 25 per cent.
“The speed at which this catastrophic child malnutrition crisis in Gaza has unfolded is shocking, especially when desperately needed assistance has been at the ready just a few miles away,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director. “We have repeatedly attempted to deliver additional aid and we have repeatedly called for the access challenges we have faced for months to be addressed. Instead, the situation for children is getting worse by each passing day. Our efforts in providing life-saving aid are being hampered by unnecessary restrictions, and those are costing children their lives.”
Screenings conducted for the first time in Khan Younis, in the middle area of the Gaza Strip, found 28 per cent of children under 2 years have acute malnutrition, more than 10 per cent of which have severe wasting.
Even in Rafah, the southern enclave with the most access to aid, the results from screenings among children under 2 years doubled from 5 per cent who were acutely malnourished in January to about 10 per cent by the end of February, with severe wasting rising fourfold from 1 per cent to more than 4 per cent over the month.
UN agencies have been warning of the risk of a famine in the Gaza Strip since December. In January, the emergency thresholds for acute malnutrition in children were exceeded. Acute malnutrition among children has continued to rise rapidly and at scale and there is a high risk it will continue to increase across the Gaza Strip, costing more lives, in the absence of more humanitarian assistance and the restoration of essential services.
UNICEF has reached children with treatment for acute malnutrition, including the use of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), Ready to Use Infant Formula and preventative micronutrients supplements containing iron and other essential nutrients for pregnant women. More supplies are due to arrive this week, but this is still not enough to address the needs.
“We are doing everything we can to avert a worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but it is not enough,” said Russell. “An immediate humanitarian ceasefire continues to provide the only chance to save children’s lives and end their suffering. We also need multiple land border crossings that allow aid to be reliably delivered at scale, including to northern Gaza, along with the security assurances and unimpeded passage needed to distribute that aid, without delays or access impediments.”
Labour leader’s reluctance to differ from Tories on policy or Gaza sets stage for progressive independent candidates
Keir Starmer has moved Labour to the right – leaving left-wing voters without a political home | Belinda Jiao/Getty Images
Almost all of Britain’s pollsters agree: the Labour Party is heading for a massive victory in this year’s general election, while Rishi Sunak’s Tories are set for a historic defeat. But there is another, far less talked about shift underway, which could see a wave of independent left-wing MPs elected.
Most polling firms expect Labour to win a majority of more than a hundred seats. A ‘poll of polls’ by political forecasting website Electoral Calculus suggests the party is on course for a 200+ majority.
These polls could all be wrong, but little seems to shake them. There is some evidence, though, of another trend that is yet to be reflected in the polls: Keir Starmer’s unwillingness to set out any clear policy differences from the Conservatives may be backfiring.
Severalpolls in recent months have indicated that around 70% of people in the UK want an immediate ceasefire, and there are weekly demonstrations in towns and cities across the country in support of Palestinians. Organisers of a march in London last week estimated that up to 400,000 people had gathered to demand an end to the violence.
This leaves a huge gap in political representation, at least from the biggest two parties, for swathes of people nationwide.
It was in this opening that former Labour MP George Galloway – who was kicked out of the party in the 2000s after objecting to the UK entering the Iraq war – was elected as an independent MP for Rochdale last month, following a campaign that centred the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Another gap in political representation has been created by Starmer’s remodelling of the Labour Party, which has been sanitised to ensure it poses little or no threat to the political establishment. The majority of his policies so far appear to be a continuation of the status quo, suggesting little will change if the party wins the forthcoming election.
In contrast, so bold and progressive were the policies of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, that the higher echelons of the Labour Party and the wider political and media establishment were determined to get rid of him from the offset.
A leadership challenge was mounted against him in the summer of 2016, little over a year after he was elected the party’s leader. Corbyn won comfortably – a fact I found unsurprising, having seen first-hand how he could pull a crowd of more than a thousand people to a hurriedly arranged event half a mile from a city centre.
Internal party opposition to Corbyn surged following his re-election, again backed by the mainstream media. When then Tory prime minister Theresa May called an election in 2017, many anticipated she would win a landslide victory that would consign ‘Corbynism’ to the outer margins.
Instead, Corbyn and his Labour manifesto struck a chord with many voters. Labour gains resulted in a hung parliament, to the horror of the political establishment, which worked to eliminate this threat from the left over the following two years.
After Labour lost the 2019 general election, Corbyn resigned and Starmer moved the party rightwards – prompting tens of thousands of its members to desert it as a result. Their votes are now up for grabs, and left-wing independents are hoping to win them.
Take a meeting in London just last weekend, scarcely reported on except by socialist paper The Morning Star. Two hundred of Labour’s former parliamentary candidates, councillors and supporters gathered to develop an alternative to its current stance on Gaza and other issues.
In a video message played at the meeting, Driscoll said: “In the next election, both parties will have the same manifesto and the same rich donors pulling the strings.”
A similar event is planned in Blackburn next month – just one part of a much wider movement that will likely see independent left-wing candidates standing against Labour candidates in many seats in the general election.
This is already being seen in England’s upcoming local council elections, where clusters of non-party, progressive candidates are working together in many parts of the country. In Blackburn, for example, every ward will have an independent left-wing candidate standing, as will all six wards in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Early indications suggest similar trends in Merseyside and parts of London.
The accepted political wisdom in the UK is that once a general election is called, voters tend to revert to the usual pattern of voting. But if independent candidates were to pick up substantial numbers of votes in the local elections, even taking some council seats, it could indicate a political shift that means this wisdom will not apply this year.
This may seem unlikely but there is undeniably a political vacuum waiting to be filled – and a sense that something is afoot in British politics that is simply not being recognised.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong speaks in Canberra on August 8, 2023. (Photo: Penny Wong/Facebook)
“Restoring UNRWA funding is the bare minimum,” said one Australian Green senator. “The Labor government must publicly pressure Israel to allow aid into all parts of Gaza.”
Australia said Friday that it would reinstate funding for the United Nations United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in international financing due to unsubstantiated Israeli claims that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
“The best available current advice from agencies and the Australian government lawyers is that UNRWA is not a terrorist organization,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in Adelaide while announcing a new funding package for the agency, which works to aid Palestinians forcibly displaced during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” through which the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, as well as their descendants.
Australia is lifting the pause on funding for UNRWA following steps to strengthen the integrity of UNRWA operations. pic.twitter.com/RD5FhRH7B2
In addition to restoring $6 million in UNRWA funding, Wong said Australia would contribute another $2 million to the United Nations Children’s Fund and would deploy a C-17 Globemaster transport plane to assist humanitarian airdrops over Gaza.
Sen. Mehreen Faruqi of New South Wales and the Australian Greens welcomed the shift, asserting that “restoring UNRWA funding is the bare minimum” Australia should do.
“The Labor government must publicly pressure Israel to allow aid into all parts of Gaza,” Faruqi stressed. “Starvation is a weapon of war, and Israel is blocking aid to reach the people of Gaza in brazen contravention of the [International Court of Justice’s] ruling” ordering Israel to prevent genocidal acts.
“I hope this is the start of the Labor government breaking away from their unquestioning and immoral support for Israel,” the senator added.
Imagine basically stealing food from starving people, then months later giving it back and expecting gratitude.
Simon Birmingham, leader of the center-right Liberal opposition in the Senate, said his party does not support the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “acting without and ahead of the United States in terms of decisions around this funding.”
Following Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that 12 of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, Australia and nine other nations including the United States cut off funding to the largest humanitarian aid organization operating in the besieged coastal enclave.
UNRWA subsequently terminated nine employees in response to the unfounded Israeli claims, without any evidence to support their firing. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini later called the move an act of “reverse due process.”
Thank you #Australia for joining donor countries who have maintained/increased their funding and those who have recently announced their contribution to @UNRWA at this critical time in #Gaza and the region.
Your support is testament to your commitment to humanitarian principles…
The European Union and nations including Canada and Sweden have also reinstated funding for UNRWA, which Lazzarini said “is facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations.” The agency has been struggling to provide shelter, aid, and other lifesaving services to Gazans facing not only Israeli bombs and bullets but also a genocidal siege and blockade that are starving Palestinians to death.
Australia’s decision came as Israeli attacks on aid convoys, food distribution centers, and desperate, starving Palestinians in Gaza continued. On Thursday, Israeli forces killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 150 others as they awaited delivery of humanitarian aid at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City. The previous day, a UNRWA staffer was among five people killed and more than 20 wounded in an attack on a food distribution center in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Israeli officials claimed the slain man was a Hamas commander.
According to UNRWA, at least 165 of the agency’s staff members have been killed since October 7. Over 150 UNRWA facilities have been attacked by Israeli forces, while more than 400 Palestinians have been slain while seeking shelter under the United Nations flag.
UNRWA also says its workers have been tortured by Israeli troops trying to force them to falsely confess to participating in the October 7 attacks.
Gaza officials said earlier this week that at least 400 Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid have been killed by Israeli forces since the February 29 “Flour Massacre,” in which at least 118 people were killed and more than 760 others wounded while waiting for an aid convoy in Gaza City.
More than 112,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded in Gaza since October 7, including people missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the strip’s hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. The majority of the dead are women and children. Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Disease and starvation are rampant, and a growing number of Palestinians—mostly children but also elders and other vulnerable people—are starving to death.
After 161 days of near-constant slaughter, there is still no cease-fire in sight.
