Keir Starmer has posted a tweet welcoming Mike Gapes back to the Labour party. Gapes was one of the handful of Labour right lightweights who quit the Labour party to start the disastrous and racism-linked ‘Change UK’ and worked to prevent a Labour victory in the 2019 general election. Angela Smith, who infamously said that people of colour have a ‘funny tinge’, rejoined quietly some time ago.
Gapes has his own history of atrocious comment. When right-wing hardliner Ian McKenzie tweeted about the gang-rape and beheading of Labour MP Emily Thornberry, Gapes was one of several right-wing MPs who defended McKenzie’s comments and attacked those who were outraged at them. And when he was challenged over what he was defending, Gapes’s response was ‘Lol’:
So Gapes has rejoined Labour. More turds floating back to a dirty bowl. His return was welcomed by Ian McKenzie. This is how Gapes reacted to outrage over his defence of r-winger McKenzie's 'joke' about the rape and beheading of Emily Thornberry: 'Lol'… pic.twitter.com/0vUWAMJF6i
This has not, of course, prevented Starmer hypocritically boasting that he will protect domestic violence victims, so his welcome for Gapes is anything but anomalous.
The welcome also exposes Starmer’s complete hypocrisy over so-called ‘Labour antisemitism’. While any left-winger faces expulsion for defending Palestinian rights, Gapes – who joined in with the antisemitism smears as enthusiastically as any – in a rare moment of sense once commented that the UK should be talking to Palestinian resistance group Hamas. In 2021, Starmer whipped MPs to vote with the Tories to ban Hamas – yet, as so often, ‘it’s ok if it’s a right-winger’, as activist account ToryFibs pointed out:
“There’s a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship,” warned one protester.
Ongoing protests against the far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu were larger than ever on Saturday night as an estimated 200,000 people or more took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities to denounce judicial reforms they warn put the nation on a path towards dictatorship.
For over two months, weekly protests—mostly on the weekends but increasingly during the workweek as well—large demonstrations have taken place in response to Netanyahu and his coalition government pushing a judicial takeover that critics say would curtail democracy.
Haaretzreported Saturday’s turnout as a record since the movement started in early January.
“There’s a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship,” Ophir Kubitsky, a 68-year-old high school teacher at the demonstration, toldReuters. “We came here to demonstrate over and over again until we win.”
An incredible photo.
Downtown Tel Aviv is flooded with Israelis protesting the government’s judicial reform package. pic.twitter.com/DntI4k16hV
The demonstrations in Tel Aviv and other locations “began peacefully,” reports Reuters. “However, footage released by police later showed protesters breaking down barriers in Tel Aviv and igniting fires as they blocked roads. Police sprayed water cannons at the protesters.”
While Israeli liberals increasingly register fear and discomfort over the direction of its government’s growing autocratic tendencies, Palestinian rights advocates have noted that the right-wing slide is a direct and predictable continuation of a system that denies its Palestinian citizens full rights under the law while overseeing a brutal and repressive apartheid regime.
As American-Palestinian scholar Yousef Munayyer recently wrote in a column about the protest movement for +972 Magazine:
As tens of thousands of Israelis protest the reforms that Netanyahu’s government seeks to ram through in hopes of “saving the essence” of Israeli democracy, they are largely avoiding a confrontation with the foundational problem, namely that the essence of the Israeli system is to put settler colonialism ahead of any liberal principles around democracy, equality, or human rights.
A key question for many concerned not only about Israel’s increasingly autocratic and right-wing lurch, but its ever-worsening treatment of the Palestinians living under hostile military occupation is this: “Does this loose group oppose the settler-colonial system that these legal reforms would further enable, or does it simply seek a return to the settler-colonial system, but without Netanyahu at its head?”
Munayyer believes all evidence thus far indicates the latter is the unfortunate answer, which is why Palestinians are noticeably absent from celebrating the display of dissent and opposition in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
“For all Palestinians, including those with Israeli citizenship, there is little urgency to try to ‘save’ Israeli democracy, primarily because for them it has never existed,” Munayyer concluded. “Not only is a political system that is constructed to be democratic toward some, but not all, not a democracy, it is also not going to seem worth saving to those it disadvantages.”
Noting that communities like Huwara are often targeted by Israeli settlers, Amnesty’s regional director urged Israel “to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians.”
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for saying that Huwara, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, “needs to be wiped out” and “the state of Israel should do it.”
Smotrich’s comment Wednesday came after Israeli settlers on Sunday rampaged through Huwara, killing a 37-year-old Palestinian man—mass violence that came just hours after a Palestinian gunman murdered a pair of Israeli brothers, who were 19 and 21.
“As Jews who support freedom and dignity for all people, no exceptions, we will not just sit in horror as the state of Israel carries out ethnic cleansing in our names.”
Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers rallied and marched on the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday to protest his embrace of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid growing violence against Palestinians—violence that demonstrators said is enabled by the U.S. government’s unwavering military and diplomatic support.
“As Jews who support freedom and dignity for all people, no exceptions, we will not just sit in horror as the state of Israel carries out ethnic cleansing in our names,” said Jewish Voice for Peace member Jay Saper. “We are calling for an end to all U.S. military funding to Israel now.”
Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
Motion condemns Starmer party’s attack on democracy
‘Democracy’ in Labour – often rigged before members even start to vote
Members of a Labour front-bencher’s local party passed a motion last week condemning the regime’s shameless rigging of party democracy and demanding to be allowed to select their candidates without interference.
Hornsey and Wood Green members voted strongly for the following emergency motion:
Selection of Candidates
HWG CLP notes the Labour Party’s assertion that it is a ‘democratic socialist party’ (Clause IV). HWG CLP further notes that Keir Starmer stated in February 2020:
‘The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic, and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election.’
HWG CLP agrees with this statement, and strongly believes that it should be the democratic right of constituency members to choose their prospective candidates and regrets that this is not being acted upon.
Keir Starmer’s statement on 15th February 2023 regarding Islington North [where Starmer is blocking former leader Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate], the imposition of shortlists in Wakefield, Bolton North East, and other constituencies, and the suspension or expulsion of very good potential candidates prior to selection processes commencing are all contrary to this democratic principle.
HWG CLP calls on the NEC to confirm that the selection of candidates is the democratic right of local Labour Party members and must be upheld. In Solidarity.
The motion, no doubt cautiously worded because of the regime’s readiness to punish members for speaking out against its misdeeds, triggered ludicrous responses from a few right-wingers – including the husband of one key Starmer adviser, who tried to argue that it was ‘anti-democratic’ for the ‘CLP’ to follow its own standing orders and hold a vote on whether the motion was in order before a vote on the motion itself was held.
Starmer’s lackeys have routinely been put in direct charge of selection processes in areas considered to be likely to select a candidate who isn’t a Starmer clone – and in many cases have rigged longlists to exclude the candidates local members prefer, leaving them with no choice but to choose which of the approved drones will stand for election.
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Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
Corbyn was judged to have interfered in antisemitism cases, with the implication that his office tried to stop antisemites from being expelled. The truth was the opposite, as the EHRC quietly conceded. His team “interfered” only in the sense that they tried to speed up the handling of disciplinary cases his right-wing opponents in the party bureaucracy stalled in a bid to fuel the antisemitism smears.
Starmer is interfering in disciplinary cases too – and doing so openly and proudly, including overturning a decision in late 2020 by his National Executive Committee to reinstate Corbyn as an MP. But this time the EHRC seems unconcerned.
The EHRC has given Starmer its official stamp of anti-racism approval even as his officials drive out Jewish members in unprecedented numbers. These are Jews whose mistreatment no one in public life seemingly cares about – because they back Corbyn.
Last week, hot on the heels of that stamp of approval, and mocking the idea that Starmer’s party is interested in tackling racism, Labour barred its local constituency parties from affiliating with a range of progressive groups.
Those included Jewish Voice for Labour, which represents Jews highly critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main UK organisation representing Palestinian interests, as well as Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour and the All African Women’s Group.
The Equalities watchdog’s “special measures” on Labour are also apparently not needed even though prominent Black party members, such as former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also a Corbyn ally, complain that Starmer’s Labour has done nothing to address anti-Black racism exposed in the recent Forde Report.
The truth is that Starmer and the establishment media will not be satisfied until they have driven a stake through the heart of Corbynism, and its genuine commitment to anti-racism and a more egalitarian approach to the economy. That is why they have never sounded more desperate to vilify him and his supporters.
