U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks during a press conference to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on November 13, 2023. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“I care about human rights,” said the New York congresswoman in response to her Democratic colleague in the Senate. “I care that billions of U.S. tax dollars’ worth of weapons are carrying out unspeakable atrocities.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized fellow Democrat and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Wednesday for failing to hold the U.S.-armed Israeli military accountable for killing and harming civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks came in response to Fetterman’s dismissal of her earlier call for an arms embargo on Israel, which has received billions of dollars worth of weapons and other military aid since the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
“The tragedy in Gaza is 100% on Hamas,” Fetterman wrote on social media with a screengrab of a Hill headline outlining Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks. “Stop using civilians and hospitals as shields, surrender, and release all remaining hostages—and this ends.”
Ocasio-Cortez then retweeted Fetterman’s words with her own rebuttal.
“I dunno man. I care about little kids dying,” the New York lawmaker replied. “I care about human rights. I care that billions of U.S. tax dollars’ worth of weapons are carrying out unspeakable atrocities. I care enough for us to do better.”
“Hope this bleak dunk attempt gets you whatever it is you’re going for,” she concluded.
I dunno man. I care about little kids dying. I care about human rights. I care that billions of US tax dollars’ worth of weapons are carrying out unspeakable atrocities.
I care enough for us to do better.
Hope this bleak dunk attempt gets you whatever it is you’re going for. https://t.co/aGSDfSdrUI
The exchange comes as Israel has intensified its assault on northern Gaza in recent days, bombing homes and schools-turned-shelters in the Jabalia refugee camp and issuing new evacuation orders for the beleaguered region yet placing snipers on roofs and shooting people who try to flee. On Saturday, the Palestinian Deputy Observer to the United Nations Majed Bamya called Israel’s escalation in the north a “genocide within the genocide” and the World Food Program said that no food had been able to reach the area since October 1, warning that the ramped up attacks were having “a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families.” However, 50 trucks carrying aid including food were allowed to enter the north on Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks that prompted Fetterman’s rejoinder came in response to the weekend’s atrocities.
“The horrors unfolding in northern Gaza are the result of a completely unrestrained Netanyahu gov, fully armed by the Biden admin while food aid is blocked and patients are bombed in hospitals,” she wrote on social media on Monday. “This is a genocide of Palestinians. The U.S. must stop enabling it. Arms embargo now.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the U.S. response. She backed a House resolution calling for a cease-fire weeks into the war, and demanded an end to the flow of weapons from the House floor in March, when she described Israel’s actions in Gaza as an “unfolding genocide.”
Fetterman, meanwhile, has faced protests from some of his more progressive constituents over his hardline pro-Israel stance.
On Tuesday, news broke that the Biden administration had reportedly written a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off the flow of weapons to the country unless it took “urgent and sustained actions” to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days.
March for Palestine | Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images
A new generation across the UK is demanding political representation. But this unstoppable force is meeting an immovable object, the Labour Party
A new generation across the UK is demanding political representation. Yet, this unstoppable force is now meeting an immovable object, the Labour Party.
On one hand, despite its failure to leave behind much grassroots organisation, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership galvanised millions. This generation now knows what it’s like to have a voice in the political mainstream. It won’t tolerate being shut out of the political process indefinitely. The success of Green and independent candidates at this year’s general election was in part driven by this fact.
Meanwhile, the realities of climate breakdown, renewed austerity and a genocide in Gaza continue to alienate many. The British public backs the renationalisation of energy by a margin of four to one, the introduction of a wealth tax by a margin of eight to one, and a ban on arms exports to Israel by about three to one.
On the other hand, the Labour Party is a fortress. Many advisors and politicians of the Labour right regarded the party’s defeat under Corbyn in 2019 as a lucky escape, and remain terrorised by the prospect of losing their careers to an insurgent political force. Starmerism is a relentless campaign on behalf of this professional political class, which is determined to shut the left out. Their hubris is an existential threat not just to Labour’s role as a political home for the left, but to the party itself.
Both wings of the Labour Party are being blindsided by this process. The Labour right, and the commentariat that lives in its orbit, likes to think in terms of historical cycles and playbooks. The crushing of the post-Corbynite left was a repeat of Kinnock’s expulsion of the Militant Tendency. 2024 was just 1997 with TikTok.
Starmer’s first act in government – blaming the outgoing administration for an economic mess and indicating a shift towards austerity – was both a conscious mimicry of Tory George Osborne and an homage to New Labour’s fiscal hawkishness.
The Labour left’s attachment to the past is more nostalgic. Its leaders – Aneurin Bevan, Tony Benn, Corbyn – are stripped of their failings and revered. Its heroic defeats – the 1981 Deputy Leadership campaign, the Greater London Council’s fight for survival, Corbyn’s general elections – are endowed with their own folklore.
Life on the outside is unthinkable and futile, as illustrated by every past attempt (the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, Respect, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, Left Unity) to build an alternative. “It is the Labour Party or it is nothing”, as Bevan once wrote, chiding members of the Independent Labour Party when they split in 1932.
Both wings of Labour are good at producing a sense of collective memory that reinforces the party’s standing as immutable, and which relates new events to past ones. Neither are good at understanding when reality diverges from the historical script.
In 2015, the left challenged for power, and in doing so broke the old system. Tony Blair did not bother to get rid of Tony Benn. Yet Starmer almost immediately expelled Corbyn and changed Labour’s rule to ensure that no one like him could lead the party again. He has already suspended seven MPs for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap. It is only a matter of time until more feel forced to rebel.
A politics from below
The real politics happens outside parliament. We’ve already witnessed huge protests take shape against the massacre in Gaza, and the coming years could see mass movements and industrial unrest over cuts and living standards. Having lived through the Corbyn years, the participants of these movements are unlikely to be satiated by the prospect of a soft left Labour leader some time in the 2030s.
Labour’s initial plans will provide some relief. The Employment Rights Bill is likely to be the most significant improvement in workers’ rights in decades. The renationalisation of the railways will also prove popular. But what happens once these progressive measures have been exhausted?
The Green Party came second behind Labour in 39 seats. Pro-Palestinian Independent candidates have made inroads into safe Labour areas. For this to have happened while Labour was in opposition is unprecedented. Unless the new government rapidly shifts its approach on public spending, redistribution and green investment, it will face an earthquake.
“Unless the new government shifts its approach on public spending, redistribution and green investment, it will face an earthquake”
To have any success, the post-Corbynite left will have to ditch its obsession with icons and celebrities. Despite its roots in social movements, Corbynism became a tightly centralised project, in which activists were given little, if any, role in determining policy and strategy. Even now, discussion of the left’s future beyond Labour seems to centre on the intentions of Corbyn, his former advisors, prominent commentators, or MPs.
Building a serious political project is about representing a solid base in society. This task flows from organising, and having roots in social and industrial struggle, not how many Twitter followers you have.
The green surge
Much of the left will also have to get over its age-old sectarianism towards the Greens, who have emerged as by far the most serious organised force to Labour’s left.
If you listen to many old Labour left activists, or read many socialist newspapers, you will be presented with a critique of the Greens that is at least two decades old. They are portrayed as ‘Tories on bikes’ and alternative medicine enthusiasts. Their ability to win seats in North Herefordshire and Waveney is said to be the product of triangulation towards right-wing rural voters. The compromises of Green parties in France and Germany are held up as the inevitable destiny of the UK Greens.
On the contrary, the Greens have become a major force precisely by occupying a space to the left of their sister parties in continental Europe. Since the turn of the millennium, their membership has risen twelve-fold to around 60,000. Waves of new members – from the ‘green surge’ of 2014 to today’s recruits – comprise its activist base.
Many joined on a radical environmental basis, but just as many did so to oppose austerity, champion freedom of movement, or fight for Palestinian rights. There might be a case that their time would be better spent in Labour, or that party affiliation often operates more like a consumer identity than a political strategy. But the existence of a genuinely left-wing, and increasingly successful, Green Party in Britain is simply a fact. Any attempt to rebuild the left as an electoral force – from within Labour or outside – must take account of this.
The landscape of the British left following the fall of Corbynism is still emerging. The only people who are definitely wrong are those who claim to know exactly what will happen. Perhaps Starmer will move back to the centre-left. Perhaps the social and industrial movements won’t materialise. There are many socialists – including me – who remain in Labour and will keep chipping away.
One thing we can be certain of is that things will never go back to the way they were before the Corbyn moment. The late 2010s unleashed forces that are only beginning to shape our politics. The left must adapt if it is to survive.
Youth Demand cover Picasso’s ‘Motherhood’ at the National Gallery 9 September 2024. They are demanding an arms embargo of Israel by UK government.
Two supporters of Youth Demand have pasted a photo of a Gazan mother and child over a Picasso masterpiece at the National Gallery today to demand a two-way arms embargo on Israel.
At noon today the pair covered the protective glass cover of Pablo Picasso’s 1901 painting ‘Motherhood (La Maternité) with a photograph of a Gazan mother clutching her child. They then poured red paint on the gallery floor. Youth Demand is calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
The image used was taken by Palestinian journalist Ali Jadallah and shows a distressed and bloodied pair, coated in debris. His caption for it reads: “A mom holds [her] injured child after an Israeli attack, as Israeli airstrikes continue on twelfth day, at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City”. Israeli bombing raids in Palestine have killed at least 41,870 people, including 16,765 children, in the last year and since the photograph was taken in 2023, Al-Shifa hospital has been completely destroyed by the IDF.
One of those taking action today was Jai Halai, 23, an NHS worker from London who said
“I’m taking action with Youth Demand because at this point it’s been over one year of seeing my colleagues in the healthcare field decimated. Decimated by bombs, by bullets and by having to operate, with no medical equipment, on starved children.
“We need a two way arms embargo on Israel now; 87% of the British public want this and never before have they been more disillusioned with our Government and political class who do not represent us. We need a revolution in our democracy.
“Direct action is what gave us our rights and is the only way to move us towards proper justice. Civil resistance is our duty as young people: to defend those without a voice today and to defend our futures. It’s time to take to the streets; bring on the revolution!”
Also taking action today was Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, 21, a Politics and International Relations student at Greenwich, London who said:
“I’m taking action because as a jew, I feel like it’s my duty to call out the genocide being committed in Gaza. I want the world to know this isn’t in the jewish name and I want to see a free Palestine. When Keir Starmer says Britain stands with Israel he’s wrong. We know very well that this is a genocide, not “self defense” and we as the people of Britain say enough is enough.”
Around 2,000 people in Lebanon of all ages have also been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the last year, on top of the death toll in Gaza and the West Bank. Missiles have also been launched at Iran on numerous occasions.
A Youth Demand spokesperson today said
“Our government is arming Israel to carry out a genocide against Palestinians and killing without restrain in Lebanon. It can’t be all carrots and no sticks: a two-way arms embargo is the least Britain can do to stop displacement, destruction and death! Young people will continue to resist genocide-as-usual“
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.
Razan Arafat Barbah, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who lost both of her legs in an Israeli attack on her home in Rafah in southern Gaza, is treated at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis on October 1, 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“A cease-fire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”
Nearly 100 U.S. healthcare providers who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip over the past year sent President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a Wednesday letter detailing “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” and urging the administration to “end this madness now!”
Israel has been waging war on Gaza since the Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people last year. During that time, the physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who signed the letter have collectively spent 254 weeks volunteering in hospitals and clinics throughout the besieged enclave.
As of Wednesday, Israeli forces have killed at least 41,689 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 96,625, according to local officials. Thousands more remain missing in the rubble of civilian infrastructure. Israel—which also launched a ground invasion of Lebanon this week—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
“This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” the health workers wrote to Biden and Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee for the November election.
“Our government must act immediately to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what has already befallen the people of Gaza and Israel,” they argued. “A cease-fire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and international humanitarian law. We also believe it is the right thing to do.”
“Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”
Even before the October 7, 2023 attack, the United States had given Israel billions of dollars in annual military aid. Throughout Israel’s assault on Gaza—and now Lebanon—the Biden administration has continued to provide weapons and diplomatic support.
The American medical volunteers’ new letter—published on a website that also features a July missive along with similar ones that Canadian and U.K. health workers sent to their governments—shares accounts from individual signatories. Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an OB-GYN, said that “I saw so many stillbirths and maternal deaths that could have been easily prevented if the hospitals had been functioning normally.”
Those who survived birth faced a warzone where thousands of children have died. Last month, Gaza’s Ministry of Health released a 649-page document with names and ages of Palestinians killed in the past year—and the first 14 pages are babies.
“Every day I saw babies die,” said Asma Taha, pediatric nurse practitioner. “They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.”
Israeli bombings in the past year have claimed thousands of lives. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, said that “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”
The letter to Biden and Harris states:
Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.
President Biden and Vice President Harris, we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them. We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why you continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children en masse.
“I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources,” said Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma and critical care surgeon and the letter’s organizer. “Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.”
The letter notes that “Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s healthcare resources and has killed nearly 1,000 Palestinian healthcare workers, more than 1 out of every 20 healthcare workers in Gaza. At the same time, healthcare needs have increased massively from the lethal combination of military violence, malnutrition, disease, and displacement.”
It also challenges Israeli forces’ attempts to justify attacking the enclave’s medical infrastructure, stressing that “not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities.”
“We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder,” the American volunteers wrote, describing Palestinian healthcare workers as “among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world.”
While welcoming the administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting, they emphasized that “the United States can impose a cease-fire on the warring parties by simply stopping arms shipments to Israel, and announcing that we will participate in an international arms embargo on both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups.”
“President Biden and Vice President Harris, we are 99 American physicians and nurses who have witnessed crimes beyond comprehension,” they added. “Crimes that we cannot believe you wish to continue supporting. Please meet with us to discuss what we saw, and why we feel American policy in the Middle East must change immediately.”
Israeli tanks are pictured near the Israel-Lebanon border on September 30, 2024. (Photo: Erik Marmor/Getty Images
“The Biden administration has acted recklessly in giving Israel a blank check to light the entire region on fire.”
Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon early Tuesday with the open support of the United States, which endorsed what it called “limited operations to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure” despite warnings that a ground assault could spark a wider conflict and intensify the humanitarian disaster facing Lebanese civilians.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described its ground invasion with the same terms it has used to characterize its bombing campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, which—despite being called “targeted” at Hezbollah and Hamas—have frequently killed scores of civilians and obliterated schools, hospitals, shops, and residential buildings. Since mid-September, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than a thousand people and displaced roughly a million.
The IDF launched its ground invasion with the backing of the Biden administration. In a statement, the White House said that the invasion of Lebanon is “in line with Israel’s right to defend its citizens and safely return civilians to their homes.”
A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council acknowledged the risk of “mission creep” only to effectively wave it away, saying that “we will keep discussing that with the Israelis.”
Analysts likened Israel’s movement of troops into Lebanon to its invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah earlier this year—an operation that was initially described as limited but ultimately left the area in ruins.
“Gaza was a testing ground for Israel to see what they could get away with and, it turns out, the answer is absolutely anything it wants,” said historian and analyst Assal Rad. “It did not stop at Gaza or the West Bank and it may not stop at Lebanon, because war was [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s objective all along and his prize is Iran.”
“Make no mistake: The Biden administration is providing cover for Israel as it invades a neighboring, sovereign nation.”
The invasion comes after the Netanyahu government rejected a three-week cease-fire proposal put forth by the U.S., France, and other nations and intensified its bombing of Lebanon, hammering Beirut with airstrikes that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and many civilians. The attack that killed Nasrallah was reportedly carried out with 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the U.S.
Coverage of the invasion in the Western corporate media painted the U.S. as “increasingly powerless,” with “limited” influence to forestall a massive ground assault on Lebanon. But the Biden administration has yet to seriously leverage American military aid to prevent a war that could envelop the entire region.
On the contrary, billions of dollars of aid and American weapons have continued to flow to Israel, enabling its war on Gaza and Lebanon. The Washington Post observed that “the events of recent weeks appear to fit a pattern in which the administration urges against specific Israeli actions only to later backtrack so it can avoid imposing conditions on military aid.”
The U.S. has also engaged in what’s been described as “unprecedented” intelligence-sharing with Israel, further deepening its complicity in the devastating wars.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement late Monday that “Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, following its devastating attacks on Lebanon over the past two weeks, is the entirely predictable consequence of the Biden administration’s ceaseless coddling and resupply of weapons to Israel, whatever public bleats for cease-fires the administration has otherwise made.”
“The Biden administration has acted recklessly in giving Israel a blank check to light the entire region on fire, all while disregarding our own legal obligations under both U.S. and international law to halt the weapons flow to them,” Whitson added.
The U.S.-based anti-war group CodePink said that “Israel claims its operation in Lebanon is ‘targeted,’ but like in Gaza, civilians are the real victims.”
“Make no mistake: The Biden administration is providing cover for Israel as it invades a neighboring, sovereign nation,” the group said. “U.S. taxpayers fund Israel’s military, providing billions annually and supplying weapons used to kill innocent people.”
“The Biden administration and Congress could halt this escalation by cutting military aid, demanding a cease-fire, and holding Israel accountable,” CodePink continued, “but instead, they allow continued aggression across the Middle East.”
