Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
SHIFTY Sir Keir Starmer was left squirming today as he dodged election questions about his past conduct and present and future plans.
The lacklustre Labour leader failed to come clean on Gaza, Jeremy Corbyn or his volte-face on public ownership.
Speaking in a radio phone-in, Sir Keir also repeated shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s controversial call for junior doctors to call off their strike action.
“Don’t strike during the election campaign because we’re very close now to the opportunity for a different approach with a Labour government if we get over the line,” he said.
“So don’t strike because that causes all sorts of issues.”
On the Gaza crisis Sir Keir waffled when asked whether a Labour government would stop arms sales to Israel.
The lawyer said that he would have to “look at the legal advice” and hold “a review.”
He also refused to agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
“You need the evidence in front of you to make a decision,” he slithered, as if the whole world has not seen an amplitude of such evidence over the last nine months.
The Labour leader was also uncomfortable when he was put on the spot as to whether he would have served in a Corbyn-led cabinet had Labour won the 2017 or 2019 general elections.
He repeated his argument that he “did not think Labour would win” and insisted that the question was “hypothetical,” a silly answer because it was evident to everyone at the time that he would have done.
Veterans mobilize in front of the White House on June 8. (Photo: Mandy Wilkens)
Peoples Dispatch speaks to US veterans who are standing against their government’s complicity in genocide and organizing more to do the same
On February 25, US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell became the first active duty US soldier to earn the title of “martyr” among oppressed people worldwide. The 25-year-old set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest of the US government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, declaring, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” before self-immolating.
Bushnell’s sacrifice was the most high-profile action by member of the US army in solidarity with Palestine and signaled an enormous sea change among active duty military as well as veterans—who are increasingly taking a bold step to denounce their government’s involvement in genocide.
According to Mike Prysner, who was an active duty soldier during the Iraq War and has been organizing veterans and active duty military ever since, the momentum among current and former members of the US military “hasn’t been this high since the Bush era.”
“The sector of service members who have turned against the US/Israeli policy in a profound way is undoubtedly much bigger than we can see at the moment—one the Pentagon is no doubt aware of as well,” Prysner wrote.
As Prysner told Peoples Dispatch, although the anti-war veterans movement is not as big as it was during the Iraq invasions, it is significant that veterans are organizing at such a high level today because unlike Iraq, the genocide in Palestine is “not a direct US war.”
“Most service members haven’t had direct experience with supporting Israel,” Prysner said. “They’re just disgusted by the fact that the military they served in and are serving in is playing a support and a propaganda role.”
However, Prysner notices significant anti-war momentum in the US Air Force in particular, which “does have more of a direct role in the other branches” in Gaza, in terms of “all the logistics that Israel needs” to carry out genocide. “I have noticed the active duty of the Air Force becoming more engaged because of their direct role,” Prysner says, including Bushnell.
“The potential for there to be unrest within the military is historically something that plays a major impact in adding to the pressure on Washington to end the war,” Prysner told Peoples Dispatch.
Shortly after Bushnell’s self-immolation, Prysner worked with other veterans of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars to organize an action in Portland in which former US military members burned their uniforms collectively in protest. This type of action was later repeated throughout the country as other veterans and active duty military drew inspiration from the momentum.
Veterans in Portland, Oregan also recently organized a massive projection of anti-war imagery on a US Navy warship docked for “Fleet Week”. The images had slogans such as “Stop the US war machine” and “Blood is on your hands”.
Not only do veterans organizing within the anti-war movement inspire active duty military to take further action as well, but they also galvanize the entire anti-imperialist movement, says Prysner. He references the contingent of veterans who attended the recent 100,000-strong protest in front of the White House on June 8. Prysner noticed “a lot of excitement among the attendees” of the protest that veterans had mobilized.
On June 8, Peoples Dispatch spoke to two of the veterans who attended the mass mobilization in front of the White House to declare a “people’s red line” against genocide. Adrian served in the Air Force from 2002 to 2009, and went to Iraq. He now openly identifies as both an anti-imperialist and Marxist, organizing with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and credits his time in the military as contributing to his shift in consciousness.
“War is a profit-making business,” US vet declares
“As a person who served in the United States Air Force, I’m very familiar with how the imperialist war machine works. Naturally, this isn’t something that one joins the military knowing. It was part of the whole radicalization process for me, being in the military, realizing that it functions very much like a corporate entity, and that war is a profit-making business,” Adrian told Peoples Dispatch.
“It was part of my being a working class person in the military, coming from the background that I came from, going to a foreign country to fight other poor and oppressed people, that created such a cognitive dissonance in me, that I had to address it in some sort of way.”
Adrian continued, “there are many things that active duty people, reservists and guardsmen can do. They can conscientiously object and thus separate from the military, but they can also organize outside of the military. They can attend rallies. They can organize with professional revolutionary organizations such as our own. They can do many other things to raise consciousness and awareness among their fellow servicemen.”
Chris Stevens, who was an infantryman in the US Army from 2007 and 2013, told Peoples Dispatch what his message is to prospective, current, and former service members who are disgusted by US complicity in genocide.
“Don’t be seduced in the first place. If you’ve yet to sign a contract, you should turn the other way. Your recruiter’s lying to you about everything, whether it be the job that you can have or the life that you’ll lead, the benefits that they promise you are not cast in stone and they will take anything they can from you,” Stevens said, referencing the predatory US military recruitment process.
Military recruiters in the US notoriously prey on working class and oppressed youth to lead them into military careers, luring them with promises of free college education. This phenomenon is part of what anti-war activists dub the “poverty draft,” in which poor young people have few opportunities apart from joining the US military, risking life and limb, and participating in the imperialist machine.
“For those who are already involved, my message is that you don’t have to listen to what they tell you to do,” Stevens continued. “There are significant historical examples from the Vietnam and Iraq wars, where entire units have decided to say no to their orders. As long as it’s not you alone resisting, if you can get a squad or a company together to say, we will not participate in this, there’s not much that the army can do.”
“So if you’re in a position where you are actively supporting this genocide that’s happening in Israel, you don’t have to,” Stevens said.
The issue of Palestine was particularly galvanizing, as Adrian mentioned: “I don’t want to see children murdered anymore. This is beyond the pale of what can be justified in the name of nationalism, in the name of anything that would be any semblance of what one would call the sovereignty of a so-called nation. The self-determination of the Palestinian people is paramount to humanity. And their fight is our fight.”
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.
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.”
On @N12News Israel's most watched news show, former Likud MP Moshe Feiglin invokes ***Hitler*** to justify Gaza resettlement:
"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 Varoufakiswrote 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.
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.”
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.
