Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel’s Gaza genocide. He needs to hold his seat to become prime minister.
Labour’s leader thinks he can get away with supporting genocide in Gaza. It’s time to teach him a lesson in his own backyard.
Our democracy is in crisis. The two main parties are virtually indistinguishable in their offers of permanent austerity, forever wars and environmental degradation.
Keir Starmer, the MP for Holborn and St. Pancras where my family and I have lived for around 22 years, is emblematic of this crisis. His politics are mendacious, unprincipled and in the interests of his billionaire donors rather than the constituents he was elected to serve.
I have seen real leadership in action: I was privileged to serve under Nelson Mandela as an MP in South Africa. His leadership was selfless, principled, accountable, transparent and honest. Everything that Keir Starmer is not.
His almost immediate abandonment of many of the ten progressive pledges on which he was elected to lead the Labour Party is a clear sign he cannot be trusted.
Starmer has now gone a step too far by refusing to support an unqualified ceasefire and a halt to arms sales to Israel amid the greatest human tragedy since World War Two: the genocide being committed in Gaza.
How is it possible that a former human rights lawyer, who must see the horrific images that we all view on our screens every day, has not even commented on the highest court in the world’s interim ruling that Israel is likely committing genocide and ethnic cleansing?
An Israel Defense Forces tank and soldiers are seen in this view of Gaza from southern Israel on May 15, 2024. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
One NGO called the move “yet another attempt by Israel to hide its war crimes against Palestinians.”
The White House and press freedom advocates were among those who on Tuesday criticized the Israeli government’s shutdown of The Associated Press‘ live video shot of northern Gaza for violating a new media law by providing access to the banned Al Jazeera network.
The AP said Israeli authorities confiscated its camera and broadcasting equipment from a home in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. The live shot was broadcast from a balcony on the home.
“The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our long-standing live feed showing a view into Gaza and seize AP equipment,” said Lauren Easton, vice president of corporate communications at the New York-based news organization.
“The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law,” Easton added. “We urge the Israeli authorities to return our equipment and enable us to reinstate our live feed immediately so we can continue to provide this important visual journalism to thousands of media outlets around the world.”
In its latest assault on press freedom, Israel has confiscated equipment from the Associated Press and shut down live coverage from northern Gaza — yet another attempt by Israel to hide its war crimes against Palestinians.https://t.co/KVIIQKwSso
The law to which Easton referred empowers the Israeli government to shut down the operations of foreign media outlets if they are deemed national security threats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet used the law to ban Qatar-based Al Jazeera—the sole international media outlet providing 24/7 live coverage from Gaza—from operating in Israel.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said the AP broke the foreign broadcaster law by providing the live feed to Al Jazeera, one of thousands of AP clients. Karhi accused the AP of “causing real harm to the security of the state.”
“It should be noted that a warning was given to the AP agency already last week that according to the law and the government’s decision they are prohibited from providing broadcasts to Al Jazeera, however they decided to continue broadcasting on the channel,” Karhi said.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Hampshire on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that U.S. President Joe Biden believes journalists should be free to do their jobs. Addressing Israel’s shutdown of the AP live feed, Jean-Pierre said, “Obviously this is concerning and we want to look into it.”
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was one of several press freedom groups that condemned Israel’s shutdown of the AP live feed.
“After having banned Al Jazeera, Israel is lashing out at the AP,” RSF said in a statement. “RSF denounces the seizure of the news outlet’s camera and the interruption of the continuous feed that films Gaza under the pretext that these images are supplying, among others, Al Jazeera.”
After banning @AlJazeera, #Israel goes after @AP. RSF denounces the seizure of a news agency's camera and the shut down of a live feed showing a view of #Gaza, on the pretext that these images are supplied to @AlJazeera, among other media. This is outrageous censorship.
The U.S. advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation said on social media that “Israel is now using its Al Jazeera ban as a pretext to seize equipment belonging to one of the world’s largest news agencies, stripping millions of people of a view into Gaza at a time of war and mass atrocities.”
Kenneth Roth, a visiting professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former head of Human Rights Watch, said that “rather than stop the war crimes charged yesterday by the International Criminal Court, Israel tries to cover them up.”
Roth was referring to Monday’s decision by ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the October 7 attacks on Israel and that country’s genocidal retaliation—which has killed, wounded, or left missing more than 126,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan and international officials.
More than 100 journalists, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 in what the Committee to Protect Journalists and others say are often intentional targetings of not only media workers but also their families. Previous investigations—including the probe of Israeli troops’ 2022 killing of Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.
Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms during every major Gaza war, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower—which housed offices of Al Jazeera, AP, and other media outlets—was leveled in an airstrike.
Even Yair Lapid, who leads Israel’s political opposition and is a former journalist, called the AP shutdown “an act of madness.”
“This is an American media outlet that has won 53 Pulitzer Prizes,” Lapid said in a statement. “This government behaves as if it has decided to make sure at any cost that Israel will be outcast all over the world. They went mad.”
ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan issued warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister, as well as for three Hamas leaders
On May 20, International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu and Gallant stand accused of “war crimes and crimes against humanity,” including but not limited to “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” “wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health,” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”
Khan also issued warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al Dief, and Ismail Haniya. They also stand accused of crimes against humanity, including rape and sexual violence, extermination, murder, and taking hostages.
The move, though largely symbolic, has created an international stir. International forces supporting Israel have reacted with outrage, including US President Biden, who said in a statement that “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.”
“Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” Biden said.
The Palestinian resistance movements and largely movements for Palestinian liberation issued different reactions. Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, was largely positive in his reaction, stating, “We consider this to be the first step towards condemning the crimes of genocide committed by the rulers and army of Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza and holding them accountable for committing these crimes according to international law and international humanitarian law.”
Hamas denounced the actions against its own leaders. “The Public Prosecutor should have arrest and detention orders against all officials from the occupation leaders who gave orders, and soldiers who participated in committing crimes,” the resistance organization stated. “The Hamas movement strongly denounces the attempts of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to equate the victim with the executioner by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders, without a legal basis, in violation of the international conventions and resolutions that gave the Palestinian people and all the peoples of the world under occupation the right to resist the occupation in all forms, including armed resistance, especially as stipulated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.”
Others have similarly criticized the move based on the equivalency Khan draws between Hamas and Israel, especially since many have pointed out inconsistencies in accusations made against Hamas forces of rape. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have many credible accusations of rape made against them. Khan has a history of siding with imperialist forces during his time as ICC prosecutor, including excluding US troops from a probe into war crimes in Afghanistan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defense, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on December 24, 2023
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The point is not that Britain undermines its supposed reputation as a defender of democracy or international law by backing Israel. Few beyond its borders believe in that of the country that connived at the 2019 coup against elected Bolivian president Evo Morales, or helped start the illegal and utterly catastrophic wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The point is that Israel is part of the same, US-led imperialist alliance as Britain, and the ICC’s move reflects growing pressure globally for the members of that alliance to be held to the standards they demand of other countries. The ICJ genocide case is one example of what has been termed a “mutiny” of the global South; the ICC arrest warrants are another.
No such legal actions will bring the Israeli war machine to a halt in Gaza, nor can we expect international courts to effectively uphold a system of sovereign and equal states in the United Nations that has always been a polite fiction.
But we can use every prosecution to raise pressure to stop the arms sales, to demand an end to a British foreign policy that ties us, through the US alliance, to defence of an indefensible world order, and to call out the hypocrisy of our war-addicted leaders — so that one day they too can be held to account for their crimes.
Senior lawyer says ‘ink is almost dry’ on the guilt of many MPs who have enabled and covered Israel’s atrocities
Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak and other UK MPs may be looking uneasily over their shoulder tonight after receiving a renewed warning from the lawyer leading a pro-Palestinian justice group about their own guilt regarding Israel’s war crimes, after International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced he has requested arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Tayab Ali, a partner in Bindmans, one of the world’s leading human rights law firms, and a director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) published his stark warning on Twitter/X this evening, telling MPs who have supported and enabled Israel’s atrocities against the people of Gaza that it is now too late for them to do much to avoid their guilt and complicity, because ‘the ink of history on your potential complicity is almost dry and you already made your decision’ – and that ICJP will be demanding personal legal accountability for guilty MPs:
