Labour leader Keir Starmer at the launch of Scottish Labour’s General Election campaign at City Facilities in Glasgow, May 24, 2024
LABOUR campaign chiefs are scrambling to shore up support in some of the party’s safest seats as fears grow of a collapse in its vote among Muslim communities.
Deep alienation over party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s pro-Israel position on Gaza has meant campaign resources being sent to seats with huge Labour majorities on paper, notwithstanding Labour’s 20-point lead in the polls.
Labour has been telling activists that “we need your help to hold this seat” in at least 16 constituencies with large Muslim electorates currently held by the party.
Labour remains mired in candidate chaos, with a complaint of sexual harassment laid against one controversial rightwinger, while another was chased out of the constituency he was imposed upon.
Seats the Labour hierarchy regard as vulnerable include Leicester South, held by shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth, Birmingham Ladywood, where the sitting member is shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood and Stepney & Bethnal Green, represented by frontbencher Rushanara Ali.
All face strong challenges from independent pro-Gaza candidates rooted in their communities.
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.
UN says aid shipments fell by two-thirds during May but number of trucks entering Gaza rose
Aid shipments into southern Gaza are being squeezed out by commercial convoys, humanitarian organisations say, at a time when Israel’s military push into Rafah has choked off supply routes critical to feeding hundreds of thousands of people.
Deliveries of food, medicine and other aid into Gaza fell by two-thirds after Israel began its ground operation on 7 May, UN figures show. But overall the number of trucks entering Gaza rose in May compared with April, according to Israeli officials.
Part of the reason for the stark difference in accounts of what supplies reached the strip is a rise in commercial shipments.
In May, the Israeli military lifted a ban on the sale of food to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported last week. Traders got the green light to resume buying fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and other goods.
Inside Gaza, residents say there is more food in markets, but prices are many times higher than prewar levels, and after months of fighting and displacement few people can afford to buy much.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, speaks during a rally with supporters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on October 26, 2022. (Photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
One advocate responded: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza.”
Israel’s forces have killed at least 36,224 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in less than eight months, and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to similarly attack the illegally occupied West Bank.
Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, shared on social media a video he recorded in Bat Hefer, following similar posts a day earlier. The Times of Israel reported that the minister’s comments came after Palestinians’ gunfire from Tulkarem in the West Bank toward the Israeli settlement.
“Our message to the neighbors beyond the fence in Tulkarem, Nur Shams, Shuweika, and Qalqilya: We will turn you into ruined cities like in the Gaza Strip if the terror you are exerting on the settlements continues,” Smotrich said in Hebrew, according to a translation from Al Jazeera.
NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy pointed out that not only is Smotrich an advocate of illegal Israeli settlements—he has a home near Kedumim—but also “his role as finance minister means he oversees budgets, like police and army.”
Smotrich threatens to turn several West Bank cities to rubble like Gaza
His role as finance minister means he oversees budgets, like police and army.
His far-right coalition's keeping Netanyahy in power.
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns of the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said of Smotrich’s remarks: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza. Starting with the refugee camps and Area C communities (to a certain extent it has already begun).”
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 500 Palestinians in the West Bank.
Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights group in the United States, issued a statement about multiple recent events, including the minister’s comments.
“Every day, we see Israel’s far-right government targeting civilian infrastructure vital to the lives of ordinary Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank,” Hooper said. “This ongoing destruction has one goal—to make life unbearable for the Palestinian people and to force their removal from the land of Palestine.”
The group further pointed out that the devastation in Ramallah followed Israeli forces bombing a pair of encampments in and near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, attacks that killed dozens of Palestinians displaced by the war—which over 30 countries have argued to the International Court of Justice amounts to genocide.
Smotrich has come under fire for other statements since Israel launched its retaliation for the October 7 attack. Just last month, in what critics called blatantly genocidal language, he advocated for “total annihilation” of Gaza.
In January, Smotrich said that the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would be a “humanitarian solution” and “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where, four minutes away from our settlements, there is a hotbed of hatred and terror, where there are 2 million people who wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the state of Israel.”
Smotrich made similar remarks before the current escalation, declaring in March 2023 that an entire Palestinian town should be “wiped out” by Israel and that “there’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Palestinians gather to receive the humanitarian aid supplies airdropped into Khan Younis, Gaza, on 28 May. Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images
Arrival of Israeli troops in the southern border town has choked aid supplies, as hunger deepens in southern Gaza
Fayiz Abu Ataya was born into war and knew nothing else. Over his first and only spring, in a town stalked by hunger, he wasted away to a shadow of a child, skin stretched painfully over jutting bones.
In seven months of life, he had little time to make a mark beyond the family who loved him. But when his death from malnutrition was reported last week, it sounded a warning around the world about a rapidly deepening crisis in central and southern Gaza, triggered by the Israeli military operation in the southern town of Rafah.
At least 30 child victims of malnutrition have been recorded in Gaza, but almost all died in the north, until recently the area with the most extreme shortages of food and medical care, where a top US aid official said famine had taken hold in some areas.
The arrival of Israeli troops in Rafah in May shifted the grim calculus of threat in the strip.
“The ongoing situation in Rafah is a disaster for children,” said Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication for Unicef in Palestine. “If nutrition supplies, especially ready-to-use therapeutic food, used to address malnutrition among children, cannot be distributed, the treatment of more than 3,000 children with acute malnutrition will be interrupted.”
A Pro-Palestine protester lies on the ground in Bradford Photo: Neil Terry / Neil Terry Photography
THOUSANDS of people took to the streets in towns and cities across Britain at the weekend to demand a halt to Israel’s merciless onslaught and continuing slaughter in Gaza.
The actions marked almost eight months of weekly protest as Israel’s attack on the southern Gazan city of Rafah continued with the death toll passing 36,000 — over half of them women and children.
Protests in London were marred by the arrest of seven young people calling for a ceasefire and for a halt to Britain’s supply of arms to Israel.
The arrests happened as about 250 supporters of direct action group Youth Demand marched past Waterloo Underground station carrying placards and chanting “All eyes on Rafah!” and “Stop arming Israel!”
Youth Demand had warned earlier on social media that they intended to block roads and bridges in London.
Protester Olivia Burnett, from Leeds, said: “The time for non-disruptive marches is over.
“When you connect to what is happening to the people in Rafah, you realise we have to do whatever is necessary to end the hell they are living through.
“What are we willing to do to stop babies being burned alive? The answer must be: whatever it takes.”
