Rishi Sunak is UK’s Prime Minister following the appalling former Tory Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson was elected in the 2019 general election despite wide recognition that speaking truth was alien to him. He got kicked out over the Partygate scandal – that he was partying at number 10 and repeatedly denying it during the Covid lockdowns. There is a further scandal still developing about enriching Tories with government contracts for excessively expensive inaquate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during Covid. Liz Truss was deposed following her ‘bonkers’ budget* that took from the poor to give to the rich and forced the Bank of England to intervene.
Rishi Sunak, UK’s janitor prime minister.
Rishi Sunak was quickly installed by the Conservatives as a ‘caretaker’, janitor or interim prime minister to replace Liz Truss. Not elected as prime minister he doesn’t have a mandate to do anything. He’s a Neo-Con climate denier providing huge fossil fuel subsidies for foreigners to take North Sea oil and a Zionist actively supporting and therefore very complicit in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
* It wasn’t called a budget. Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng called it a statement to avoid scrutiny by the Office of Budget Responsibility.
The Israeli military used hundreds of mines to blow up Israa University in Gaza on January 17, 2024. (Photo: Screengrab)
“All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,” said one international relations expert.
The Israel Defense Forces’ detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel’s objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.
“This is not self-defense,” said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament. “This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing.”
The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel’s latest attempt to carry out a “cultural genocide” along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.
The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that “Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture,” including libraries, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.
“The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage,” Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed.
Now, international relations professor Nicola Perugini of the University of Edinburgh said, “all the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.”
The Israeli military just blew up the University of Palestine in Gaza City with 315 mines. All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. We need a full academic boycott. pic.twitter.com/nNStUTBc9e
On its Facebook page, the university said the IDF had occupied the campus for about 70 days before planting 315 mines and detonating the institution’s main building, its museum, a university hospital, and other buildings.
The IDF occupied Israa University, said administrators, “and used it as a military base for its mechanisms and a center for [the] snatching of isolated civilians in the areas of Rashid, Maghraqa, and Zahraa streets, and temporarily detained [them] to investigate with citizens before moving them.”
Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, said the fact that 315 mines were detonated meant that “by definition… it was not a legitimate military target.”
“Israel would have to have full control to plant so many mines,” said Plitnick. “This is a clear example of a war crime and destruction for the fun of it.”
Eight universities in Gaza have now been targeted since the IDF began its bombardment on October 7, according to the IMEMC.
Birzeit University, in the occupied West Bank, condemned the destruction of the school and accused Israel of stealing 3,000 rare artifacts from Israa’s museum.
“Birzeit University reaffirms the fact that this crime is part of the Israeli occupation’s onslaught against the Palestinians,” said the school on social media. “It’s all a part of the Israeli occupation’s goal to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide being carried out in Gaza Strip.”
‘What will it take for him to back a permanent, bilateral ceasefire?’
Rishi Sunak faced MPs in parliament today at the latest Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). He fielded questions from the Labour leader Keir Starmer on the Rwanda scheme and the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn on the cost of living crisis.
But one of the most dramatic moments in the exchanges came as a result of a question from Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. She asked Sunak “what will it take for him to back a permanent, bilateral ceasefire?”
Speaking in the House of Commons, Lucas said: “Until the UK government calls for an immediate ceasefire, it is complicit in Gaza. Not my words, but those of the head of Oxfam, who like every single agency trying to operate on the ground is clear: that aid can’t be effectively delivered while fighting continues. More UK aid is, of course, welcome, but even when it does get through, it can result in what one Palestinian aid worker calls ‘bombing us on full stomachs’.
“24,000 people have already been killed. So can he tell us what will it take for him to back a permanent, bilateral ceasefire?”
Hundreds of thousands marched in Washington, DC to demand an immediate ceasefire and protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza
Hundreds of thousands marched in Washington DC to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Photo: Adrian Antonioli / ANSWER Coalition
On January 13, a crowd of 400,000 gathered in Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza to take the Palestine solidarity movement straight to Biden’s doorstep. Hundreds of thousands then marched, holding Palestinian, Yemeni, South African, and Puerto Rican flags, through DC and straight to the gates of the White House.
The mobilization was organized by the American Muslim Task Force on Palestine, which includes American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Student Association-National, Muslim Legal Fund of America, Muslim Ummah of North America, and Young Muslims, and the ANSWER Coalition.
Frustrated with Biden’s support and bankrolling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, protesters surrounded the President’s residence and chanted “Hands off Yemen!” and “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn this invasion around!” in reference to the US-UK bombing campaign against Yemen in response to the country’s blockade of Israel-bound ships. Protesters also left bloody baby dolls at the gates of the White House to condemn the genocide in Gaza and the over 10,000 children that have been killed to date. As the crowd demonstrated, several snipers were seen on the roof of the White House.
The hundreds of thousands who showed up in DC were joined by millions across the world who participated in a global day of action in solidarity with Palestine to mark nearly 100 days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Rallies, strikes, and mass mobilizations were held in major cities of South Africa, Japan, Turkey, the UK, South Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, Ivory Coast, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Austria, Australia, Finland, as well as throughout the United States. Thousands shut down the Port of Oakland in California at 5 am on Saturday morning.
Before marching, the crowd of hundreds of thousands in Freedom Plaza heard from a diverse array of speakers from the US Muslim community and anti-imperialist organizations. “So long as the genocide in Gaza is being funded by this administration,” said Ismahan Abdullahi of the Muslim American Society, “we will not relent in our efforts to demand justice and the liberation of the Palestinian people.”
“Just as South Africa courageously rose to rightfully charge Israel with genocide, we the people of the United States of America will rise and continue these efforts,” she continued.
“You Genocide Joe, you Blinken the butcher, and your Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. You will be haunted by the screams of the children in Gaza,” said Taher Herzallah of American Muslims for Palestine, who, like many other speakers, placed the blame for the ongoing Gaza genocide directly onto the United States government. “You will be haunted by the prayers, the agonizing prayers of the elderly and the women of Gaza. And we, this new generation, will be the answer to their prayers.”
Protesters demanded an end to all US funding of Israel. Photo: Wyatt Souers / ANSWER Coalition
2024 is an election year, and Biden, who is running for reelection, has been hounded by Pro-Palestine demonstrators at several campaign events already. Mainstream media outlets openly worry about Biden’s chances in 2024, with the aging President losing key demographics of Democratic Party support such as young people and Arab-Americans.
“Instead of focusing on the American people, our tax money is being used to spread hatred, to spread warfare, to support criminal activity, frankly speaking, to support a genocide,” Mohamed Sabri, who traveled from Chicago to attend the march in DC, told Peoples Dispatch about why he will not be voting for Biden.
As a result of Biden’s unpopularity, third party candidates running for president in 2024 have gained new prominence. Both Jill Stein and Cornel West, running platforms to the left of the ruling Democratic Party, spoke at the March for Gaza.
Peoples Dispatch spoke to presidential and vice presidential candidates Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia, who were on the ground, marching among the crowd of hundreds of thousands, and are running jointly on an explicitly socialist platform. “We know it’s significantly important for any presidential candidate running for the 2024 election to prioritize the freedom, liberation of Palestine. Anyone who does not do that is standing in support of genocide,” said De La Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
“Democratic politicians, they like to pay a lot of lip service during the year, especially around domestic issues, and they never want to talk about imperialism, which is at the center, it’s the core of all of the problems faced by the entire world,” added Garcia.
The PSL presidential ticket of Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia participating in the March for Gaza in Washington DC. Photo: Craig Birchfield / ANSWER Coalition
Keir Starmer gives a keynote speech marking the four-year anniversary of the 2019 election, at Silverstone Technology Park, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, December 12, 2023
LABOUR will recognise a Palestinian state when it gets permission from Israel to do so, Sir Keir Starmer has announced in his latest abandonment of progressive international commitments.
Ditching a policy dating back a decade to Ed Miliband’s leadership, the Labour leader has announced that the party in government will no longer join nearly 140 other countries around the world in recognising the state of Palestine.
According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, Sir Keir said at the weekend that “recognition has to be part of a process, and an appropriate part of the process.”
What that meant was spelt out by shadow foreign office minister Wayne David, who said Labour would “recognise the state of Palestine at a point which will help the peace process once negotiations between Israel and Palestine and the others are taking place.”
Calling Labour’s previous position of recognition of Palestine independently of any supposed peace process “T-shirt politics,” Mr David elaborated that recognition had to come to “fruition in a way which is acceptable to the state of Israel.
People demonstrate outside the constituency office of Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, in north west London, during a Palestine Day of Action demonstration, November 18, 2023
THAT there is a sense of inevitability about Keir Starmer’s abandonment of Labour’s commitment to recognise a Palestinian state should not diminish outrage at the move.
Ditching the pledge, first made under Ed Miliband’s leadership of Labour, is all of a piece with the party’s unequivocal support for imperialism under Starmer’s leadership.
It comes as other policies — to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia or to give MPs a vote before Britain undertakes military action — are also junked in a bonfire of progressive demands.
But the abandonment of a commitment to join 139 other countries around the world in recognising the state of Palestine is particularly brutal and cynical.
…
In this situation to abandon a policy Labour has championed for a decade is not to assist the cause of peace, it is to green-light Israeli aggression.
