Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer delivers a speech on the situation in the Middle East at Chatham House in central London. Picture date: Tuesday October 31, 2023.
Labour leader refuses to back ceasefire despite revolt
FLOUNDERING Sir Keir Starmer declared that war is peace today in an Orwellian speech trying to retrieve Labour’s position on the Gaza crisis.
Defying mounting opposition within the party, the Labour leader asserted that a ceasefire in Gaza would encourage further violence and that only a “humanitarian pause” could be considered.
But his pose for peace was further undermined by the suspension of MP Andy McDonald from the Labour whip in the Commons.
Mr McDonald’s offence was to have told a ceasefire rally at the weekend that “we won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.”
A Labour spokesperson called the remarks “deeply offensive” but the Labour Muslim Network attacked the suspension as “obscene.”
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Palestine Solidarity Campaign called the idea of a pause “a wholly inadequate response” to the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where over 8,000 have already died in the latest Israeli attack.
PSC director Ben Jamal said Sir Keir’s “words and actions render him complicit in Israel’s ongoing commission of war crimes.
“Those who believe in the primacy of international law and respect for all civilian life should condemn his remarks and demand a reversal of the Labour Party position.”
A Momentum spokesperson argued that “Keir Starmer hasn’t shifted one inch: his speech today still backs Israel’s war on Gaza and opposes the ceasefire demanded by everyone from the UN to Save the Children.
The Labour leader Keir Starmer has reaffirmed his opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza in a major speech today. Starmer made the speech to set out the Labour Party’s position on the ongoing situation in the Middle East amidst deep divisions in his party.
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Starmer’s speech has received a mixed response.
A spokesperson for Labour’s left wing faction Momentum said: “For all the fine words, Keir Starmer hasn’t shifted one inch: his speech today still backs Israel’s war on Gaza and opposes the ceasefire demanded by everyone from the UN to Save the Children.
“Thus Starmer backs a pause in hostilities – then a resumption of Israeli bombing which has already killed more than 3,000 children. To call this ‘humanitarian’ is an insult to the Palestinian people.”
Deputy leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: “Keir Starmer siding with the Conservatives by refusing to call for a ceasefire. He says that he’s not saying this to start “a new round of arguments or hand wringing.” If there’s any justice, they won’t get away with this. The UK population calling: we need a ceasefire now.”
“One child’s death is one too many, but these are grave violations of epic proportions,” said the humanitarian group Save the Children. “A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety.”
Over just a three-week period, the Israeli military has killed at least 3,195 children in the Gaza Strip—a death toll that surpasses the annual number of children killed in all of the world’s armed conflict zones since 2019.
That’s according to a disturbing new analysis by Save the Children, which observed that kids make up more than 40% of the total death toll in the Gaza Strip since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel that was met with a massive bombing campaign and an intensifying ground attack.
The humanitarian group noted that, according to the United Nations, at least 1,000 Gazan children have been reported missing and may be trapped under rubble, meaning the reported death toll is almost certainly an underestimate. UNICEF has called child deaths in Gaza “a growing stain on our collective conscience” and demanded a cease-fire.
Save the Children did the same on Sunday. Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement that “three weeks of violence have ripped children from families and torn through their lives at an unimaginable rate.”
“The numbers are harrowing and with violence not only continuing but expanding in Gaza right now, many more children remain at grave risk,” Lee added. “One child’s death is one too many, but these are grave violations of epic proportions. A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety. The international community must put people before politics—every day spent debating is leaving children killed and injured. Children must be protected at all times, especially when they are seeking safety in schools and hospitals.”
Save the Children cites the most recent three annual reports from the U.N. secretary-general, which have found that 2,985 children were killed across two dozen countries last year, 2,515 were killed in 2021, and 2,674 were killed in 2020. More than 4,000 children were killed in global conflicts in 2019.
3,195 children killed in #Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world's conflict zones since 2019. We are calling for an immediate ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/vrEQ846tPB
— Save the Children International (@save_children) October 29, 2023
The group’s analysis was released days after it warned that Israel’s expanded ground assault on the Gaza Strip has put children “at heightened risk of loss of life, physical harm, severe emotional distress, and protracted displacement.”
Israeli troops and tanks advanced toward Gaza City on Monday and “blocked one of the main roads connecting the northern part of the Gaza Strip to the south,” The Wall Street Journalreported, “a major advance that appeared aimed at encircling the enclave’s biggest population center.”
More than a million Gazans had already been displaced by Israeli airstrikes before the country launched its fresh ground attack late last week. Israeli bombing has also destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.
On Friday, as Israel ruthlessly bombed northern Gaza and knocked out the territory’s internet and communications, a Save the Children team member in Gaza warned in a message that “we could all die, we could survive, we could survive, we could… pray for us.”
Save the Children said later in the day that it lost contact with its team on the ground in Gaza.
“This is pure horror for all children and their parents,” Lee said Friday. “Across the Gaza Strip, more than one million children are trapped in the middle of an active conflict zone with no safe place to go and no route to safety. With communications down, children are cut off from the world, more isolated than ever before. They are unable to speak to loved ones, or even to call an ambulance.”
“Despite Save the Children and thousands of other voices calling for an urgent cease-fire, we are seeing an increase in military operations,” he continued. “We call on all parties to the conflict to take immediate steps to protect the lives of children, and on the international community to support those efforts, as is their obligation.”
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I can only quote an excerpt of this article. Recommended.
Philo-Zionism now holds that to “stand with” the colonizing state of Israel is not to hate Palestinians, but to love Jews; but to stand with the Palestinian liberation is not to love Palestinians, or humanity, justice, or freedom, but to hate Jews. This results in the conflation of Palestinian liberation with antisemitism, and the criminalization of solidarity with Palestinians across Europe and the U.S.
The shocking statement by U.S. President Joe Biden that the October attack by Hamas was “as consequential as the Holocaust” is replete with dark meaning. The ubiquitous refrain that Hamas is “evil,” and that the group’s attack was the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust, transforms the Palestinian struggle from an anti-colonial one to an antisemitic one.
It relocates the terrain from which Palestinians act from one rooted in their own history and lived experiences to a Eurocentric drama familiar to Western publics, in which the only significant actors are evil Nazis, innocent Jewish victims, and their American and allied saviors.
Christian and Jewish enthusiasts for Israel are thus confirmed in their conviction that Palestinians are not resisting a colonizing state that was built coercively on their land—one that has devastated their lives, brutalized their families, and besieged, exiled, harassed, intimidated, humiliated, incarcerated and murdered them for decades with impunity. Rather, Palestinians kill Israelis simply because they hate Jews.
Only the total denial of Palestinian history and context makes such a preposterous conclusion tenable. And it makes genocide possible once again.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Israel has grossly violated international humanitarian law in the last 3 weeks of incessant bombing of Gaza, all with the political and financial backing of the US
On October 24, it became clear to the United Nations (UN) that the sustained bombardment of Gaza—which had already killed 6,500 people (including at least 35 UN employees)—had made this part of Palestine unviable for human life. Over two million people live in this slim section of land on the Mediterranean Sea. Since 1948, the refugees who live here have relied on UN assistance, with the United Nations building an entire agency (UNRWA) in 1949 for that purpose. UN Secretary General António Guterres told the UN Security Council that within days the UN would run out of fuel for its trucks, which carry the minimal relief that crosses into Gaza from Egypt and supports the 660,000 Palestinians who have fled their homes to come to UN compounds across Gaza. The trucks carry “a drop of aid in an ocean of need,” Guterres said. “The people of Gaza need continuous aid delivery at a level that corresponds to the enormous needs. That aid must be delivered without restrictions.”
Guterres’s statement, delivered in a calm voice, did however depart from the sentiment of disregard that defines the statements of European and North American leaders—many of whom have rushed to Tel Aviv to stand beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledge their full-throated support for Israel. History matters. Guterres said that the problems now befalling the Palestinians of Gaza did not begin on October 7, when Hamas and other Palestinian factions broke through the apartheid security barrier and attacked the settlements that border Gaza. His statement on the situation over the past decades is factual, based as it was on thousands of pages of UN reports and resolutions: “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.” The image of the “suffocating occupation” is utterly accurate.
After Guterres made these remarks, Israeli authorities—as if on cue—demanded the resignation of the UN Secretary-General. Israel’s permanent representative to the UN Gilad Erdan accused Guterres—absurdly—of “justifying terrorism.” Saying that Guterres “once again distorts and twists reality,” Erdan noted that his government would not permit the UN Humanitarian Aid chief Martin Griffiths from crossing the Rafah border into Gaza to oversee the distribution of relief. “In what world do you live?” asked Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen of Guterres. At the UN Security Council, meanwhile, the United States vetoed resolutions for a ceasefire, while China and Russia vetoed a US resolution that said Israel had a right to defend itself and Iran must stop its export of arms. The United States has deeply politicized the atmosphere in the UN, using its own resolutions to rally support—unsuccessfully—for Israel, while attacking the Palestinians (and bizarrely Iran) in the process.
Nothing neutral about the United States
The United States has never been an unbiased arbiter over the region, given its close linkage to Israel from at least the 1960s. Billions of dollars of weapons sold to Israel, billions of dollars of aid to Israel, and punctual statements in favor of Israel have defined the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv. During all the negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, the United States has played a game of duplicity: pretending to be neutral, but in fact, using its immense power to neuter Palestinians and to strengthen Israel. The Oslo Accords, which led to the creation of a powerless Bantustan run by the Palestinian Authority, was negotiated with the United States with its hands on the pen. Oslo led to the creation of a process that has resulted in the attrition of Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as the garrotting of the Palestinians in Gaza—all of this combined being the “suffocating occupation” that Guterres talked about.
Since 2007, when Israeli troops left Gaza and then hemmed it in by land and sea walls that made Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison, Israel has routinely bombed the Palestinians who live there. Each time there is a bombardment, one worse than the next, the United States government has backed Israel fully and re-armed it during the bombardment. Calls for a ceasefire have been blocked by Washington in the UN Security Council since the destructive bombing of Gaza called Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). This time, on cue, the United States has provided Israel with diplomatic support, with US President Joe Biden going to Tel Aviv and with the United States going as far as adopting a flagrant lie that Israel did not bomb al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on October 17. Before Biden got to Israel, the United States sent two major naval battle groups into the eastern Mediterranean—two aircraft carriers, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Gerald Ford, with their supporting naval vessels in two strike groups. Since then, the US has moved missile defense systems into the region to strengthen the Israeli armed forces. The movement of these forces comes alongside billions of dollars spent annually by the US to arm Israel, including $15 billion in extra military assistance over this recent period. These wars are not merely Israel’s wars. These are the wars of Israel and the United States, with its Western allies in tow.
Gaza will become Mosul
Meanwhile, the United States has sent senior military officials to work closely with the Israeli generals. One of these officials is a three-star Marine lieutenant general James Glynn, who has been sent to “help the Israelis with the challenges of fighting an urban war.” Glynn and others are in the Israeli military chain of command not to make decisions for Israel but to assist them. Glynn was part of the US Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the years following 2014, when the United States bombed Mosul and Raqqa (Iraq) to eject ISIS from those cities. As if to underline Glynn’s Mosul and Raqqa experience, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that he had himself been involved in Operation Inherent Resolve in 2016-2017 when Austin headed US Central Command. Austin’s comments and Glynn’s deployment to Israel are in anticipation of the ground war that is expected against Gaza. “The first thing that everyone should know,” Austin told ABC News, “and I think everyone does know, is that urban combat is extremely difficult.”
Indeed, Austin’s comment about the difficulty of urban combat, particularly with the Mosul and Raqqa experiences in mind, is appropriate. In 2017, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the US attack on Mosul had resulted in between 9,000 and 11,000 civilian casualties. Very few people recall the brutality of that war and the numbers of civilian dead are barely noted. If Mosul is the example before the United States and Israel for the ground war to come in Gaza, there are some differences that should be borne in mind. ISIS had only two years to dig in its defenses, while the Palestinian factions have been preparing for such an eventuality since at least 2005 and are therefore better prepared to fight the Israeli army one ruined street after the next. It appears from all reports that the morale of the Palestinian factions is far greater than that of the Israeli army, which means that the Palestinian factions will fight with much more force and with much less to lose than ISIS (whose fighters slipped out of the city and vanished into the countryside).
In both Mosul and Raqqa, when the US aerial bombardment began, tens of thousands of civilians fled the cities for the countryside alongside some ISIS fighters to wait for the destruction to commence and then end. If they had remained in Mosul and Raqqa, the civilian casualties would have been twice the number reported by AP. Mosul’s population was just 1.6 million, smaller than the 2.3 million residents of Gaza—so the numbers of civilian casualties would have to be adjusted upwards. Palestinians in Gaza are trapped and cannot escape to the countryside, unlike the residents of Mosul and Raqqa. They can go nowhere as Israeli tanks enter Gaza, guns blazing. The civilian deaths in Gaza, already outrageously high due to the uncontrolled bombing by Israel, will be unimaginable during this ground war that began on October 27. Gaza, already a ruin, will be left a cemetery.
