ISRAEL’S announcement that it will “teach a lesson” to the United Nations by denying visas to its representatives only highlights its growing isolation — and that of its Nato allies.
Its brutal bombardment of Gaza has already killed at least 29 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the besieged strip, a tiny proportion of the civilian casualties but a telling sign of Tel Aviv’s contempt for international law.
The UN’s structure has prevented it from giving a clear moral lead with the United States vetoing calls for a ceasefire. But the remarks by secretary-general Antonio Guterres that have so riled Israeli leaders — that Hamas’s attacks on October 7 did not happen “in a vacuum” and must be linked to “56 years of suffocating oppression” of Palestine by Israel — were a statement of fact.
More could have been said. It is not just the decades-long denial of Palestinian statehood, the ongoing routine violence of the occupation or the siege of Gaza that set the scene for those terrifying events.
It is that the oppression of Palestinians has become rapidly more extreme in recent years, from Israel’s adoption of the racist Nation-State Law, through the massacre of unarmed demonstrators on the Gaza border during the March of Return protests, to the appointment of self-described fascist ministers who would have been beyond the political pale even five years ago.
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It is not Western peoples who are isolated, but our politicians, as the huge Palestine demonstrations and the growing backlash against Keir Starmer for endorsing war crimes show.
If world opinion is for a ceasefire, British public opinion is too. The gulf between people and politicians should be used to build an anti-imperialist movement strong enough to stop the war.
Israeli prime Benjamin Netanyahu and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, March 2023.
Rishi Sunak has given Britain’s full approval to the flattening of Gaza.
Late on 7 October, the prime minister tweeted “we stand unequivocally with Israel”. Sunak had expressed “full solidarity” to Benjamin Netanyahu, the tweet added.
As Netanyahu had promised “mighty vengeance” following the Hamas-led offensive that morning, there was no room for doubt about the signal which Sunak was sending.
In a few words, Sunak took Britain’s foreign policy to a new extreme.
Israel’s “mighty vengeance” is shaping up to be its most destructive bombardment ever of Gaza and its 2.3 million inhabitants.
A “mighty vengeance” endorsed by 10 Downing Street.
There is a long history of the UK supporting Israel’s wars.
Israel’s trauma is not a free pass for war crimes, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
IN THE wake of this month’s Hamas attack on Israeli settlements, the British government, along with other Western governments, gave vocal and emphatic backing to Israel’s “right” to “defend itself.”
This support has been undiluted even though Israel has cut off food, water and medical supplies to the civilian population of Gaza and unleashed a mass air assault on this tightly packed residential area — according to media reports, more bombs were dropped on tiny Gaza in 10 days than the US dropped on Afghanistan in its first year of operations there.
Israel has also ordered more than a million Gazan civilians, half of them children, to leave northern Gaza and cram into a tiny area against the Egyptian border.
The United Nations Office for Human Rights has condemned this as “mass ethnic cleansing” that looks set to be on an even worse scale than the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, that saw 750,000 innocent civilians violently driven from their homes, the area that is now Israel.
The Palestinian people are now overwhelmingly a refugee population. In a clear sign of what arguably could be described as Israel’s real intent, Israeli ministers have openly called for “another Nakba” to be inflicted on Gazans.
The UN secretary-general and its Human Rights Agency have said emphatically that Israel’s actions toward civilians in Gaza are a war crime, while the UN children’s agency has condemned the appalling physical and psychological impact on children.
Yet the British government has continued to support such actions as part of Israel’s “right to defend herself,” tacking onto its statements a line saying that Israel must follow international law, as if murdering civilians can somehow be done legally.
The government’s stance was mirrored by the decision of opposition leader Keir Starmer who appeared to tell radio broadcaster LBC that Israel has a “right” to impose the cut-off on Gaza, a position which also appeared to be supported by members of Starmer’s front bench during various now-notorious media interviews.
This one-sided response of the British Establishment has also been seen in Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s order to police forces to treat even displays of the Palestinian flag as a potentially criminal act, leading to a number of arrests at Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.
The government has also pledged extensive direct military support for Israel against Gaza, a region in which children represent half of the population.
However, collective punishment is a war crime, under international law, against Gaza’s 2.5 million civilians — as is forced transfer of populations.
Demonstrators in Berlin take the streets in solidarity with Palestine (Photo: Montecruz Foto)
Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism in the country, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years and organizations, like the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.
Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since October 7. After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of October 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and antisemitism on German streets.
Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right AfD politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. Playing off the idea of “imported antisemitism,” the social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.
Samidoun has been made into public enemy number one, as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.” In a speech before parliament on October 12, Chancellor Scholz personally announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany.
In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. Since October 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. On October 13, the police went so far as to ban a demonstration registered by the group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.”
Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.
In a letter to all Berlin schools, the city’s Department for Education, Youth and Family set out strict guidelines on how to discuss the situation in Palestine with students. “Any demonstrative action or expression of opinion that can be understood as advocating or approving of the attacks against Israel or support for the terrorist organizations carrying them out, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, constitutes a threat to school peace in the current situation and is prohibited.” According to the letter, these may include the following: “visibly wearing relevant clothing (for example, the kuffiyeh known as the Palestinian scarf), displaying stickers and patches with inscriptions such as ‘free Palestine’ or a map of Israel in the colors of Palestine (white, red, black, green), and shouting ‘free Palestine!’ and demonstrating verbal support for Hamas and its terrorism.”
At one high school on Sonnenallee, a 61-year-old teacher attempted to confiscate a Palestinian flag from a 14-year-old student and ended up in a physical altercation with a second 15-year-old student. The parents’ association of the school tried to organize a demonstration under the slogan “No place for racism, no place for violence” as a reaction to the incident, yet it was promptly banned by the police, ostensibly as a “a precautionary measure”. The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has since sent a letter in response to Berlin’s Department for Education, expressing their “great concern about the psychological and educational development [of their children]” in Berlin schools.
As other European states are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, the German state has been able to use force and violence to prevent such scenes on German streets. Yet it is unlikely that the government will be able to ban these sentiments of solidarity indefinitely, especially as the images of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza continue to circulate around the world.
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.
It has been 15 days since Israeli Occupation Forces started their continuous bombings of Gaza following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, threatening a complete genocide of Palestinians living there
In what has been described as the most intensive bombing of the besieged Palestinian territory since October 7, at least 400 more people were killed in Israel’s indiscriminate strikes in Gaza strip on Sunday October 22.
Israel bombings inside Gaza continued on Monday as well with over 60 people killed in overnight attacks alone.
The Israeli military claimed on Monday that it bombed over 300 targets in Gaza on Sunday. Their aircrafts continued to target residential areas in Khan Younis, Al-Fallujah, and other localities killing civilians including children, on the 15th day since the Palestinian resistance movements launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Israeli warplanes targeted densely populated Jabalia refugee camp where at least 30 people were killed, as well as other localities close to the Al-Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals.
Footage released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Monday clearly shows Israeli bombing in the vicinity of the Al-Quds hospital.
October 22nd- a video showing Israeli airstrikes in the vicinity of Al_Quds hospital while a delegation from the ICRC was visiting. These bombardments caused fear and panic among internally displaced civilians and the medical staff at the hospital. #Gaza#NotATargetpic.twitter.com/AN6xu6YzMX
These hospitals are overcrowded with wounded and in danger of being bombed like Al-Ahli Arab hospital last week. Close to 500 Palestinians were killed when Israel bombed it on October 17.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health more than 5,000 Gazans have been killed in the Israeli bombings so far, of those over 2,000 were children. More than 15,000 people have been wounded in these attacks and over a million have been displaced.
Israel has also killed over 95 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and wounded over 1,600 of them in the last 15 days. Israeli occupation forces arrested hundreds of Palestinians in different raids in the occupied West Bank on Sunday as well.
The Israeli blockade on food, fuel and medicine supplies to Gaza continued on its 15th day and despite the small number of humanitarian aid trucks reaching the territory through Egypt’s Rafah border since Saturday there is an urgent need for the full resumption of the free transit of these supplies.
Lack of fuel and medical supplies have made around 10 hospitals in Gaza go out of service, increasing pressures on the remaining hospitals and endangering hundreds of lives including newborn babies.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) warned on Monday that, “in three days UNRWA will run out of fuel, critical for our humanitarian response across the Gaza strip.”
Lazzarini stated that without fuel it will be difficult to run the hospitals and supply basic amenities including food to the affected people. UNRWA runs several hospitals and also shelters over 500,000 Palestinians displaced due to Israeli bombings in Gaza.
51 health workers have also been killed in airstrikes since October 7 and over 87 others have been injured.
Meanwhile, China’s special envoy to the Middle East, who is currently touring the region, said on Monday that his country is willing to do whatever it takes to start a dialogue to explore an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. He stated that the situation in Gaza is very serious and if no steps were taken to achieve a ceasefire now there is a possibility of a region-wide escalation.
In the meanwhile, Israel is already bombing Lebanon targeting Hezbollah, which has supported the actions of the Palestinian resistance during Al-Aqsa Flood and targeted positions of the Israeli army near the Lebanese border.
