Youth Demand group spray paints ‘GENOCIDE COFENCE’ at the UK Labour Party Conference, Liverpool, 24 September 2024.
Two Youth Demand supporters have taken action at the Labour Party conference by painting ‘GENOCIDE CONFERENCE’ on the front entrance. Youth Demand are calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
At around 10:50am two Youth Demand supporters walked up to the security check-in building, where all guests must pass through, of the Labour Party conference being held in Liverpool and spray pained ‘GENOCIDE’ and were part way through writing ‘CONFERENCE’ before they were tackled by plain clothes police officers and arrested.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
“Labour is still arming Israel despite a majority of the public backing a complete arms embargo. Despite admitting there is a ‘clear risk’ of ‘serious violation of international humanitarian law’, they have spinelessly suspended less than 10% of arms licenses.
“They claim their national conference is ‘democracy in action’. This is a joke when in reality Labour sold our democracy to arms and fossil fuel companies. Just last week it was revealed Starmer accepted a £4,000,000 donation from a hedge fund with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of shares in fossil fuels and weapons.“
One of those taking action today was Danny Lusardi, 23, a graduate from Lancaster. He said:
“The Labour government has admitted the arms it’s selling to Israel are being used for war crimes. But still they’re happy to keeping licensing 90% of those sales. We’re here to show them the British public can’t accept that.”
“It’s our duty as citizens to hold our government to account. When they won’t listen to the democratic will of the people, that means breaking windows and spraying paint.”
“As we approach a year of watching Israel’s genocide on the news and social media, it’s time to ask ourselves: are we serious about ending it now?”
'There is a genocide happening right now in Gaza, it has been so destroyed it is literally a different colour from space.'
At the end of WWII, this country looked at the bodies and promised we would never allow these kinds of atrocities to happen again. This monument reminds us… pic.twitter.com/rI7yKXxFcX
Protestors take part in a National March for Gaza in London, England on September 07, 2024 [Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images]
Just as head chopping was central to Daesh as an expression of its military prowess and power, killing babies and children is central to Israel as an expression of its dominance in occupied Palestine. No one loves head chopping more than Daesh, and no one loves killing children more than Israel. That’s the message which comes through loud and clear on a near daily basis.
Such barbarism is cloaked in a religious garb but everything that Daesh does is contrary to the human rights and justice at the core of Islam, and everything that Israel does is contrary to the human rights and justice enshrined within Judaism. Israel and Daesh profess to be Jewish and Islamic State respectively, but the savagery of their conduct is more satanic than Godly.
The very notion of killing babies and children should be anathema to every human being, so what is it about the Zionist psychology that actualises baby killing? After the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported the words of Saar Ben Hamoo, a South African Zionist and ardent supporter of Israel: “We will drink the blood of your children in Gaza,” he declared. The Zionist Ben Hamoo is guilty of hate speech, but also gave expression to Zionist infanticide in advance of Israel launching its genocide in Gaza.
Prior to last October, no one could have imagined the mercilessness of Israeli Zionists and their supporters in their desire to commit infanticide. How did Ben Hamoo know that baby killing would feature prominently in the genocide being carried out in revenge for 7 October?
Was it a guess? Or wishful thinking?
It is natural for human beings to express love, kindness and gentleness towards a child, whether a relative or a stranger. Anyone who thinks about hurting a child or even tries to hurt a child is considered a degenerate. To deliberately break the limbs of a child or even think about killing a child is beyond comprehension for normal people. The killing of a child has to be the most repulsive act that a human being can commit, but this is exactly what Israeli Zionists have been doing and continue to do in occupied Palestine, without compassion, and with full impunity.
In October 2023, after the outbreak of the Gaza war, Al Jazeera reported that Israel kills a Palestinian child every fifteen minutes. A recent article for MEMO pointed out that, “Israel has killed, on average, two Palestinian children every day for the past 24 years.”
The Vice Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Bragi Gudbransson, told reporters on 19 September, “The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history.” The CRC monitors governments’ compliance with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and released its findings about six governments, including the Israel regime.
The report states that the committee “is greatly concerned about the high number of children in Gaza killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned and subjected to famine, malnutrition and disease as a result of Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.”
UNRWA chief says 70% of Gaza victims are children, women – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]
A week ago, the Gaza health ministry published the names of 710 new-born Palestinian babies killed by Israeli forces during the ongoing war. Since 7 October, the confirmed number of Palestinian children killed by Israel is 16,700. Moreover, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported in June that more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military attack on the enclave. Most of these missing children are presumed dead under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by Israel. At the very least, therefore, it is fair to say that the Zionist state has slaughtered 36,700 children in Gaza since last October alone.
Although UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez has said that, “Gaza has become a graveyard for children,” his comment underplays the fact that Palestinian children in Gaza are not just dying, they are being killed. More than just a graveyard, therefore, Gaza has become a slaughterhouse for children.
According to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, children are “bearing the brunt” of Israel’s war. “This is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future.” Save the Children UK insisted that, “We simply cannot accept the violence that Palestinian children continue to face as normal.”
And yet the infanticide in Gaza has been normalised.
International medics who have no political affiliation to Palestine but have gone to work in Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, provide us with eyewitness accounts of Gaza post-7 October. Professor Nick Maynard is one such doctor. He worked in both Al-Aqsa Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. “We saw a lot of children with their arms or legs blown off,” he told the Irish Times. “There were no painkillers to give the children.”
More than four hundred Palestinians were slaughtered by the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa Hospital when the occupation state claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas. This claim was rejected unequivocally by Maynard. “I have never seen any evidence of Hamas there,” he insisted.
Firoze Sidhwa is a 42-year-old trauma and critical care surgeon at San Joaquin General Hospital in North California. He went with the World Health Organisation to work at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. What Sidwha told Bruno Macaes of the New Statesman about the killing of children in Gaza is chilling: “Most of them have been killed in explosions where a lot of them would have been trapped under the rubble. Some are going to die immediately with a concrete block hitting their head or something like that but a lot of them just had their leg pinned under the rubble and because there is no heavy moving equipment, there is no way to get to them, they slowly died of sepsis while buried in the dark tomb alone, freezing during the night, boiling during the day. It would take three, four, five days for them to die in this way. It’s horrific to think of the scale of their suffering.” Horrific indeed.
Israel has been deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children in Gaza. “We had kids shot in the chest and shot in the head, in other words clearly deliberate, clearly targeted,” explained Sidhwa. Another doctor from a different hospital in Gaza told him how often he encounters children being shot by Israelis: “All the time, every day, kids were coming in who had been shot in the head and chest.”
Sidhwa and other doctors who worked in Gaza’s hospitals penned a letter to the Biden administration to advocate an end to the infanticide in Gaza. The letter included the damning indictment that, “Every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.”
Despite such clear evidence of infanticide, the US continues to support Israel and provide it with more weapons to keep its baby-killing machine running. One wonders when the vampire-like thirst of Zionists like Ben Hamoo for the blood of Palestinian children will be satiated. “Israelis must ask themselves if they’re willing to live in a country that lives on blood,” wrote Gideon Levy in Haaretz on 15 September.
How many more babies in Gaza have to be killed before the US and Europe stops arming the baby killers in Tel Aviv and instead impose sanctions on the genocidal apartheid regime? How will we answer on that day when we all return and stand before our Creator, the Most Just, and are asked, “For what crime were the children of Gaza killed?” Whatever we think we might say then, we must act now to bring this infanticide inherent in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to an end.
dizzy: The equality drawn between Daesh and Israeli actions is fully understood. There are so many – possibly all – made for television fake manufactured terrorism events that can be similarly equivalenced or attributed.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
People take part in a march for Palestine in Liverpool to coincide with the Labour Party Conference, September 21, 2024 Photo: Neil Terry / neilterryphotography.co.uk
THOUSANDS of peace protesters marched through Liverpool on the eve of Labour conference to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to arms sales to Israel.
One of the biggest demonstrations seen in Liverpool in years, the 15,000-strong crowd brought together activists from across the country with a strong local turnout and wound its way through the city centre to a rally at the Pier Head.
There, suspended Liverpool Labour MP Ian Byrne said that “serious violations of international law” are being carried out by Israel.
“The siege of Gaza is a war crime,” he said, adding that “corporations which send arms to Israel are complicit in these crimes.”
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, told the rally: “We don’t want 30 arms licences for Israel cancelled, we want them all cancelled.
“War crimes are being committed every single day.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
People take part in a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally on Whitehall in central London, September 11, 2024
Ministers accused of criminal liability over F-35 exports
…
As ministers attend the opening of the Labour Conference in Liverpool this weekend, tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected march through the city to demand that the government take meaningful action to end Israel’s genocidal attacks.
Ahead of the march, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal said: “The Labour government knows that Israel is committing crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.
“But instead of honouring its obligations under international law, it is still seeking to shield Israel from accountability.
“It is shocking and unacceptable that this government would remain actively complicit with a state that commits genocide and practices apartheid, but that is the case.
“That is why we bring our movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality to the Labour Party Conference.”
Motions on Palestine are on the conference agenda, but it has not yet been decided whether they will be debated.
Israeli soldiers are seen from a distance, appearing to throw and kick the bodies of Palestinians off a rooftop in [Qabatiya, a West Bank town.]
“There is no military need to do this,” said one rights advocate.
In the latest potential violation of international law by Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, footage verified by media outlets on Friday showed members of the Israel Defense Forces pushing and kicking what appeared to be the lifeless bodies of three Palestinians off a rooftop in Qabatiya, a West Bank town.
The Associated Press obtained video showing three soldiers on the roof of a building that the IDF had attacked with grenades earlier, picking up a body and dragging it toward the edge of the rooftop before pushing it off. On another nearby rooftop, the soldiers in the footage are seen swinging a body by its limbs over the edge of the building onto the ground below, where a bulldozer operated by the IDF was moving.
A third body is seen being kicked by a soldier toward the edge of a building. Ultimately, the soldier kicks the human body all the way off.
An AP journalist and other reporters in Qabatiya also told the outlet they had witnessed the incidents, while Al Jazeera reported it had verified the footage.
Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut posted the disturbing footage on the social media platform X.
[dizzy: The link to X is not working, failing with the message “Not found” so I have substituted the following Youtube video.]
Ameed Shehadeh, a correspondent for Al-Arabi who also witnessed the incident, told CNN that “a bulldozer tried to demolish the house to bring the bodies down.”
“That didn’t work,” said Shehadeh. “Soldiers went up and kicked and pushed the bodies off the roof, as we have seen.”
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said the video didn’t make clear whether the Israeli soldiers had verified whether the people “were still alive or not” before they kicked and pushed them off the rooftops.
Under the statute of the International Criminal Court, the war crime defined as “committing outrages upon personal dignity” prohibits soldiers from mutilating dead bodies in armed conflicts.
The IDF has been accused of “necroviolence” against the bodies of Palestinians they’ve killed in the past, including in 2020 when a journalist shot a video showing an IDF soldier running over a lifeless body with a bulldozer.
“The footage we’ve seen is horrific and it’s making the rounds here in Palestine. But ultimately, Palestinians are not surprised. Israel has a track record of disrespecting the bodies of the Palestinians they kill,” said Leila Warah, an independent journalist in Palestine.
The Israeli military released a statement saying the footage showed “a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers.”
Other attacks and incidents in Gaza and the West Bank over the past year that the IDF has claimed were accidents or were not in accordance with its rules and values include, but are not limited to, the killing of U.S. activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank this month, the bombing of a so-called “safe zone” in Rafah, and air strikes that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen in Gaza.
Following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel last October, Israeli officials also said they were releasing all “restraints” on the IDF in Gaza and referred to the enclave’s 2.3 million people as “human animals.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry reports that the IDF has killed at least 700 Palestinians in the West Bank since last October.
Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said of the video released Friday, “there is no military need to do this. It’s just a savage way of treating Palestinian bodies.”
He added that the IDF will likely not hold anyone accountable for the abuse of the dead bodies.
“The most that will happen is that soldiers will be disciplined,” said Jabarin, “but there will be no real investigation and no real prosecution.”
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
