Gaza slaughter – Starmer under pressure
JVL Introduction
This piece from Labour Hub outlines the resignations from Labour because of the Leadership’s stance on Gaza. Keir Starmer has tried to backtrack a little by calling for Humanitarian aid but has still not, for example, said that Israel’s denial of this is against International Law. Councillors and Party Officers from different parts of the country can take it no longer. Finally Labour MPs, Apsana Begum and John McDonnell have spoken at today’s PSC Rally in London; there were none last week. The support on the street for the marches, vigils, petitioning and across the UK and the world has been phenomenal; large sums of money raised by people wanting to support Palestinians – but the Leadership of the Labour Party seem not to see and, when they do, think only the Muslim community is upset. This is so insulting, firstly people are concerned as human beings, secondly not all Paletinians are Muslim and by highlighting that, Starmer feeds into the notion that this is a religious “conflict” and not one of occupier and occupied. Despite the by election victories, Labour is faltering on this issue and may well lose votes as well as more activists.
The article notes that many more MPs have signed Richard Burgon’s Early Day Motion calling for a ceasefire but it is unconscionable that any Labour MP or, indeed, any MP, has not already signed it. It is a scandal that less than 10% of MPs have signed this.
LL
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Sat 21 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
Pressure mounts on Starmer over Gaza
Seven days after a massive demonstration in support of Palestinian rights last week, protesters again took to the streets of several UK cities today to demonstrate against the siege of Gaza. In London, over 100,000 marched in the rain in support of Palestinian freedom.
Within the Labour Party, the pressure on Keir Starmer to modify his position on the war on Gaza continues to mount, as leading figures continue to leave the Party. In Oxford, six city Councillors resigned their membership yesterday, joining two who quit earlier this week, and adding to those elsewhere who have made the same stand.
In Scotland, nine members of a local Labour Party have resigned their positions over the Party’s stance on Gaza. Constituency officers in Glasgow Kelvin, including Baroness Pauline Bryan, resigned en masse after calling for the “cessation of Israeli military action”.
The CLP officers said their resignations followed the submission of a motion urging Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar to call for a cessation of Israeli military action, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor and the release of hostages.
They said in a statement: “We have been informed by the general secretary and the Scottish general secretary that any motions relating to the situation in Israel and Gaza are out of order for all CLPs. It seems preposterous to us that a local political party cannot have a substantive discussion on contemporary events which are commanding the attention of the entire world.”
Their statement continued: “We refuse to be part of a party machinery which stifles democracy. Accordingly, we hereby resign our positions on the executive committee of Glasgow Kelvin CLP.”
In a separate initiative, Peter Soulsby, the Mayor of Leicester, has written to the Labour leader, complaining that the impression has been given of “ignoring the decades of injustice and the oppression of Palestinians and the violations of their human rights.”
Soulsby, who himself has visited the Occupied Territories on the West Bank, writes of his discussion with Muslim Labour Councillors, who represent communities which “perceive the Party as currently lacking sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.”
The letter says that in Leicester and elsewhere, many members, supporters and the wider community want Starmer and the Party to call for immediate relief for Gaza, a proportionate Israeli response that conforms to international law and avoids collective punishment and “a long term just settlement that respects the rights of the Palestinian people as well as those of Israel.”
Earlier this year, 19 sitting Labour Councillors in Leicester, the majority of them from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, were deselected ahead of May’s local elections. In the event, completely against the national trend, Labour lost 22 council seats.
Meanwhile, over 60 MPs have now signed Socialist Campaign Group Secretary Richard Burgon MP’s EDM calling for an immediate ceasefire in the region. This stance has a clear majority in public opinion, according to a new YouGov poll, yet is still opposed by both main party leaderships. Nearly 90% of Labour voters want an immediate cessation to hostilities.
New polling shows there is majority support in the US as well for a ceasefire and de-escalation, backed by two out of three Americans, including a majority of Republicans.
Momentum estimate that around 20% of Labour MPs have backed an immediate ceasefire, and nearly half of all backbenchers. This includes non-Campaign Group figures like Liam Byrne, Sarah Champion, Clive Betts, Debbie Abrahams, Tahir Ali, Afzal Gorton and Emma Lewell-Buck.
Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin has joined calls for an immediate ceasefire. Rokhsana Fiaz, Labour Mayor of Newham, has also issued a strongly worded statement calling for international human rights law and international humanitarian law to prevail.
One of the strongest statements comes from Zarah Sultana MP. In a contribution entitled “Why Labour must back an immediate ceasefire”, she writes: “War crimes have been given the green-light by political leaders in the UK and beyond. Even after an Israeli defence official promised to turn Gaza ‘into a city of tents’, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has refused to condemn Israel for its flagrant violations of international law… At the UN security council on Wednesday, to our shame the UK refused to support a resolution calling for Israel to allow humanitarian corridors into Gaza and a pause in fighting.”
Labour’s headquarters in London was the focus of protests yesterday, amid the Party’s deepening crisis on its stance. The protesters, organised by London Palestine Action, held banners saying, “Blood on your hands” and “End the occupation”.
Yesterday too, Keir Starmer rowed back from his earlier support for Israel’s ‘right’ to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians, saying: “I was saying Israel had the right to self-defence… I was not saying Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines.”
The Labour Muslim Network had earlier demanded an apology from Starmer for his comments, and a crisis meeting between the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Labour Council leaders had led to some modification in the leadership’s messaging on the conflict.
Meanwhile, UK trade unionists are responding to an urgent call for solidarity issued by Palestinian trade unions, demanding that Britain ends its military and political support for Israel’s actions. The statement has resonated particularly within the National Education Union, the University and College Union and Unison, with many national executive members from these unions endorsing it.
Image: c/o Labour Hub
I am surprised that you endorse Richard Burgon’s pathetically weak EDM which
‘utterly condemns the massacre of Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas’ whilst merely expressing ‘its deep alarm’ at ‘the Israeli military bombardment and total siege of Gaza and the resulting deaths and suffering’.
It doesn’t even call clearly for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s bombing campaign and demand that Palestinians vacate northern Gaza.
Thank you for highlighting that but, that was partly the point; ie that even this sort of a motion can barely get 10% of MPs supporting it, it is not as though another MP has come out with something better.
Starmer is caught, of course, in the web of his own spinning. He is hostage to the Zionist lobby, having declared his “unconditional support”. On the strength of that, he has garnered financial support from the usual suspects. Just as did Blair, (and not least because he is being advised by the war criminal and by friend-of-Epstein Pater Mandelson), he wants to have his own funding sources rather than the trades unions, who are prone to go off on one when he lets them down again.
But this means he cannot criticise the apartheid state. “Unconditional support” doesn’t allow that. He cannot play the “human rights” card, and there is a growing ground-swell within the Labour Party that holds this to be the very least that must be done. Not a word must be uttered against what Netenyahu is doing. To do so would be anti-zionist and therefore antisemitic. Oh dear!
Thank God for Groups like JVL,
MPs on all sides of the House and all other decent caring people who put human life before their Parties disgusting political decisions
As for the Leader of the Labour Party he did mean what he said when agreeing with the Israeli Government on cutting off water food and fuel For Electricity to the Palestinian People
He said it on camera were many people heard him and have played the clip and the other clip also on camera of him saying he never meant what he said HE DID
Anyone who cannot condemn what is going on in Gaza with the relentless bombing of innocent men women and children destroying hospitals, churches, Health Centres, People’s Homes, and other infrastructure
Only yesterday they flattened the Aljazeera news tower to stop the reporting of the death and destruction their carrying out
.
I honestly feel so sorry for all those Innocent Palestinian Men Women and Children who are being massacred by an Israeli Prime Minister and his Government Who do not represent all the Israeli People Who which many have begged for a cease fire in order to let the Palestinian People treat their dying and injured Men Women and Children who are already left with nothing to look forward to when it does end
We also have to remember the Innocent Israeli Men Women and Children who were killed by Hamas on the 7th of October when they were guilty of…
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]
What use is Burgon’s motion (now with 65 signatories he told us this evening in Huddersfield) if he is not prepared to publicly challenge the disgraceful genocide- enabling coward Keir Starmer?
Hurray, finally LP members have taken up the cause of Palestinian rights, after too many years doing nothing.
Shame on Keir Starmer. There will be no road to a resolution of the conflict without an input from the West, above all the United States, so it is important to keep the public pressure on every Western government for a cease fire. Yesterday, in the Egypt Summit, the UN, Western government representatives, the PLO authority and some Arab countries, calls were made for everyone to examine our humanity, to see the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Unfortunately, this call has not been heeded by governments in the West. I think that is this respect, Ireland has been the exception.
Those who represent us have been bought and paid for, by the Israel lobby, along with the MSM and Toilet papers
Out of interest is the Archbishop of Canterbury still one of the biggest supporters of Israels right to slaughter innocent men, women and children
The police said 100,000 at the London demo, the organisers said 300,000. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that when it comes to demonstrations the police can’t count.
The only truthful sentence uttered by Starmer, “I support Zionism without qualification”.
He was desperate to please the Israeli Lobbyist that gave him £50.000 towards his Leadership campaign and the Board of Deputies.
His latest speech, which was almost certainly written by someone else, was worded in such a way to help him recover from his undying support for Israel stance.
I hope this becomes his eventual downfall, his Dictatorial method of dominating what the policies of the Party will be, has turned the Party into a full on Capitalist Party.
God Bless the many hundreds of thousands up and down the Country that have taken to the streets to protest against the Genocide of Palestinians by Israel.
Everyone should be aware of Craig Mokhiber. Who for 30 years was Director for Human Rights at the U.N. In his resignation letter which is online. he states, among many other condemnations, that Israeli action in Gaza is “A text book genocide”
It would be interesting to visualize a discussion between Mokhiber and Starmer. Perhaps Starmer would argue that Mokhiber had only 30 years experience! Starmer would probably jump straight to his default position and accuse Mokhiber of “antisemitism”