Open letter to Sir Keir Starmer from 4 British Palestinians

JVL Introdution

We’ve been asked to publicise this letter from four Palestinian members of the Labour Party and we’re very happy to do so.

It calls Keir Starmer and the Party to account for their utter failure to call Israel to account with regard to respect for international law.

Two extracts:

“None of these actions are justified by the killing of civilians by Hamas.  We teach our children that two wrongs don’t make a right but this simple message seems to be beyond you…”

and

“In effect, you are aiming to silence Palestinian voices, including the estimated 20,000 British Palestinians living in Britain.”

OPEN LETTER TO SIR KEIR STARMER, THE LABOUR SHADOW CABINET AND THE GENERAL  SECRETARY OF THE LABOUR PARTY

To: Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party and of the Opposition
The Labour Shadow Cabinet
David Evans, General Secretary of the Labour Party

Dated: 18^th October 2023

Dear Sir Keith Starmer, Shadow Cabinet and General Secretary,

As four British Palestinian Labour Party members, we are horrified by your refusal to condemn Israel’s current indiscriminate bombing, imposition of a complete siege and planned land invasion of Gaza as war crimes. You appear to be supporting, if not encouraging, Israel in its genocidal actions against Palestinians, especially those in Gaza.

Rather than calling for an immediate ceasefire and lifting of the siege, you keep parroting ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, a conveniently non-specific phrase.

Is killing more than 1000 children (to date) Israel exercising its right to defend itself? Is cutting off electricity, water, food and fuel following a 16-year siege so that we are on the brink of mass starvation and a collapse of Gaza’s health system examples of Israel defending itself? Is telling 1.1 million people to move from north to south Gaza and then bombing them when they have moved, a legitimate example of self-defence?

Or are they war crimes?

None of these actions are justified by the killing of civilians by Hamas.  We teach our children that two wrongs don’t make a right but this simple message seems to be beyond you. Instead, you encourage Israel on an eye-for-an-eye revenge path which will only lead to more violence and deaths on both sides. This is not the way forward to peace.

You also have had nothing to say about the Palestinian villagers in the West Bank who are being harassed and driven from their homes by armed Israeli settlers with the Israeli army standing by to crush any Palestinian resistance. The number of Palestinian fatalities there this year had exceeded 250 before Hamas’s attack on 7^th October. Since then, these attacks have increased with at least three villages having been cleared//near-cleared and demolished, and an increase in the body count of more than 50 in a week.

Your statements and actions on the current tragic situation in Palestine-Israel are dramatically opposed to the values of peace, justice, equality and humanity that the Labour Party is supposed to uphold. You have badly damaged the reputation, perhaps fatally, of a Party that claims to support people fighting for freedom from occupation and oppression.

Even in terms of the base morals of what needs to be done electorally to win power, your actions are irrational. Even if you win the next general election, you will have alienated minority ethnic communities that identify with the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

To add insult to injury, you have now banned elected Labour representatives and branches from attending protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people and said no motions can be discussed which oppose the leadership’s position on the current situation in the Middle East. The leadership’s position is totally at odds with that adopted at Labour Party conference last year.

In effect, you are aiming to silence Palestinian voices, including the estimated 20,000 British Palestinians living in Britain. And you are telling us that we can’t explain to fellow Labour Party members or the wider public how Israel in 1948/9 denied our father the right of return from studying in Britain back to Nazareth, where he was born and grew up, because he was an Arab, not Jewish but a Christian. This was not  an isolated incident but the policy that was applied to around 750,000 Palestinian refugees in the same years, often using brutal force, and a policy that continues to this day despite UN resolutions calling for the right of return of refugees.

You are saying that we cannot explain how our Palestinian relatives are discriminated against and are facing threats of ethnic cleansing. You are saying that we cannot argue for support for the non-violent BDS campaign which argues for Boycotts, Disinvestment and Sanctions to be applied to Israel until it ends the occupation and dismantles the Apartheid Wall, gives Palestinian citizens of Israel equal rights and supports the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

We understand that your policies have created an internal Party crisis with many Labour Councillors resigning or threatening resignation. We, however, will not resign, adopting the Palestinian tradition of steadfastness (sumud), and will fightback for Labour to return to the principles of internationalism, anti-racism, equality for all humans, anti-colonialism and choosing peace over war. We will work to have you removed from the leadership of the Party unless you genuinely return to these principles. Even if you expel us, we will continue to fight for Palestinian rights, for the only sustainable peace – peace with justice and equal rights for all who live in Palestine-Israel – and against Israel’s policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

We would appreciate an answer to our letter.

Yours in the hope that you can rediscover your humanity,

Alderman Dorothea Khamis – North Durham CLP
Dr Hanna Khamis – Warwick & Leamington CLP
Chris Khamis – Labour International, formerly Birmingham Perry Barr CLP
Tareq Khamis – Luton North CLP