Responding to the unfolding horror in Israel and Gaza, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:
"Our first thoughts are with the hundreds of innocent victims and their families who are faced with the devastating and escalating violence - most of whom have an overriding desire to live in peace.
“The Green Party calls for an immediate end to the violence in Israel and Palestine. The targeting of civilians is an outrageous breach of international law and is unacceptable under all circumstances.
"We urge the international community to take immediate steps to protect civilian life and infrastructure from attack, and to launch immediate humanitarian relief efforts.
"The long absence of a meaningful political dialogue and peace process has created a vacuum, which those who offer violence as a solution fill. The pathway to ending these waves of violence and bringing about a long term political settlement must begin with an end to illegal occupation.
"The UN Security Council, of which the UK is a permanent member, must act to prevent the spread of the conflict to neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Iran. They have so far failed to agree any new political initiative to address the fundamental causes of these latest acts of violence. For the sake of thousands of people on both sides in this conflict, they urgently need to do so.”
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Caroline Lucas:
'Violence is never the answer. I condemn Hamas for targeting civilians, the brutal Israeli military response, the illegal occupation of Palestine & siege of Gaza.The international community must hold all to account for human rights abuses & renew push for just political settlement' - https://nitter.net/CarolineLucas/status/1710686907829493762#m
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Sian Berry:
'Deeply saddened at violence in Israel-Palestine. Attacks on civilians are never justified.
The international community must take urgent steps to hold Hamas & IDF to account
Whelps, they tried non-violence - it didn't work. This is all they've got left. I also take issue with the depiction of Israeli civilians as 'innocent'. Can you live as an illegal settler on somebody else's land, drinking their water, eating their food, making money off the spoils of occupation, protected by the armed goons of the Israeli gangster state while the original inhabitants are kept in enforced poverty in a prison subject to regular genocidal attack - and still be considered 'innocent'? It's patronising bullshit to insist on nonviolence from the Palestinians from the safety of the imperial centres (also benefiting from the subjugation of Palestine). Worse: it's an attempt to put them back in their box when they might have found a strategy that finally works for them - though this remains to be seen...
No cause on earth justifies the slaughter of civilians, and Hamas' sadistic murder of partygoers and kibbutzniks was an outrage.
The same basic commitment to civilian life in Gaza, or indeed anywhere else, should apply. It does not.
If asked, the vast majority of people will answer that human life is of equal worth regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.
In practice, many do not actually believe this.
Some deaths matter far more than others: a hierarchy of death. Palestinians are near the bottom.
This is the inevitable consequence of occupation and colonisation.
When European states subjugated their colonies, they rationalised that subjugation by stripping their colonial subjects of their humanity.
They were lesser, inferior people, and thus could be treated as such.
However this current nightmarish episode ends, there is only one certainty: far more Palestinians will die and be maimed.
This has been an absolute iron rule and certainty in decades of occupation.
So far this year, 248 Palestinian civilians, including 40 children, have been reportedly killed by Israeli forces and settlers.
There has been almost no interest in any of these deaths because Palestinian life is simply not deemed to be of any worth or importance.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem have all concluded that Israel operates a policy of Apartheid.
Apartheid functions by depriving its victims of any common humanity: the dehumanisation of Palestinians sustains it.
Half of Gaza's population are kids.
Gaza is an open air prison, subjected to a 16 year long blockade from air, land and sea.
80% of its population rely on international humanitarian aid to survive.
The conditions there are self-evidently intolerable.
When the Israeli government orders a total siege of Gaza, with "no electricity, no food, no fuel", justifying collective punishment - a war crime under international law - on the grounds "we are fighting human animals", they are adopting the rhetoric of genocide.
Culpability for the atrocities which will undoubtedly be committed in the coming days, weeks and months will be shared with Western governments.
Israel is their ally, armed and backed by them - just as the future of the Palestinian people has been disregarded by them.
Some will try to absolve themselves of cheering on this bloodbath by simply blaming Hamas, and claiming that Hamas is responsible for all the coming bloodshed.
No. Every atrocity committed by the Israeli state is a choice, and their bullets and bombs will slaughter civilians.
All of this will end only when Jews and Arabs alike have security and control over their own futures.
The problem remains that only Israel's security is understood and respected. There is no official widespread acceptance that Palestinians deserve security of any sort.
At moments like this, defending common humanity becomes controversial, deemed even extreme: that Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives are of equal worth, and that every death is to be equally mourned.
Truth and context will be dismissed as apologism.
Well, that makes it more important to defend humanity and truth, and that means opposing Israel's Western-backed onslaught on Gaza, opposing every civilian death, and demanding a lasting peace which accepts Palestinian freedom and Israelis' security cannot be divorced.
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Monbiot silent for now. Corbyn had this, which was mercilessly attacked in the comments from the usual suspects: 'The unfolding events in Israel and Palestine are deeply alarming.
We need an immediate ceasefire and urgent de-escalation.
What if the 'route out' of this is further escalation, the involvement of Hezbollah, Iran, maybe Syria, maybe Russia, to finally subdue the racist pariah state of Israel and force it to make concessions to Palestinians and the imprisoned population of Gaza? In the absence of other options and the total failure of every other path tried so far due to Israeli intransigence, I would say pacifistic calls like this are deeply unhelpful, and even undermine the ability of Palestinians to resist effectively and achieve some measure of justice. Following the advice of well-intentioned, complacent western liberals has got them precisely nowhere for decades. In fact it has made their situation worse. So maybe the liberals should stfu for a change and let the Palestinians decide their own course of action.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Desmond Tutu - "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the
If violence is never the answer, what pray, are the Palestinian people supposed to do to end the occupation of their land and force the Israelis to leave it? Are they meant to renounce violence to reclaim their territory faced with a militarized state that is determind to use violence and its huge army to keep the land they've taken from the Palesinians?
If the Israelis are allowed to keep land they acquired through warfare, is the West, the Liberals, saying that the Palestinians aren't allowed to use warfare to get it back? If they are, then why is Israel so special?
Surely, something must be done? If liberals and the West don't approve of terrorism, then provide the Palestinians with proper weapons; fighter jets, tanks, missiles, drones, all modern weapons they need to confront Israel on a level playing field. The hypocrisy of the West knows no bounds.
What the West and liberals reallt mean, is that they think the Palestinians should just acknowledge the State of Israel as legitimate and surrender their land forever and exist as second-class people, not even citizens with equal rights, in their own stolen country. And when the Palestinian prisoners break out of their ghetto prison and lash out in anger and vengence, they are condemned for it.
Re: Desmond Tutu - "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the