Jeremy Corbyn recently gave an interview to journalist Matt Kennard which was eye opening, but not exactly surprising. In the interview, Corbyn spoke of his time in charge of the Labour Party and the pressure placed on him to unequivocally support Israel’s military:
“During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party committee, they confronted me and said, ‘Will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?”
Yes, Corbyn was expected to pledge his allegiance to a foreign power in order to be accepted as Labour leader, and because he refused, all the smartest people decided he was a traitor.
Let’s take the opportunity to unpack what this all means:
Israel is imposing a decades-long occupation and a 17-year siege of Palestine that are illegal under international law, yet Israel’s stranglehold on our politics is such that a party leader is not allowed to disagree with Israel when its military is breaking international law.
The leader of a political party is expected to comply with Israel’s wishes and automatically back their military actions, even when they are committing genocide and leaving a country uninhabitable. Our leaders are supposed to choose support for Israel over support for international law. Anyone who thinks that Labour and the Democrats are somehow lesser evils should remember the only leaders to stand up to Israel in recent decades were Thatcher and Reagan. It’s all been downhill ever since, no matter who is in charge.
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The first question you need to ask yourself is why does any country have such leverage over our political system? If someone in the UK said they automatically supported Hamas or Putin’s Russia, they would be burned at the stake. Therefore, the next question we need to ask is why should we automatically support any military action being carried out by any country? Even countries we like can be wrong.
I wouldn’t automatically support the military action of my own country, let alone a country with such an abysmal human rights record as Israel - a record that includes mass starvation, sexual violence and torture, child abuse and child murder, the use of human shields, public executions and burying people alive in mass graves.
An IDF tank unloaded 335 bullets into the car that 6-year-old Hind Rajab was in just 13-23 metres away, killing her family. Paramedics gave the IDF coordinates so they could rescue the sole survivor and the IDF blew up the rescuers, leaving the little girl to die, so naturally Israel denied its forces were in the area. An investigation found Israel lied (shock) and it was inconceivable the soldiers did not know children were in that car, but a Labour leader is expected to automatically support a military that fires 335 bullets at 6 year olds.
Israeli soldiers recently tied a Palestinian to the bonnet of a Jeep so they could use him as a human shield, but Labour leaders are supposed to support violence against Palestinians because Hamas allegedly uses human shields. The IDF just slaughtered another 14 civilians at Al-Mawasi refugee camp, but our leaders have to support soldiers who shell refugee camps because Hamas targets civilians. IDF soldiers just posed for pictures with the walking sticks of the civilians they slaughtered with big grins on their faces, but our leaders must automatically support these soldiers because the other side are barbarians who don’t respect human life.
The reality is our politicians are expected to stand up for Israeli civilians, but they are not allowed to oppose violence against Palestinian civilians. Just imagine for a moment that Corbyn took the easier path and said, “Yes, I will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes”. The anti-Semitism smears would have stopped in a heartbeat. Those smears were never about protecting Jews from anti-Semitism, they were always about protecting Israel’s war machine.
As Corbyn pointed out: “The pressure of the Israeli government on the Labour Party is huge”. This pressure has given us a situation where Labour is controlled by the most corruptible individuals and anyone who is determined to do the right thing is driven out of the party. 73 Labour MPs are members of Labour Friends of Israel, an organisation that bribes Labour MPs like AIPAC bribes the US congress.
Here is a list of LFI’s bribes, sorry donations:
It’s worth noting Labour Friends of Israel describes itself as a pro-Israel lobby group, but refuses to say who funds it. Jeremy Corbyn says he presumes it’s funded by the Israeli state. I wonder if there is any correlation between the politicians who take money from the Israeli lobby and the politicians who attack other politicians for not representing Israel’s interests? Hmm, tough one…
Given people with such extreme views have such leverage over our politicians, you can see why Sir Keir Starmer has been so terrified of criticising Israel. It explains why he expelled Jeremy Corbyn and other supporters of Palestine. Our political establishment has been captured by a brutal foreign power who gave themselves cover by labelling any attempt to discuss what was taking place an “anti-Semitic trope”. Falling for this trick costs human lives, so don’t.
Even media outlets that position themselves as being outside the mainstream have been captured by Zionists. Briahna Joy Gray has revealed The Hill would not allow renowned Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein to appear on its Rising show because he is a “holocaust denier”. Finkelstein has often spoken of how his parents survived the holocaust and how this shaped him as a human being, but because Finkelstein does not go along with Zionist group think, he is a holocaust denier somehow.
Like Corbyn, if Finkelstein came out tomorrow and said, “I automatically support any military action Israel undertakes,” the smears would stop and he would be invited onto every TV station to explain why he now supports Israel’s genocide. He would be treated like a hero and his words would be held up as proof that everyone who opposes genocide is a bad person, and yes, that includes the Israelis who oppose genocide.
Even if you’re an Israeli Jew, you can be smeared as an anti-Semite as historian Dr Lee Mordechai found out the moment he dared use the word “genocide”. Mordechai explained his hesitance to return home to Israel to speak out, but said: “I felt that this is what I'm here for, right? This is what I'm getting paid for. I'm paid to be an academic, to do scholarship and to try to improve society.”
If you’re a professor of history at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who criticises the military actions of your own government and sees telling the truth as a “service” to your own people, this is apparently no different from announcing that you hate all Jews. The only way to not hate all Jews is to support anything the Israeli military does. I often disagree with the decisions of my government. This means I hate all Christians, even the one I’m married to, because I don’t automatically support the UK’s military actions. I’m learning something new about myself every day.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
on June 24, 2024, 4:21 pm