Right, so yesterday we saw some of the biggest strike action the country has seen in years and the leader of the Labour Party, the leader of the labour movement supposedly, the party built by some of those same striking trade unions said precisely – nothing about it all day. Not one note of solidarity, support, nothing. But do you know what he absolutely did have time for yesterday? Defending the state of Israel. Again questions arise over who exactly Starmer’s loyalties lie with, when ordinary workers fighting for their livelihoods, the underfunding of the services they work in, the future damage to our economic prosperity that such underfunding represents goes ignored, in favour of defending a foreign state.
But not only was he defending a foreign state, he took to task one of his own MP’s in order to do so.
At PMQ’s yesterday Labour MP Kim Johnson, the MP for Liverpool Riverside, Liverpool’s first black MP, stood up and asked this question to Rishi Sunak:
‘Since the election of the fascist Israeli government in December last year, there has been an increase in human rights violations against Palestinian civilians including children. So can the Prime Minister tell us how he is challenging what Amnesty and other human rights organisations are referring to as an apartheid state?’
That’s a question that doesn’t mince its words isn’t it? It was absolutely bang on. Sunak, weak as he ever is, bleated back that she ‘failed to mention the horrific attacks inside Israel, and it is important in this matter to remain calm and urge all sides to strive for peace’.
Well, as much as a two state solution is inherently a desirable outcome, it doesn’t seem particularly realistic, when the Israeli state has a long and ongoing history of taking land from Palestinians and treating them as worth less, inherently the sign of an apartheid state, it is exactly what we saw in apartheid South Africa in the 1980’s when white supremacists treated blacks as second class citizens and the world took aim at it and slapped embargoes down upon them. Why is Israel different?
Sunak’s weakness aside, if there’s anyone we’d expect to take even less action on the Israel Palestine issue than him, its Zionist without qualification Keir Starmer, Kim Johnson’s boss and he was not happy with her question. The man who had no time for people protesting about their jobs and conditions around the country definitely had time to seemingly haul Kim Johnson over the coals, because she was out not long after to issue this statement in the Commons:
‘I would like to apologise unreservedly for the intemperate language I used during PMQ’s. I was wrong to use the term fascist in relation to the Israeli government and understand why this was particularly insensitive given the history of the State of Israel. And while there are far-right elements in the government, I recognise the use of the term was wrong. I would also like to apologise for the use of the term ‘apartheid state’. While I was quoting accurately Amnesty’s description, I recognise this is insensitive and would like to withdraw it.’
It was one of those rare moments of bravery from a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MP’s to call this out, especially with Starmer as leader, but it didn’t last long. For it to take just hours to force Johnson to return to the Commons and issue that public apology, we can only surmise what Starmer mighthave said to her, not least I imagine the threat of expulsion from the party and the loss of her seat if she didn’t comply. Keir Starmer, the member of parliament for Holborn and St Pancras and Israel.
Sure the UK parliament speaks out about the atrocities in that part of the world time after time, but it always stops short of overtly blaming Israel for it.
Last December as Kim Johnson stated in her question, the overseer of much of the atrocities committed against Palestinians in recent years, Benjamin Netanyahu, managed to cobble together a coalition to put him back in power, after he had been deposed for the previous 18 months. He did so by entering a coalition with the far right – yes, there are parties even worse than Netanyahu’s Likud Party out there and he’s now governing with them so you can only imagine how much worse things are getting and are going to get. The leader of this far right party, the Religious Zionist Party, is a guy called Bezalel Smotrich. He’s so far right, that when he visited the UK last February the Board of Deputies of British Jews tweeted him to go back where he came from. Yeah, he’s too much even for them! I actually agree with them in this rare instance, because Smotrich is really something else.
He has said of Arab lawmakers in Israel that they are here by mistake and only exist because the ‘job’ wasn’t finished on them in 1948, the war that saw some 700,000 Palestinians flee or get expelled from their lands, the start of where we are at now. He has boasted of being a proud fascist and homophobe and given he is now Israel’s Finance Minister, Kim Johnson’s words would seem wholly accurate by Smotrich’s own admission. In fact he’s such a flagrant homophobe that in response to a Gay Pride march in Jerusalem in 2006, he organised a beast parade, where people marched goats and donkeys through the streets in mockery. He regards homosexuals as abnormal, in response to a fatal stabbing at the 2015 Gay Pride march, he simply referred to the march as an abomination and a beast parade again. He supports segregation of Jews and Arabs – apartheid by any other name – making the excuse that why should one woman lie down and give birth next to another, when in 20 years the Arab woman’s baby may try to kill the Jewish woman’s child? Where Palestinians arm themselves with sticks and stones, Smotrich advocated for a shoot to kill policy in return. He actually wanted the Defence job as part of this coalition, even Netanyahu seemingly couldn’t allow that, preferring to put him in charge of the nations purse strings instead.
Amnesty have weighed in on this as well, they have concluded upon the weight of evidence they’ve compiled into a 128 page account that Israel very much is an apartheid state. They aren’t alone in speaking out on this, other countries have, groups such as B’Tselem have spoken out on this too, publications such as Al-Jazeera and Middle East Eye have used the same language as Kim Johnson in regards to the Israeli government now in place and members of it. Other publications have called Starmer out before on the issue too. He is on record as saying that his Labour Party will always stand up for Israel, that he is a Zionist himself and despite lying about whatever he pretty much said about everything else he's ever stood for, on this he has stuck to his guns, so much so Tribune magazine last year eviscerated him for dismissing that Amnesty International Report and refusing to recognise any of the contents of it. Vast human rights violations happening against Palestinians, a global human rights organisation produces a harrowing, detailed report and the supposed human rights lawyer Keir Starmer, just dismisses it because he is on the side of Israel therefore is not by default on the side of Palestinians. It makes you wonder what else he willfully ignores and will continue to if he ever sees power. Think about it, a human rights lawyer has just made one of his own MP’s apologise for quoting a human rights organisation. How sick is that? Parts of his own party have criticised him too. Momentum, the pro-Corbyn organisation which seems a bit at sea without him now, have condemned Starmer on this, calling his actions an outrageous abuse of power. Even his own preferred Jewish advocates the Jewish Labour Movement have described Netanyahu’s administration as being far right – I don’t suppose they’ll be made to issue an apology though. This comes a week after Holocaust Memorial Day where Starmer threatened to expel a Holocaust Survivor if he dared speak about the Holocaust at a memorial event because he’d proscribed the hosts from his party. The gentleman in question resigned over this and solidarity to him for that.
Defenders of Starmer’s position were there though and to nobody’s surprise whatsoever the Barking Dame, Margaret Hodge said of Kim Johnson that she betrayed the legacy of her predecessor Louise Ellman, another Jewish MP, another Labour Friend of Israel, another anti-Corbyn, apparent right wing defender of the indefensible, just like Madge.
Keir Starmer has shown himself to be an authoritarian apologist for what is now an even more far right government. His Labour could be even more right wing than the Tory administration we’re seeing now and the way he’s going and the enforcement he’s dictating with regards to comments on Israel show this is not somebody interested in a two state solution, but one that will more likely side with the aggressors against the aggrieved. His moves against a member of his party here regarding her statement on the Israeli administration, could in theory be forced upon all of us under a Starmer led government. Human Rights? Starmer would have some nerve to even bring the topic up now.