How Many More Days of Solidarity Must There be Before There is Justice for Palestine?
Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine, addressed an online briefing held to mark the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29th. You can read his contribution or watch the event in full below:
How many more days of solidarity must there be before there is justice for Palestine? Year after year, the UN and most of the world passes motions and expresses solidarity. But if you are a Palestinian in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the often-forgotten refugee camps – not only does nothing change, it gets worse. Israeli violence and expansionism are not just tolerated, it is supplied with the means, money and support to continue unabated.
The UN’s excellent and much-abused OCHA produces regular bulletins detailing the facts – the number of deaths and injuries. The incursions, the settler violence, the impact of the siege – on and on, month after month, for decades. The most recent bulletin details a huge spike in settler violence coinciding with the olive harvest. Since the occupation, the Israelis have destroyed over a million olive trees as a deliberate policy to undermine one of the few remaining bits of its economy still alive.
It is not a question of facts. It is a matter of willpower. The war on Gaza continues unabated – MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine) has produced a graphic showing how every single hospital in Gaza has been affected by the Israeli attacks, by its military onslaught. Not accidentally, but targeted.
There are now over 2 million people starving. Global inaction cannot be explained by normal political inertia or by Western guilt that dictates uncritical support for the Israeli state and everything it does. Visualizing Palestine, in its latest graphic, describes it as APR – Anti-Palestinian Racism.
A racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, dehumanizes or defames Palestinians and their supporters.” It denies, distorts or silences Palestinian narratives – as was seen most recently with the distortions surrounding the attacks on Palestinian supporters by Maccabi fans in Amsterdam.
The response to the ICC ruling by the US and others that it equates Israel with terrorism, is based on the notion that a Palestinian life is not worth the same as an Israeli life, that an Israeli murderer is not really a murderer. That somehow history can justify current war crimes, more insidiously that Palestinians are somehow lesser beings. Israeli propaganda seeks to dehumanise them at every opportunity. If Palestinians were regarded and treated as equal human beings by Israel and the West – the colonial war on Palestine and the occupation would have been over long ago.
The ICC ruling and the issuing of arrest warrants is a very important step – it makes it harder for Western Governments to ignore Israel’s actions. Signatories of the Convention are under an obligation to detain for trial those identified as war criminals by the ICC.
Where does that leave the Labour Party and the UK Government? Whilst we all suffer from the Trump Blues following the US election, the arrest warrants should provide a golden opportunity for Labour to put clear water between itself and US foreign policy.
However, it has succumbed to Anti-Palestinian racism, as much as both the Republican and Democratic establishments have in the States. Many years ago Engels described them not as parties, but “gangs of political speculators”. That is what the Labour Party has become on Palestine – a coterie of donors, officials and advisers prepared to gamble with people’s lives for the sake of political advantage and power. And their actions, which they would fervently deny, are fundamentally based on a racist view of Palestinians. They treat and regard them differently because of who they are.
Ignoring the hundreds of thousands, now a year later millions of people who have marched in support of Palestine, Labour has placed itself and the determination of its policies “beyond popular reach”. Immune to the views of its members, the public, global opinion or international law.
Our challenge on this UN Day of Solidarity is to commit to bringing Labour and this Government back within popular reach. When I was able to visit Palestine, in greeting you warmly Palestinians would say politely – nice to see you and what are you doing in your own country.
We can’t de-elect Trump, but we can focus on trying to make Labour and the UK an independent voice for Palestinians. Not an easy challenge, Israel in losing global support, has cowed the political establishment into silence – not out of fear, but self-interest.
On the back of the massive support for Palestine the past year has shown, we need to build inside and outside the Labour Party, rejuvenated within the trade union movement, on the streets and in the churches a solidarity movement and alliance capable of bringing down the political walls of indifference, of bringing the Labour Party back within popular reach, capable of responding to and listening to what the people say.
Social media can help, but we need to be apostles of the Palestinian story – going out to friends, family, work colleagues, to anyone who will listen, telling the Palestinian story. In the US the JVP – Jewish Voice for Peace, have produced toolkits about how to talk to family and friends about Israeli genocide and the demand for an arms embargo.
This is a conversation we all need to have. Whilst Netanyahu and his Government are trying to silence Haaretz and its critics at home and abroad – we need to speak up. We need to transform Labour into a voice for peace, rather than being a supporter of war.
- The UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People online briefing was hosted by Labour & Palestine and Arise Festival on 29 November. You can watch it in full here.
- You can follow Labour & Palestine on Facebook and Twitter/X.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
No comments:
Post a Comment