ZIONIST TRUMPERS

The Shift: Nearly 60% of Israelis say they’d vote for Trump

Former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump remains a popular figure in Israel. A recent poll found that 58% of Israelis would vote for Trump, while just 25% would vote for Harris.

By Michael Arria 

 September 17, 2024 
MONDOWEISS

Donald Trump speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump remains a popular figure in Israel.

A recent Channel 12 poll found that 58% of Israelis would vote for Donald Trump, while just 25% would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. 17% said they didn’t know who they would choose.

Israel was one of the only countries in the world where Trump maintained favorable approval ratings throughout his presidency.

“A recurring theme on this site is that Americans have no idea of Israel’s real character, a rightwing society with a strong militarist authoritarian streak,” wrote Phil Weiss and James North at the site in 2020, shortly before Trump lost to Biden. “Israel supporters don’t want that picture to get out in the U.S., because they will surely lose bipartisan political support for the $4 billion we send Israel every year, and the complete impunity we provide for Israel’s human rights violations. Israel needs to be as American as cherry pie.”

At the time Weiss and North were reporting on a poll showing that Trump was backed more than three to one by Israeli Jews.

This week Trump will give two speeches to pro-Israel audiences.

First, he’ll speak to a group of Jewish supporters in DC about countering antisemitism.

Jewish Insider’s Matt Kassel reports that Orthodox businessman Yehuda Kaploun and his business partner Ed Russo will host the event.

A source told Kassel that the event will allow Trump to speak with Jewish leaders “about his plans to combat the wave of antisemitism and antisemitic behavior and enforce the laws for religious liberty to all.”

Miriam Adelson is expected to attend. The GOP megadonor is reportedly set to spend more than $100 million to elect Trump in November.

In DC Trump will also address the Israeli American Council’s (IAC) national convention. The IAC is led by lan Carr, who served as the envoy to combat antisemitism under Trump. Its largest donor is Adelson.

U.S. Troops Leaving Iraq

Earlier this month Reuters reported that U.S. and Iraqi negotiators had agreed on a deal to pull hundreds of troops out of Iraq in 2025 with the last remaining U.S. soldiers leaving Iraq by 2026.

During the recent presidential debate Kamala Harris claimed that there are no U.S. troops in active combat zones today. That is demonstrably untrue.

Last year USA Today published data culled from Brown University’s Cost of War project. The paper found that the U.S. military carried out counterterrorism operations in 78 countries from 2021 to 2023.

From the report:


The findings cover the first three years of the Biden administration and show the range of globe-spanning operations where U.S. troops have engaged in direct combat, launched drone attacks, patrolled borders, gathered intelligence and trained other nations’ militaries and security forces.

The scope of the operations is partly determined by the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF − and a 2002 measure authorizing the war in Iraq. For more than two decades, these authorizations have been used to justify U.S. counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries. Opponents of these laws − who label them “zombie war” authorizations − such as Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., say they go far beyond the scope of their original intention. Multiple attempts to repeal them are now stalled in Congress.

At Responsible Statecraft Christopher Mott wonders why U.S. troops can’t be pulled out of Syria along with the soldiers leaving Iraq.

Mott:


Next door to Iraq is Syria, a country whose own brutal and long-running civil war has also seen over a decade of U.S. intervention, from the ill-conceived Operation Timber Sycamore, the largest known C.I.A. arm and equip program in history, to direct U.S. occupation via bases of significant parts of the east of the country. Meanwhile, a long coordinated regime change campaign targeting President Bashir al-Assad failed after exacerbating the situation on the ground.

Operation Timber Sycamore was later exposed as having helped a rebel movement that was disproportionately Islamist and often linked to informal or even explicit alliances with al-Qaida affiliates. The goals of these movements often included the imposition of a theocratic government and the forced conversion or even extermination of sectarian minority groups. Barely more than a decade after 9/11, the U.S. was undermining its own self-proclaimed “War on Terror” in order to conduct regime change.

Out of this chaotic mess would come the rise of ISIS, something unlikely to have gotten so much traction without all the non-state actors that grew up in the wake of both Iraq and Syrian wars.

There is virtually no public discussion on this issue from the presidential candidates, congressional members, or mainstream media.

The occupation of Palestine is not intractable: The way forward is obvious

17th September 2024Leave a Commenton The occupation of Palestine is not intractable: The way forward is obvious

“Contrary to the impossibilist narrative that nothing can be done, the occupation of Palestine is not intractable; it can be ended; it is not an immoveable impasse.”

By Declan Kearney MLA

In August 2023, and just nine weeks before the attack by Palestinian fighters which led directly to the start of the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza, this blog noted the unprecedented divisions and contradictions which had become exposed in Israeli society. 

The catalyst was a culmination of anti-democratic decisions taken throughout 2023 by Netanyahu and his coalition partners; widely perceived then as the most reactionary government in the history of the Israeli state. Today that perception is now accepted as an irrefutable fact.  My assertion in that article was that the pragmatists and realists in Israel must finally conclude there is no alternative to finding a genuine democratic settlement with the Palestinian people and their leaders. Until that happens the implications of maintaining the illegal occupation of Palestine will fester like a cancer in Israeli society. The ethnic cleansing, apartheid system and settler colonialism inflicted against Palestinians have spawned a fascist-like ideology, which is now personified by Netanyahu’s coalition. 

The question I posed last year was whether Israel could eventually evolve from the pre-August 2023 turmoil into a liberal democratic state and accept the national democratic rights of all Palestinians. The ongoing war in Gaza is the fifth which Israel has mounted since 2007. Young men and women in their late teens and early twenties have grown up knowing nothing else other than relentless siege and successive air and ground offensives. The Gaza Strip has not only become the world’s largest open-air prison, it has also become a permanent war zone. And all of that, alongside the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and denial of Palestinian national self determination. 

This is the objective reality and context which culminated in the attack against Israel on 7 October 2023. Netanyahu’s response was to unleash a genocidal war throughout the Gaza Strip, with the camouflage of two military objectives – the destruction of Hamas, and the release of the Israeli prisoners taken captive. After almost twelve months neither objective has been achieved.  

Instead, a systematic genocide has been conducted, alongside a bombing campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable. The ensuing humanitarian catastrophe has caused the spread of serious communicable diseases, including the re-emergence of Polio. The hospital and medical infrastructure have been virtually decimated.  The loss of life and human suffering is unparalleled. More than 40,000 have been killed, and thousands more dead bodies are buried beneath the rubble. Entire family networks have been wiped out. 

New consequential crises are unfolding as a result. An estimated 150,000 Gazans have evacuated to Egypt, with over 90,000 living in dire poverty and with inadequate medical support. UNWRA does not possess sufficient funding to address the cost of living, accommodation and medical needs of these evacuees. There is no longer a vocabulary to properly describe the barbarity, horror and ruthlessness of this genocidal war. Although it unmasked the moral hypocrisy of the Western powers who give unconditional support to Israel and has even forced some to nuance their public positions, the fanatical aggression of Netanyahu’s government remains intact.  He, and those who support this war are clearly out of control. Whilst the USA and other Western governments continue to fund and arm Israel’s murder machine in Gaza, they will consider themselves to be untouchable. 

Netanyahu has assessed that, for as long as the war continues, he can avoid criminal proceedings and potential conviction and imprisonment. But he also shares the same hate-filled Zionist ideology as the other fanatics in his cabinet – and upon whom he depends on to remain in power. Every attempt to negotiate an end to this war has been subverted by the so-called war cabinet. That reality was brought sharply into focus by the assassination of Hamas leader and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in July. 

The assassination of Hezbollah’s senior commander Fuad Shukr, in the same period was an action clearly designed to cause broader regional destabilisation. A similar calculus has motivated the widespread military incursion into the West Bank, in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, Tubas and Hebron, during the last two weeks. The objectives are to cause maximum loss of life; wholesale destruction of infrastructure and utilities; to demoralise the local population; crush popular resistance; and, to destroy any notion of a ‘two state settlement’ and Palestinian statehood. At the same time, the annexation of Palestinian land, theft of property, and settler expansion, is being accelerated. Netanyahu’s offensive in the West Bank is a gradual extension of the genocidal war in Gaza with the same aim of implementing ethnic cleansing through collective punishment. 

Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority is being further hollowed out. It appears incapable of providing any effective strategic or political response, with inevitable repercussions for its leadership standing within the Palestinian civic society, and particularly among the youth. And yet, a tipping point for the Zionist strategy may now be coalescing. A newly emerging, tenuous, international consensus calling for a permanent ceasefire has begun to form. The primary factor influencing this is undoubtedly the moral courage of South Africa in taking its legal action under the Genocide Convention against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

The decision by Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise the State of Palestine has disrupted the attempt by some to insinuate monolithic support across the EU for Israel’s war. Obvious tensions have opened up within the US administration. Nuanced calls for a permanent ceasefire are indicators of that, echoed most notably with recent interventions by Vice President Kamala Harris. And although the British decision to discontinue sales of some weaponry to Israel will not materially change its military capacity, it has a symbolic significance within the bigger picture. It may well be that Netanyahu and his allies have begun to overplay their hand, and irreversibly so – as extremists and supremacists often do.

However, it is within Israeli society that their ground has most dramatically narrowed. The deaths of the six young captives last week, some of who were listed for release stemming from any prospective prisoner exchange agreement, and scuppered for now by Netanyahu, has resulted in a wave of outrage against his government.  The anti-war and anti-Netanyahu movement has been galvanised like never before. His government has been correctly viewed as the obstacle to a ceasefire, by putting his own self-preservation and messianic anti-Palestinian agenda before the release of captives, and the security of Israel.  

This has now found expression within the war cabinet itself through a very public disagreement between Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant. Former cabinet minister Benny Gantz has also strongly attacked Netanyahu’s failure to prioritise release of the captives. Last Monday popular anger led to an unprecedented general strike, called for by the Israeli trade union movement, and supported by opposition leader Yair Lapid. Since then widespread protests and disruption have continued. 

Although no one is predicting an imminent ceasefire agreement, notwithstanding increased US diplomatic activity, many Israeli Arab and international commentators are describing the political volatility and street demonstrations in Israel as a watershed moment. In the meantime, the Palestinian people cannot wait, they have suffered too much, and for too long. The rising death toll in the West Bank and unimaginable human carnage in Gaza must be ended. 

In addition, there are now 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners who are being subjected to physical and psychological torture. Over 60 prisoners have died in detention since 7 October 2023. The arming and funding of Netanyahu’s murder machine by the USA must be stopped. Comprehensive international economic and political sanctions must be imposed on Israel. If Netanyahu is determined to block a ceasefire agreement, then a price must be exacted with the complete isolation of Israel. His genocidal agenda is driving the Israeli state towards an abyss with devastating consequences. 

At this time, the future security and stability of the state of Israel depends upon the influence of those who are pragmatic and realistic enough to recognise that a lasting and peaceful coexistence must negotiated with the Palestinian people. That, as former US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer recently stated, must be on the basis of full respect for the exercise of Palestinian national self-determination; a permanent end to settler colonial annexation of the West Bank; and a total withdrawal of all Israeli forces and settlements from Palestinian territories.

Contrary to the impossibilist narrative that nothing can be done, the occupation of Palestine is not intractable; it can be ended; it is not an immoveable impasse. The way forward is obvious, and it must be through inclusive dialogue and negotiation. No actor or side can be excluded, and no vetoes can be exercised over who is involved in the process, or the issues to be negotiated. That is how peace settlements are achieved. 

Palestinians must prepare now for the eventual talks process, and the challenges it will present. Consensus on political unity within the entire liberation struggle, including civic society, based upon defined objectives, key areas of common ground, and an agreed national strategy, are essential. This work must commence now. Hard decisions will have to be confronted and resolved. Strategic initiatives, compromises and flexibility will need to be embraced. The Sinn Féin leadership is committed to working with, and walking that road with our Palestinian sisters and brothers, based upon our experience of struggle and developing the Irish peace process. 

Ultimately the interests of the Palestinian people must be paramount. No other international or regional interests should distract from that priority. Today there is a collective responsibility to ensure the seeds of better times take root for the Palestinian people, and that a new dawn of opportunities will be realised. The hopes and dreams of Palestinians must be made a reality. In the words of the poet Fadwa Turqan:

“When the Tree rises up, the branches
Shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
The laughter of the Tree shall leaf beneath the sun
And birds shall return.
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.”

---

• Declan Kearney is an MLA for South Antrim and National Chair of Sinn Féin. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
• This was originally published in the Sinn Féin email bulletin on 13/9/2024.

 

Free speech threatened as journalists treated like terrorists

The rising use of Britain’s anti-terrorism laws against pro-Palestinian voices should worry us all.

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR
18 September 2024

Richard Medhurst (right) is one of several pro-Palestinian journalists facing terror charges. (Photo: Bonzo / Alamy)

The co-founder of a pro-Palestine campaign group will appear at Westminster magistrates court today charged with terrorist offences.

Richard Barnard of Palestine Action is a leading critic of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which is now estimated to have killed more than 40,000 people.

He is accused of “expressing an opinion that is supportive of a proscribed organisation contrary to section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

The charge follows an investigation into a demonstration held in Manchester last October after Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel. He is also accused of encouraging or intending to encourage criminal damage. 

Although Palestine Action has repeatedly broken into Israeli weapons factories in the UK, the terrorism charge against Barnard appears to relate exclusively to speeches he has made.

Barnard was charged on the day counter terrorism police, some wearing balaclavas, raided the house of Sarah Wilkinson, a prominent pro-Palestinian journalist, seized her phone, passport, and electronic equipment.

That was on August 29, at 7.30 in the morning. According to her son Jack, the police said she was under arrest for “content that she has posted online.” She described later how they handcuffed her and “literally ransacked the house”.

An urn in her attic was upturned, scattering her mother’s ashes. “My mother’s urn was desecrated”, she told the Crispin Flintoff Show. She was deprived of her medicine and released, hours later, that evening.

Asked why she was arrested, she said: “To silence people reporting on genocide…because I was connected to people in Gaza. To instil fear”. The police asked for phone numbers of her contacts in Gaza, she said.

‘Thought crimes’

Wilkinson, 61, has been an outspoken critic of Britain’s support for Israel. She regularly broadcast and posted news items and videos on the conflict in Gaza, and writes for MENA Uncensored.

Her bail conditions, since dropped, prevented her from reporting or commenting on the news, but she does not know what further action will be taken against her.

A few days earlier, on August 15, Richard Medhurst, an independent journalist who contributes to the Grayzone website, was arrested at Heathrow airport under the Terrorism Act 2000. He was questioned by police and held for some 15 hours.

The police were confused and appeared not to know what exactly he was arrested for, he said. He was asked about his religious belief, a question he described as weird since they had confiscated his crucifix.

He said he assumed that whoever was responsible for his arrest were upset by his reporting on Palestine.

Although he was released on unconditional bail, he has to go to a police station in three months. They might drop the charges or extend his bail. But he added: “I could be charged at any moment…it is hanging over your head”.

Whenever he opens his mouth, he said, he could be regarded as a terrorist, so he is under pressure to censor himself. The message was: “Just watch yourself; we can come after you with harder stuff”.

Audrey Cherryl Mogan, a barrister who has successfully defended Palestine Action members in court, told Declassified: “There have been several individuals charged with offences under the Terrorism Act, particularly sections 11 and 12, arising out of protests in support of Palestine.

“Many of these individuals have no previous convictions and have not been involved in criminality before. This follows the trajectory of increasingly more serious offences being levied at protestors over the last few years.

“Offences, particularly those alleging that people have encouraged support for proscribed organisations through the expression of opinions, where they have not actually referred to any proscribed organisation, are particularly worrying, as it ventures into the realm of thought crimes.”

Sinister development

Medhurst’s arrest is among a number of disturbing examples of how anti-terrorism laws are being increasingly used, seemingly with the backing of the new Labour government, to intimidate protesters against deadly Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

They are part of a sinister development that has serious implications for civil liberties and freedom of speech, yet it has been ignored by the mainstream media. It is as if you are not a member of the establishment media, you are a problem that “has to be dealt with”, said Medhurst.

He is a member of the National Union of Journalists and accredited to the UN. “The entire British press corps should be screaming”, he told Black Agenda Radio, but judging by the response of the mainstream media, it seemed as if journalists who are arrested are obviously seen to have deserved it.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 criminalises anyone who “invites support for a proscribed organisation” or “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive” of such a group. Those arrested under the section say the threshold is so low that individuals could be arrested with no intention of doing anything they are charged with.

In the cases cited here it can be assumed to be supporting Hamas, whose political wing was proscribed by the then home secretary, Priti Patel, in 2021 after years of campaigning by the lobby group Conservative Friends of Israel.

Police have previously made a number of controversial arrests under the Terrorism Act, detaining Palestine Action members in Bristol for a week without charge.

Like Barnard, they have targeted factories in the UK belonging to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.

Growing trend

Such cases seem to have become more common under Keir Starmer, although they are not entirely unprecedented. 

In May 2023, Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg was arrested under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act upon his return from Serbia and subjected to a lengthy interrogation at Luton airport.

A month earlier, 29-year-old Ernest Moret, a French publisher of Éditions la Fabrique, was arrested in London by counter terrorism officers. 

He was detained at St Pancras station in April on his way to the London book fair under schedule 7, a more well known part of the Terrorism Act.

British detectives asked whether he had taken part in anti-government demonstrations in France and if he backed French president, Emmanuel Macron.

Moret’s mobile phone and laptop were also confiscated for several weeks, before being returned to him after police decided to take no further action. 

The police also admitted downloading Moret’s sim card before returning his phone. 

A year later, he was awarded “substantial” damages by the Metropolitan police, as new figures reveal thousands of foreign nationals have been stopped at UK ports under anti-terror laws.

These include David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who wrote a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency. 

Miranda was held for almost nine hours at Heathrow airport in 2013 under schedule 7.

The law applies specifically to airports, ports and border areas, and allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals. 

Miranda was released after all his electronic equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles, were confiscated.

‘Undemocratic’

The response of the Starmer government to protestors suggests that it will uphold the increasingly draconian laws introduced by its predecessor. 

Earlier this year, the civil rights group, Liberty, won its case in the high court against former home secretary Suella Braverman’s anti-protest laws. 

Braverman had lowered the threshold at which police could impose conditions on protest from “serious disruption” to “more than minor” disruption.

That change had been rejected by Parliament. The Conservative government appealed a high court decision shortly before it announced the general election. 

The new home secretary, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, has backed the Conservative’s appeal. Liberty is now challenging her decision.

Akiko Hart, Liberty’s director, said, “This legislation is undemocratic, unconstitutional and unacceptable.” 

Hundreds of people, notably the climate protester, Greta Thunberg, have been arrested or convicted under this law since it was introduced.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard is an editor, journalist, playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

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In disturbing escalation against the Palestine movement, UK police arrest journalists and activists under Terrorism Act

In recent weeks, journalists Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst, as well as Palestine Action co-founder Richard Barnard were all arrested under the the UK's Terrorism Act. Critics say it is a direct attack on the Palestine movement.

By Synne Furnes Bjerkestrand 

 September 17, 2024 

MONDOWEISS

Palestine Action co-founder Richard Barnard (Photo: Palestine Action)


On August 29, 12-16 police officers, some of them from the UK’s counter-terrorism unit, arrested Palestine activist and journalist Sarah Wilkinson, 61, under the Terrorism Act 2000, for content she had posted online.

The bail conditions, which included not being allowed to use any electronic devices or any form of public transportation, were dropped a week later. She has also returned to reporting via her social media accounts.

Wilkinson has been advocating for Palestine long before October 7, but over the past eleven months, the suppression of voices like hers in the UK has increased.

Other well-known figures such as freelance journalist Richard Medhurst and co-founder of Palestine Action Richard Barnard were also arrested last month under the Terrorism Act 2000.

What is the Terrorism Act?

The Terrorism Act 2000 is not new in the UK and has been used for over two decades. It is the centerpiece of counter-terrorism legislation that went into effect in 2001.

Since then, Amnesty International has issued several reports in which the organization has voiced its concerns surrounding the counter-terrorism legislation in the UK.

In a report published in January 2023, they express their concern about the definition of terrorism in section 1 of the act:


“In August 2015, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concern that the UK had maintained the broadly formulated definition of terrorism in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 “that can include a politically motivated action which is designed to influence a government or international organization, despite significant concern…that the definition is ‘unduly restrictive of political expression’.”

The recent arrests of people opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza could be an example of how the act is abused, Julia Hall, researcher on counter-terrorism and lawyer with Amnesty International, explained to Mondoweiss.

Hall says the use of the law has escalated since October last year and that this is very concerning, as it could have a “chilling effect.” “This means that the use of the Terrorism Act leaves people in a state where they are afraid of what they can say, and many people then choose to stay silent,” Hall said, speaking to Mondoweiss from the United States.

She explained that the use of the law is far from new. According to a 2017 Amnesty International report, the right to freedom of expression has been “under direct and sustained assault across Europe in recent years.”

Hall said that using the counter-terrorism laws on people who are opposing the genocide is “draconian, but it is not new: the tools have been in the drawer for two decades, and this is a regional issue.”

Now, the use of the Terrorism Act against protesters, activists, and journalists that oppose the illegal Israeli occupation, apartheid, and the ongoing genocide is on the rise, Hall tells Mondoweiss.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, which Wilkinson was arrested under, is against international law, according to Amnesty International. “It is overly broad and vague and does not conform to international law,” Hall explained.

She highlighted how it is important to see how the current situation is connected with the racist and Islamophobic riots that took place in the UK in August this year, as well as the rise of racism in other European countries.

“You cannot divorce the clampdown on freedom of expression in solidarity with Palestinian human rights from the broader situation in the UK and across the region,” Hall told Mondoweiss. “Many marginalized racial and ethnic communities are being targeted for hate and violence – migrants and refugees, for example – and activists, journalists, and protesters that are speaking out against racism and discrimination in many contexts, including in solidarity with Palestinians, are being silenced.”

Hall also pointed out that this also has coincided with an uptick in the referrals of children to the UK’s Prevent anti-terrorism program. Amnesty International has called for the abolition of this program, as it disproportionately targets Arabs and Muslims.

“I do think Islamophobia, racism and white supremacy is on the rise across Europe”, she said.

The Prevent program is UK program meant to “stop people becoming terrorists.” But as Amnesty International has shown it has a track record of creating “chilling effects” on human rights.

Attacks on a growing movement for Palestine

Hiba Hajaj, a British-born Jordanian of Palestinian origin, tells Mondoweiss that the turning point for a lot of people now protesting in the UK started on October 7 last year. She has worked as an activist for Palestine for over 25 years.

Last week, 125,000 people attended the Palestine protest in London, demanding an end to the Israeli genocide and the 75-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestine. “The tactic from the police and government does not work. The movement is only growing bigger,” Hajaj told Mondoweiss over the phone from London.

Hajaj said she had never seen this many people out on the streets since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003: “ I have worked with establishing student societies for Palestine in the UK for more than twenty-five years, and now I see the seed I planted grow into life.”

Hajaj has attended every Palestine protest in London for over twenty-five years. She thinks the police want to shut down the Palestine movement by arresting well-known figures such as Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst using the Terrorism Act. “They are trying to send an indirect message that this could happen to anyone,” Hajaj says. “If peaceful activists get arrested, then people will start getting scared.”
‘Purely to silence journalists‘

Wilkerson is a well-known figure and has continuously expressed her critique of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians since October 7 last year. Earlier this year, she took part in the “Freedom Flotilla Coalition.”

Her son Jack Wilkinson wrote on X that

“The police came to her house just before 7.30 AM – 12 them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for “content that she has posted online.”

Wilkinson said in a video interview with The Crispin Flintoff Show that she was arrested because:


“(…) I am pro Palestinian, it is because I am broadcasting news from Gaza, it is because I am connected, if you like, with the people in Gaza. And it is purely to silence journalists, it is like what they did to Richard Medhurst (…) It is to silence the people who are reporting on a genocide. And the point of that, is so that if no one is reporting on it, they can continue the genocide, they can kill everybody(…)”

She also said that the government does not want the people to know what is happening to the people in Gaza.“The only way they can do this is by silencing the journalists and the people that broadcast the news,” she explained to Flintoff.

The police also requested details of contacts Wilkinson has in Gaza, a request which she refused.

MENA Uncensored, where Wilkinson was working as a roving reporter, wrote in a post on X:


“We hold the anti-media British government full responsibility of this stupid act of intimidating and oppressing journalists as well as human rights activist in favor of the Israeli occupation entity, and we demand that this zionist-run puppet British government releases our reporter Sarah Wilkinson immediately.”
Complacency in genocide

The UK government recently suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. But rights organizations have criticized this move as being insufficient.

Dr. Nehad Khanfar, a member of the Palestinian community and lecturer of law and politics, says that this act from the UK government is “below the minimal of what should be expected of them.” He is also the Head of the Emergency Committee at the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK (APCUK) but is not speaking on behalf of them in this article.

“The British government is complicit in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. It is very concerning that they can go on like this, and the danger is that this could be taken as a role model in the future,” Khanfar said via phone to Mondoweiss from his home in London.

Khanfar said that he sees the arrests of journalists “seriously concerning,” and that several students who are engaged in the Palestinian community have experienced being detained during peaceful protests.

“I have never seen the police like this in the UK before. I believe it is the extreme-right narrative in British politics that is now manifesting,” Khanfar said.
‘Freedom is coming‘

Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, has also been charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and is accused of “expressing support for Hamas and has been charged with two counts of criminal damage.”

He will appear before the court in mid-September, and he also faces two charges of “encouraging or intending to encourage criminal damage.” In August, activists from Palestine Action were also detained under the Terrorism Act.

Hiba Hajaj, who has also had social media profiles removed from Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook by the platforms after posting about the ongoing genocide, says this is all part of the effort to censor and silence Palestine advocates. But she says that nothing can stop her from telling the truth.

“You cannot take the whole concept of freedom away from Palestinians. We believe in freedom,” Hajaj tells Mondoweiss. “You can block our social media accounts and do anything to stop us, but you cannot control what we feel in our hearts, and that is that freedom is coming.”

 UK

Darzi Report: will Government write the wrong prescription? 

18th September 2024Leave a Commenton Darzi Report: will Government write the wrong prescription? 

“Darzi has thrown down the gauntlet. Will the Government rise to the challenge or will it mistakenly conclude that the wrong treatments (‘reform’ and further austerity) are just what the doctor ordered?”

Keep Our NHS Public have published a post-election statement on Labour’s win and the new challenges faced by NHS campaigners.

Lord Darzi’s diagnosis shouts out that the NHS desperately needs more funding and that changing the existing model would do more harm than good.

Following nine weeks of reviewing data, Lord Darzi has now published his report ‘Independent Investigation of the National Health Service in England’, focusing on patient access, quality of care and the overall performance of the health system. Not surprisingly, his findings (summarised here) reflect those of health campaigners that have persistently highlighted the deteriorating state of the NHS for many years. 

Worsening health inequalities that are socially determined are bringing more pressure on the NHS, while public health budgets have been slashed by 25%. A growing and less healthy population further increases demand. Darzi catalogues problems with delay in accessing care, missed targets and lost lives, and he identifies the main causes of poor productivity. First among these is austerity, ensuring that the NHS was in poor shape when the Covid pandemic hit. This determined massive disruption of routine care (e.g. 46% fewer hip replacements compared with an average fall in OECD countries of only 13%) from which impact we are struggling to recover.

Lack of capital investment (a £37bn shortfall compared with peer countries) has produced crumbling estate that is not conducive to productivity, with every day seeing services disrupted at multiple hospitals. One fifth of primary care estate predates the NHS. Lack of cash means that equipment is outdated, and processes have not been brought up to date. More investment is essential for the development of community services if the shift of care away from hospitals is to be realised.

Staff were worn out by the pandemic, and after effects are still present. However, Darzi pays generous tribute to health workers, recognising that they are profoundly passionate and motivated to give high quality care. He goes on to say:

“Our staff in roles at every level are bound by a deep and abiding belief in NHS values and there is a shared passion and determination to make the NHS better for our patients. They are the beating heart of the NHS.“

Viewing the 2012 Health and Social Care Act as ‘a calamity without international precedent’ he warns that further top-down reorganisations are neither necessary nor desirable. Failings in the NHS cannot be laid at the door of managers, and any move to a different model of care would be unwise given that other health systems, such as those where user charges, social or private insurance play a bigger role, are more expensive. 

According to Darzi, the NHS may be in a critical condition but its ‘vital signs’ are still strong. Given the right treatment, therefore, it could be restored to health. As set out in his terms of reference, Darzi has not ventured to suggest specific policy including addressing overall budgetary issues. However, it is clear he considers that austerity and ongoing underfunding have starved the NHS of the resources it needs to meet growing demand thus preventing it from functioning efficiently. 

Darzi points out that with 2.8 million of the population economically inactive due to long term illness, having more people in work is crucial to growing the economy. Indeed, he states:

“It is not a question of whether we can afford the NHS. Rather, we cannot afford not to have the NHS, so it is imperative that we turn the situation around.”

When Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced the Darzi review was being held, he is quoted as saying that it would aim at ‘diagnosing the problem’ so the Government could ‘write the prescription’. In the modern era, any treatment should be founded on the best available science while taking into account the views of patients and professionals. 

Darzi’s conclusions after intense study of the data and a wide range of views are, on the face of it, surprisingly close to KONP’s assertion that the NHS, when funded to succeed, was and can be again one of the very best health systems:

“Nothing that I have found draws into question the principles of a health service that is taxpayer funded, free at the point of use, and based on need, not ability to pay.“

For those such as Patricia Hewitt and Alan Milburn who question the very funding model on which the NHS has thrived, Darzi asserts:

“Every advanced country has universal health coverage [except USA] but other health system models—those where user charges, social or private insurance play a bigger role—are more expensive.“

Darzi points to the evidence of a well-run health service after a decade of restorative funding in the 2000s, and when patient satisfaction was high with GPs and the NHS as a whole; and when targets for A&E and hospital treatment were well met by 2010.

Although the remit given to him prevented him from making funding recommendations, he is absolutely clear in his findings on the damage of underfunding since 2010:

“The 2010s were the most austere decade since the NHS was founded, with spending growing at around 1 per cent in real terms…. The 2018 funding promise was broken…. Spending increased… below the historic rate [4% per year]…. The NHS has been starved of capital and the capital budget was repeatedly raided to plug holes in day-to-day spending.“

He blames this austerity – not staff – for much of the NHS ills: 

“Crumbling buildings, services disrupted at 13 hospitals a day in 2022-23, a backlog maintenance bill [of] more than £11.6 billion, and a lack of capital means [resulting in] too many outdated scanners, too little automation, and parts of the NHS yet to enter the digital era“

Importantly, Darzi deals with the myth that the NHS has too many managers, and this is worth emphasising: 

“Some have suggested that this is primarily a failure of NHS management. They are wrong…. Just imagine if all the effort and resource that had been poured into dissolving and reconstituting management structures [post the 2012 Act] had been invested in improving the delivery of services…. The result of the disruption was a permanent loss of capability from the NHS. Experienced managers left, meaning the NHS lost their skills, relationships and institutional memory…[Now] the number of managers per clinician has declined markedly over time. Despite what some media commentators may say, good management has a vital role in healthcare: it exists to ensure that the maximum healthcare value is created with the resources that are available. In providers, managers [should be] there to ensure efficient organisation and process so that clinicians can deliver high quality care to meet the needs of patients.“

How will Streeting, Starmer and Reeves use Darzi for their policy direction?

Streeting’s three ‘big shifts’ are:

• from hospital to community care
• from analogue to digital
• from treating sickness to preventing it

These are soundbites echoing through the last 25 years and nothing new. What is needed is a restoration of commitment to the NHS wholly publicly run and funded to succeed.

For Keep Our NHS Public, our three ‘big shifts’ are:

• away from underfunding and to funding the NHS to succeed
• away from private outsourcing and to building back publicly provided NHS services
• away from fragmentation of services and to a reuniting of the national NHS

And we add a fourth important parallel ‘shift’:

• the establishment of a national service for care, support and independent living

Darzi has thrown down the gauntlet. Will the Government rise to the challenge or will it mistakenly conclude that the wrong treatments – ‘reform’ and further austerity – are just what the doctor ordered? If so, this would be a rebuff to Lord Darzi and – more importantly – a huge tragedy for patients, staff and the NHS.

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• This article was originally published by Keep Our NHS Public on 12th September 2024.