L-R Paul Mason, Kevin Courtney, Melissa Benn & Emma Dent Coad in Kilburn, March 25th
A fortnight ago we published the transcript of famed British journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason publicly abusing a local anti-war activist. Now we are publishing another abusive outburst from Mason at the same event, this time aimed at former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn.
At a debate organised by Kensal & Kilburn – Better 2024, titled “Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?” Mason, who was arguing that it is worth voting for the party, attacked Corbyn during the Question & Answer session when the event Chair, Melissa Benn, asked him to explain “why Keir Starmer has made the left within the party the enemy instead of working with them as Biden worked with Bernie Sanders.”
The high-profile journalist and Labour campaigner Paul Mason was in Kilburn tonight, part of a debate organised by Kensal & Kilburn – Better 2024 titled “Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?”
Chaired by Melissa Benn, the panel was made up of the Kensington independent candidate, Emma Dent Coad; former General Secretary of the National Education Union, Kevin Courtney, and Mason, who confirmed he is looking to become a Labour parliamentary candidate ahead of the general election. In 2022 Mason was apparently exposed plotting to take down the British left in collaboration with security agents, something he strongly denies.
Below is a transcript of part of the Q and A session at end of tonight’s meeting in which Mason accused an audience member of antisemitism. Within minutes of the meeting concluding, Mason had tweeted his slur against the audience member, a well-known North Kensington community campaigner, to his 611,000 followers. The audio can be heard here. Judge for yourself.
Audience member: “I can’t believe that there hasn’t been any mention here of the Labour Files, like you know the way that Jeremy Corbyn was outed and obliterated through the media because of Keir Starmer and his Israeli sponsors and the fact that so many in the Labour Party are supported and funded by Israel. How can anyone even consider voting Labour, they don’t stand for the people. The only hope that we have and why I’m here supporting Emma is because she’s local she would have stood for Labour again but Starmer and his Israeli body didn’t want her standing and that’s been the case as we’ve seen across the country and it means that Labour candidates in the wards aren’t locals known to locals, don’t understand the local situation and the issues that we’ve struggled through. She knows us, she’s out there with us, she stood alongside us through the atrocity of Grenfell, she never gave up when she was our MP at the time. She held meeting after meeting after meeting in the House of Commons and has constantly supported everyone. That’s what we want, that’s our hope so as far as I’m concerned, the more independent candidates that stand the better.”
Paul Mason: “See, why didn’t you just say Jew? Why didn’t you just say Jew? Because…why didn’t you just say “He’s a Jewish agent”? Why didn’t you just say it because that’s what you mean isn’t it. And I’ll say to you, anybody in this room who wants to be part of a left where you go around saying ‘Starmer’s an Israeli agent’ if you want to do that, fine, form a party together, form an alliance, support Emma, but don’t bother supporting the Labour party because we are anti-racists, we are anti-racists and I will never accept that Starmer is an agent of Israel, comrade. If the left wants to break with Labour, if the left wants to go down a little rabbit hole of all the other five, six, seven alliances that are being formed, good luck, not as good luck as to the Greens, but good look. But please work out that that that’s where you’re heading, you have to either decide you’re for it or against it. I am against it. I am against it. I am against it and I don’t need any lectures about genocide, I’ve been to Gaza, I’ve seen what the Israelis do, I’ve seen what they do I will not have Starmer being called an Israeli agent.”
Emma Dent Coad: “I’m just going to pass by that….”
Mason interrupts: “She’s your supporter”
Dent Coad: “We’ve marched together, I know exactly where she stands, and we are marching with our Jewish brothers and sisters. I’m not having that and you know that it’s a political ideology. It’s the easiest thing in the world to accuse somebody of anti-Semitism when they are against a political ideology. It’s a political ideology which is the issue and we all know that, so, you know, don’t fall down that rabbit hole please.”
Kensington & Chelsea Council’s decision to cancel its annual diplomatic reception was a victory for anti-war campaigners. However, the council leadership’s claim that security threats were behind the move could suggest coordination between the local authority and bigger players in the war on Palestine.
13th February
We published this article on Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC)’s diplomatic reception for embassies based in the borough, the invitees including Israel’s genocidal ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.
Concerned locals, including members of the newly formed Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham branch of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, mobilised, planning a demonstration at the Town Hall and urging residents to contact their councillors to demand the reception’s cancellation.Continue reading →
Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) will honour Israel’s UK ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely, at a diplomatic reception even as the country she represents intensifies its campaign of genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip.
Hosted by the RBKC’s mayor Preety Hudd at Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday, February 20th, the event – an annual reception for ambassadors based in the borough – is a fixture in the council’s calendar although scant information about it is shared with the residents who pay for it. Continue reading →
Kensington Labour Party finally released a statement calling for a ceasefire in Palestine, over three weeks after local councillors wrote a first draft, and only after the criminal government of Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed to a temporary truce. Multiple Labour councillors have told Urban Dandy that interventions from local and regional Labour officials delayed the release of the statement and ensured the local party did not contradict and embarrass Labour leader Keir Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy who have backed Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. We have obtained the Kensington councillors’ original statement, which bears little resemblance to the published version, adding to the evidence of a crackdown on internal democracy and a prioritisation of Israeli government interests under Starmer.
Original Statement
The original statement drafted by the Kensington Labour councillors was ready for publication on 7th November. In contrast with the version published three weeks later, the original is clear that Israel is responsible for the genocide it is carrying out. This put the Kensington group of councillors in alignment with international law as Israel has no right to use violence against a population that it occupies.Continue reading →
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the political-media establishment went wild with its virtue signalling; opposing Vladimir Putin’s government as a pariah and offering unrestrained moral support to the plucky underdog Ukrainians. When Israel accelerated its genocide of Palestinians in October, the same establishment did a 180. Instead of calling for international law to be upheld, or offering moral and military support to the victims of a decades-long occupation and siege, establishment figures went from virtue signalling to sin signalling. For Ukraine, there was one audience, for Palestine, another. One audience required virtue, the other something very different.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine triggered a full-spectrum psychological operation against the minds of the British population. A clean sweep of politicians, commentators and public figures demanded that we uphold human rights and support the Ukrainians at any cost short of direct British military confrontation with Russia.Continue reading →
Kensington Labour Party appears to be avoiding public accountability over its refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Activists arranged a protest to be held outside Kensington Unitarian Church tonight, where the constituency party was due to meet. Labour has now switched its meeting to take place online .
With national, regional and local party bosses backing Israel’s policy in Palestine, the Labour group of councillors have come under scrutiny. Having agreed a statement opposing Israel’s crimes over two weeks ago, the group has failed to publish the document, which was expected to distance the Kensington group from the party’s de facto support for Israeli genocide
In an email sent to local members and seen by Urban Dandy, the party blames “unforeseen circumstances” for the cancellation of the in-person meeting. One of the speakers at the online meeting will be from GMB, the trade union that issued a statement two weeks after Israel had launched its massacre, carefully avoided naming Netanyahu’s apartheid government as the perpetrator.
Israel has no right under international law to use violence against the population it occupies and subjugates.
For well over a month, Israel’s destruction of life in the Gaza Strip has been supported by much of the political elite in Britain using a new phrase in the war lexicon: “humanitarian pause.” It is the language of cowardice, propaganda, and fascism, used to buy time for Netanyahu’s slaughter of a defenceless population, and his ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Kensington
A local Labour member recently sent Kensington & Bayswater Constituency Labour Party (CLP) a petition calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s assault. In their email, which they also shared with Urban Dandy, the constituent pointed out that, in knowingly supporting Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, Britain is failing to meet its obligations under international law. But in her reply, CLP Chair Monica Press snubbed the call for a ceasefire, stating that “a humanitarian pause is more achievable”.
Press’s stated reason for rejecting the call was that “neither Hamas or Israel will consider” a ceasefire. This is false, as Hamas has offered the return of hostages to Israel in exchange for a ceasefire. Israel rejected Hamas’s proposal.
Press drew further false equivalence between the two, saying that both Hamas and Israel are “authoritarian and extreme” governments that “endanger their own populations.” Yet there is a consensus among Palestinians in favour of resistance to the occupation as a means of liberation after decades of one-sided Western diplomacy that served as a cover for Israel to steal more land and imprison millions of people in the Gaza concentration camp. Israel has endangered its population by choosing expansion over peace.
Charity
Instead of demanding political change and the upholding of international law, the leadership of Kensington Labour asked local party members to make charitable donations that can be delivered to Gaza, during a “pause” in the killing. Judging by the absence of any statement to the contrary, this preference for charity is supported by the Labour group of councillors at Kensington Town Hall.
The CLP’s charity appeal has apparently raised £150 for the Palestinians so far.
In her response to the party member, Monica Press stated that the CLP needs to “show and be seen to show our concerns.” But the CLP’s only real concern has been ingratiating itself to the Starmer regime, who in turn are busy doing likewise with the Israel lobby.
The CLP seems to have judged that Palestinian life is not worth the expenditure of any political capital. Like the leaders of the national Labour Party, the CLP will not oppose Israel’s industrial-scale murder. They would just like them to pause for a few hours so the victims can have something to eat before the genocide resumes.
In the parliamentary constituencies of West London, politicians have responded to the renewed war in the Middle East. Most have failed to oppose Israel’s genocide; some have encouraged the killing, and others have tried to position themselves on the side of peace: a mix of cowardice, complicity and clarity.
Israel & Free Speech
Speaking truth about Israel-Palestine is now almost forbidden, such is the level of hysteria it triggers. The hysteria deters free-thinking, deters open recognition of Palestinian rights under international law and the impact on Western political discourse is chilling. The reasons for the chronic pro-Israel bias include:
The constant threat of being smeared as an antisemite by supporters of Israel for dissenting against Western governments’ support for Israel’s dominance of Palestinian life.
Israel is seen as representative of Western values, an oasis of white European democracy amid backward Arab states. This racist concept means Israel’s crimes are routinely ignored; Palestinians’ peaceful resistance is ignored, and Palestinians’ violent resistance is always denounced as terrorism. Mainstream discourse either omits context altogether or obfuscates it with misleading cliches like “religious conflict” “disputed land” and “another round of violence.” Western states accept Israeli crimes as a price worth paying for the division of the Arab world.
Fanatical and powerful Christians who believe that Christ will return and that the existence of Israel is a prerequisite for this. This pathology is particularly prevalent among American leaders.
The Israel lobby wields significant power across Western capitals. Those speaking out against Israel’s crimes, or even speaking up for Palestinian rights, are smeared and harassed.
Palestinians have sacrificed so much since Britain gifted their land to the Zionist movement. Palestinian steadfastness has remained constant while the essence of the conflict has not changed in 75 years: a colonial regime that seeks to remove the indigenous people from the land and replace them with an exclusively Jewish population. The occupation and its violence are illegal under international law. The right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return home is also uncontroversial under international law. The same goes for their right to resist oppression. Seven decades have added much detail to the story but it remains a case of illegitimate occupier versus legitimate resistance. Are our local politicians acting on this truth?
Westminster North
Labour MP Karen Buck, who is a veteran of the Palestine solidarity movement and visited Gaza in the aftermath of Israel’s 2008-9 massacre, has shown little appetite for fighting for the people she knows to be the victims of a brutal siege. Buck toes the party line, focusing on humanitarian assistance rather than addressing the cause of the humanitarian crisis.
The Conservative party have not yet named their candidate to challenge Buck.
Hampstead and Kilburn
Tulip Siddiq is Labour’s Shadow City Minister and has issued boilerplate statements on the war that serve to support Israel’s ongoing genocide. Siddiq claims she “can’t bear watching it” and says Israel must act in line with international law but does not condemn Netanyahu’s government as it breaches international law daily.
In an email to constituents, the MP’s focus, like most Labour politicians, was humanitarian aid. Like almost every British politician, Siddiq ignores the Palestinians’ right to resist and blames the resistance movements in Gaza, rather than Israel, for the situation.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats are yet to announce candidates in Hampstead and Kilburn.
Hammersmith
Andy Slaughter is Labour’s Shadow Solicitor General and a long-time supporter of the Palestinians who visited Gaza with Buck in 2009. To maintain a just-about-plausible pro-Palestine stance, Slaughter has broken ranks somewhat from the zealous pro-Israel line of Keir Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, retweeting Palestine’s Ambassador to the UK and Sadiq Khan’s call for a ceasefire.
Unfortunately, Slaughter also retweeted a very telling post by Labour Campaign for Human Rights: “We are horrified by recent atrocities in Israel and subsequent developments in Gaza” – note the profound racism of the language: Young Palestinians breaking out of their concentration camp for the first time and killing Israelis qualifies as “atrocities” while Israel’s systematic destruction of a whole people in the name of religious and ethnic supremacy is regarded as “developments”.
Slaughter also foolishly retweeted false claims about Hamas killing babies.
Once a marginal, but now a Labour stronghold, Hammersmith will be contested by Conservative Andrew Dinsmore in 2024. He does not seem to have commented on the war yet.
Chelsea and Fulham
Greg Hands MP is Conservative Party Chairman and Minister Without Portfolio in the Sunak government. Hands is prolific on social media and since the Palestinian resistance’s attack on October 7th, he has offered relentless support for Israel and no acknowledgement of the rights of Palestinians.
Hands’ month-long stream of propaganda has included smearing Labour MP Apsana Begum for her solidarity with the Palestinians; claiming without evidence that Israel is not an apartheid state; conflating resistance with antisemitism; celebrating the government’s awarding of £3 million to the fear-mongering Community Security Trust, and retweeting the false claim that the Palestinians bombed their own hospital. Hands supports genocide with total impunity and has shown no interest in calling for a ceasefire, let alone addressing the causes of the war.
Hands will face Labour’s Ben Coleman at the next election. Another prolific tweeter, Coleman appears to be an unthinking supporter of Israel and has retweeted a large number of pro-Israel statements from Starmer and Lammy as well as a photo of the Israel flag on 10th October when the genocide was well underway.
Brent Central
Labour MP and veteran of the Corbyn era, Dawn Butler has called for a ceasefire. She is supportive of peace, but like Andy Slaughter speaks only within the limits of debate set by the media and party leaders. Butler enjoys a huge majority with almost 75% of the vote last time out and is uncharacteristically quiet over Israel’s genocide. There has been no announcement of who her Tory opponent will be.
Kensington
Felicity Buchan, Tory MP in the marginal seat of Kensington, was an enthusiastic supporter of the “western values” of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion but takes the opposite approach when it comes to Palestine. The Under Secretary of State for Housing and Homelessness in the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is fully supportive of Israel’s destruction of Palestinian housing, their creation of millions of homeless people, and their levelling of the Gaza Strip.
Like her colleagues, Buchan’s focus is Israel. Palestinian suffering receives barely a mention from Kensington’s MP despite her large Muslim constituency, aside from a reference to “the tragic loss of civilian lives” as if an earthquake has struck Gaza, rather than a campaign of ethnic cleansing by a military regime that has illegally occupied the territory since 1967, maintaining it as the world’s largest ever concentration camp. Buchan dismisses acts of resistance by inhabitants of the camp simply as “terrorism”.
To compound her anti-Palestinian approach, Buchan has shown more concern about the conduct of peaceful anti-war protests than she has for the genocide of mainly children and women, reassuring her Twitter following that there will be “a robust approach to policing these demonstrations”.
Complicity Felicity’s main challenger at the election will be Labour’s Joe Powell who has limited his response to retweeting and liking pro-war, pro-Israel voices like Barack Obama (“we stand squarely alongside our ally, Israel”) and David Lammy, who claimed during a pro-Israel rant on Sky News that Hamas has “raped babies” and who’s diplomacy has extended only as far as supporting “humanitarian pauses” in the genocide.
The phrase “humanitarian pauses” has been created to enable liberal politicians to imply that it is fine to commit genocide while still pretending to care. This focus on humanitarian aid is lipstick on the pig of Labour’s full commitment to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The party’s vision for the Middle East is a region dominated by a militarised apartheid state; a colonial anachronism in the 21st century, with any challengers to that power imbalance brutalised and denigrated in an attempt to kill off any hopes they have for justice.
The other challenger to Buchan is independent candidate Emma Dent Coad, who resigned from the Labour Party earlier this year. Dent Coad has been far more outspoken than any other West London politician, without reticence about her affiliations to Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and her support for Palestine solidarity. Dent Coad has retweeted fiercely independent anti-war journalists like Matt Kennard, helping the spread of important information about the war, its origins and its true intention: the destruction of the Palestinian people.
Palestinian culture emphasises Sumud ( صمود) or steadfastness in the face of hardship and injustice, a quality that has enabled Palestinians to survive an existential assault by Israel for 75 years. Throughout this period, Britain has matched the Palestinians’ Sumud with its own steadfastness in enabling Israel’s domination over the Palestinian people and land. These two Sumuds are at odds with each other, meaning Britain, across its political spectrum, has a serious Palestine problem, albeit one that is easy to solve, should the country ever decide to take up the cause of justice.
Problem one – Refugees
The Palestinian refugee crisis is so extreme and so integral to current events in the Middle East that it requires a certain level of genius to miss it. Judging by their proclamations over recent weeks, the whole British media and political class possess this type of genius. They have managed to avoid the obvious fact that the refugee issue is the key to resolving the Middle East conflict.
It is useful to consider the refugee crisis in the context of the broader demographics of Palestine and Israel. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimated the worldwide Palestinian population to be just over 14 million in 2021.
The PCBS estimates that at least 5.3 million Palestinians live in the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) constituting 38% of all Palestinians worldwide. Inside Israel, 1.7 million Palestinians reside, 12% of the global Palestinian population.
Over 50% of Palestinians, at least seven million people (possibly as high as nine million according to the PCBS), live in the Diaspora as refugees. Of these, Jordan hosts the largest number with 4.5 million, while 1.8 million are in other Arab countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Gulf states. Around 750,000 are estimated to live in non-Arab countries, with a particularly large number in Chile.
The total global Palestinian population is notoriously difficult to calculate, but 14 million is a good conservative estimate. If translated into a state population, it would make Palestine the 75thbiggest country in the world, and drop Israel one place to 99th in that list, with its population of 9.5 million (that figure includes the 1.7 million Palestinians living inside Israel who would probably claim their Palestinian citizenship given the option).
All Palestinian refugees have an inalienable right to return to their land, guaranteed under international law in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948. Yet, with the help of Britain and other powerful allies, Israel continues to block the fulfilment of the refugees’ right of return and seeks to further diminish their presence in their homeland. As a result, many Palestinians live in appalling conditions with few rights. If the refugee crisis had started in 2023, rather than in 1948, it would shock the world and feature heavily in the news. Instead, it is largely unknown to Western news consumers.
In the Gaza Strip, most of the 2.2 million population are refugees and descendants of refugees (descendants have the same status and guaranteed right to return) from Israel’s initial ethnic cleansing of 1947-48 when Jewish terrorist gangs forced Palestinians into exile. Many in Gaza have been made refugees multiple times over by Israel’s wars against the Strip.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian refugees live in camps under strict military occupation, suffering daily humiliations. In Lebanon, conditions at some Palestinian camps are not fit for human habitation, and in every nearby country in which they have sought refuge, Palestinians have suffered further displacement, war, and oppression. This includes Jordan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq. Upheavals in countries across the region have frequently seen persecution of the Palestinian refugees with no state yet established to protect them.
Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Graffiti of the iconic Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, where these refugees are unable to visitNahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, near Tripoli, Lenanon, 2011. The camp was destroyed by the Lebanese army, displacing tens of thousands of refugees. The international community was not forthcoming with funds to reconstruct the camp
To resolve the Middle East conflict, Britain could support the fulfilment of the refugees’ right of return. This would provide justice, regional stability, and reduce the chances of regional conflict or nuclear war. With the return of the refugees, Israel’s Zionist project, which seeks to form an exclusively Jewish state in the holy land, would be defeated, and Israel would be forced to live in peace with its neighbours as a normal country instead of the garrison state it currently is. Resolving the refugee crisis would also go a long way to allaying the crisis faced by Muslims and Christians as their institutions and holy places would no longer be threatened by a colonial project that violates the sanctity of mosques and churches and abuses worshipers. Sunni Islam’s third and fourth holiest sites are in Palestine (Jerusalem and Hebron) as is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem.) This barely scratches the surface of the religious significance of Palestine.
As an aside (!), it is another remarkable fact of the conflict that Britain, a Christian country with a large Muslim population, does nothing to defend the holy sites. Analysis, even passing mention, of Israel’s targeting of sacred religious places is largely absent from media and political commentary of the conflict. The day after Israel bombed a Christian hospital in Gaza, killing an estimated 500 peole, the leader of a Christian nation, US President Joe Biden, hugged Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and claimed the Palestinians had bombed themselves. Within two days, the leader of another Christian state, our own prime minister, did likewise, telling Netanyahu and the World, “We want you to win.”
If this “win” is even possible, can it be achieved without the destruction of both Islam and Christianity in Palestine? It certainly cannot be achieved without the continuation of an epic injustice against a stateless people.
Problem two – Democracy
The consensus across the political-media spectrum in Britain is that Palestine has no right to be a democracy. Like with the refugee issue, we see impressive discipline from politicians and journalists as they avoid mentioning the last Palestinian general election. Commentators incessantly tell the British people that the winner of that election, Hamas, is a terrorist group, plain and simple.
Ignorance and cowardice pervade parliament over the issue of Palestinian democracy. In 2006, Hamas won the right to form a government in the Occupied Territories. Realising that they would be sabotaged by the US and EU, Hamas formed a coalition with the defeated Fatah party. The US and EU, with Britain prominent, plotted to cancel Palestinian democracy, backing a Fatah-affiliated group to overthrow Hamas in a violent coup. Hamas, based in Gaza, but having won a higher percentage of the vote in the West Bank, got wind of the plot, pre-empted it and took control of Gaza’s institutions. This move sealed the current division of the Palestinians into two separated geographical areas. The Gaza Strip is de facto ruled by Hamas but maintained as a concentration camp by Israel. The West Bank has a Fatah government headed by Mahmoud Abbas, recognised as representative of the Palestinians by Western governments, but operating as an arm of the Israeli security forces in suppressing Palestinian dissent.
Britain, under a Labour government at the time of the election, simply pretended that Hamas hadn’t won, and continued to support Israel wholeheartedly as it repeatedly massacred Gazans and tightened its oppression and theft of land in the West Bank. Hamas generally maintained ceasefires and kept Gaza quiet, signing multiple reconciliation agreements with Fatah, but the geographical division combined with Fatah’s aversion to resistance made true unity impossible. In 2018, when Palestinian refugees marched bravely and peacefully in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi to the Israeli border, they were massacred. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured. Britain’s support for Israel continued.
Britain and others’ refusal to deal with Hamas consigned the Palestinians to political impotence. By retaining two governments in two small, besieged territories, influential states that could potentially advocate for peace and justice are unable to do so with confidence. The result is Palestinian presence in the so-called Axis of Resistance to US domination (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and perhaps Turkey and Qatar) and 17 years of political drift for the Palestinians.
The Left
Elite commentary in Britain during Israel’s current intensified ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip is revealing. As expected, the right generally backs Netanyahu’s violence. Parliament’s official opposition has done likewise, and the Labour Party now lacks backbenchers able to speak with conscience and clarity about Israel’s war crimes.
The British left more generally, needing to speak but with little to say about ending the conflict and providing justice to the Palestinians, has largely limited its response to calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and calling out racist sentiment in the media. Part of Israel’s calculation in causing mass destruction is that Westerners will quickly fall into two chattering camps: Zionists and those appalled by the violence. Both camps are kept busy as, day after day, Israel – from a safe distance – pummels the refugees of Gaza.
Many on the left lack a real grasp of the issues and history outlined above – refugees and democracy – so they perpetuate a stale old routine. There’s no mention of the refugees, or the fact that the conflict could be quickly resolved based entirely on international law and UN resolutions that Britain is a signatory to. And no mention of democracy, because that risks validating Hamas, its political wing now proscribed by the Conservative governmentwithout protest from Labour. This also means silence over the Palestinians’ right to self-defence, including by violent means.
It is as if the conflict started on October 7th and is being fought between two equal sides. Both right and left advocate a return to the pre-October status quo, a living nightmare for the Palestinians. The British left seems to only support the Palestinians on condition that they remain victims, recipients of aid and pity.
This lack of political impetus risks leaving the Palestinians no further forward than they were before they briefly broke out of their prison. It risks condemning another generation of refugees to misery and dispossession. It leaves Israel as an anachronism, unable to move towards peace while the West encourages it to covet the destruction of the Palestinians, Islam, and Christianity in the holy land. And it leaves Britain adrift, a weakening state with a political-media class that lies relentlessly to sell us a Middle East policy that is devoid of hope, mere cover for ethnic cleansing, racism and dictatorships, alongside increasingly repressive domestic policies.
Urban Dandy London 