The Labour MP Kate Osamor has had the whip suspended while she is investigated for saying Gaza should be remembered as a genocide on Holocaust Memorial Day.
Osamor had distributed the message to her party members, saying Holocaust Memorial Day should be observed, but other genocides should also be remembered – listing Gaza as one of them.
This is utterly absurd.
Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
Using the pretext of utterly unacceptable 7 October Hamas attacks, in response to which Israel had the clear and certain right to defend itself, Netanyahu has launched a campaign of genocide with the intention - as his ministers and he have made clear - of eliminating Palestine, forcing the people of Gaza out of their territory and removing for good (in his opinion) the chance of a two-state solution.
That is a genocide that is being pursued with wanton disregard for human life and the harm caused.
Of course, Kate Osamor was right to refer to it as such.
And no one can say she was anti-Semitic for doing so. Pointing out that Israel has a fascist government that is pursuing genocide is not anti-Semitic: it is stating an observable fact.
So what is Labour doing?
As usual, it is in denial of the facts.
It is, as ever, living in fear.
And as a consequence, it is on the wrong side of public opinion.
But that is what we should expect a party that is now Zionist and which has no regard for human beings or human rights to do, and that is what Labour is now. I hate to say that, but I can see no other conclusion.
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One percent of the population of Gaza has been killed and another 3% injured. That is a comparable percentage of the UK population killed in WW2. Two thirds are women and children. A whole population has been traumatised, reduced to destitution and scavenging for food. 150 UNWRA workers have been killed. 300 health workers also. (UN source) Supplies have been deliberately slowed down at the border. Now our government has suspended funding to UNWRA because of allegations against 12 employees -out of 13,000. This was the day after the ICJ called for an aid to be supplied immediately and effectively. The suspension of funding may not take effect yet but the consequence will be more suffering and preventable deaths of innocent people.
The prompt response is in contrast by our government to the lack of criticism of Israel’s campaign or even a call for restraint.
The Foreign Secretary claims the war has to go on or Hamas will stay in power and attack again in the future. This has precedence over a hundred or so deaths a day? The priority should be saving life and sort out the politics later. Professional websites like Chatham House are of the opinion that Hamas will not be eliminated in the longer run. I agree.
The one sided support for Israel will have lasting negative consequences for our standing in the developing world.
Sunak’s policy doesn’t even met the test of supporting the “national interest”.
And I am appalled that our govt has not said so.
Much to agree with
Is it coincdence that Israel’s allegations against 12 staff of UNWRA came the day after the ICJ decision and was immediately followed by the withdrawal of funding from several Western powers? Surely this is a breach of the ICJ requirement that Israel take immediate and effective measures to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. Are the Western powers deatroying that aid to help Israel?
Cyndy
even if it is not trying to stop the aid to help Israel, it will be the perception in much of the wider world and be used against the West. Not just by those who do not have good intentions towards us but also by those who wish for good relationships.
Israeli government has over 200 staff working on disinformation alone, according to insiders and Ha’aretz newspaper. They would’ve war-gamed this eventuality, as with most things they do, and had the ‘ammunition’ ready.
The Al Jazeera expose some 12 years ago of the Israeli lobby showed Joan Ryan (then Labour MP) being offered expenses to find info about Labour lefties. There will be a massive ‘dark file’ on all sorts of people collated there, from UNWRA to EU to UK Parliament to celebs, all to be leaked or funnelled out as needed. What do you think Pegasus spyware was for?
The government may have shamefully suspended funding, but it’s possible for individuals to donate to UNWRA: https://donate.unrwa.org/gaza/~my-donation
A drop in the ocean, I know, but it’s something.
appalled that our government has not condemned the continuing slaughter
( clicked submit too soon )
Isn’t the Labour Party now the “Mandelson Grifter Party” available for hire to the highest bidder? Feels like it!
You would think that a party led by a former DPP and human rights lawyer would be at least chary of being contempt of a court of International Law.
By way of reinforcement and amplification of comments already made; 26,000 Palestinians have been killed and 65,000 seriously wounded since the Hamas attack. Circa 600,000 Palestinians are facing starvation. Israel has dropped circa 8x the number of bombs on Gaza that the US dropped on Iraq.
When Blinken arrived in Israel after the Hamas attacks he stood next to Netanyahu and said “I come before you not only as the US Secretary of State but also as a Jew.”
The Hamas attacks cannot be morally defended but nor can the hugely disproportionate response taken by Israel with support from the US and UK.Labour has taken virtually the same position as the government.
The US is focusing on addressing the consequences of conflict in Gaza by taking military action against the Houthis and others who they see as a threat to their interests. The UK has supported this approach flying missions from Cyprus.
Netanyahu will continue to pursue his long term objective of driving Palestinians out of Palestine in order to extend the Israeli homeland. A similar approach will ongoing in the West Bank.
The ICJ set out six measures that are required to avoid genocide. Netanyahu rejected these labelling the ICJ as anti semitic.
The outlook is extremely gloomy. Progress towards descalation will be very difficult and a permanent and just settlement impossible with Netanyahu and Biden in leadership positions which in turn means the horrific loss of life and suffering will be ongoing.
It is all so very sad. The latest poll shows that 71 percent of the public support an immediate ceasefire, so Labour demanding one be going with the flow of public opinion and demands.
As I see it, this is all part of Labour: (a) being scared of getting monstered by the right wing media (which is always the default); (b) Labour having a strong history of support for Israel; (c) Labour seeing it can do well in the tiny amount of seats where Jewish vote can count; and (d) showing “we are a new party, and have moved on from Corbyn”.
The last point – “we are a new party, and have moved on from Corbyn” is the key and central factor that all the others revolve around – the “Mandelson effect” as a previous commentator put it. Corbynism was an attempt – as yet unfinished – to get back to social democracy, offering in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos (as Danny Dorling says) only a fraction of the tax and social spending levels of commitments that the Scandinavian countries commit to. (Sadly as the neoliberal project in Britain has the longest history, and has gone deepest anywhere in Europe, a Scandinavian style social democratic model – which is on paper popular – is deemed too remote.) As such, Corbynism certainly wasn’t a socialist project, but was – and is – a project – a mild form of social democracy – that was fresh and new after 50 years of neoliberalism, and something that could be built upon.
I saw this this morning and was deeply disturbed by it.
The way in which anti-Semitism has been weaponised by bad actors is redolent of the Corbyn era and I also agree that it reeks of the sulphur of Fascism.
What makes it worse is that it all obfuscates REAL anti-Semitism that is going on.
Who are Labour scared of? The Jewish Chronicle? Wealthy members of the Jewish community who have promised campaign funds? I can’t understand the over-sensitivity here. What does Labour gain by doing something like this?
One of the best sayings I’ve ever heard on this blog was ‘Don’t pick a fight with a pig because you’ll only get dirty and the pig likes it’.
This feels like one of those situations.
The London Review of Books have a very good piece on how the never fully de Nazified parts of Germany and the German state has used ‘philo semitism’ and excessive military aid to Israel as a cover. Something I had no idea about – but very scary in the light of the fascist/authoritarian advance across Europe, US, India, Israel etc.
Labour could have taken the quote on r4 today from a holocaust survivoir who refused to hate after the most horrifying experiences in Auchwitch, Belsen, cattle trucksetc – saying it woudl only breed more hatred.
Israel could have stopped bombing for that one memorial day – maybe the MP could have called for that – giving less opportunity for starmer and co to act.
I admit that I am nit sure what you are saying here
Sorry to be so garbled. The lesson from the Holocaust survivor on R4 this morning to Israel that hatred is not an appropriate response – and that stopping the bombing for the memorial day would have been an better
On Germany I was referring to Pankraj Mishra reviewing :
Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany
by Esra Özyürek.Stanford, 264 pp., £25.99, March, 978 1 5036 3556 2
Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust
by Andrew Port.Harvard, 352 pp., £30.95, May, 978 0 674 27522 5
‘This is not the first time invocations of Staatsräson have been used to conceal democratic deformations. In 2021, for example, while pursuing defence deals with Israel, Germany challenged the right of the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in the Occupied Territories. In mid-December, with twenty thousand Palestinians massacred and epidemics threatening the millions displaced, Die Welt was still claiming that ‘Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler.’ German leaders continue to block joint European calls for a ceasefire. Weizman may seem to exaggerate when he says that ‘German nationalism has begun to be rehabilitated and revivified under the auspices of German support for Israeli nationalism.’ But the only European society that tried to learn from its vicious past is clearly struggling to remember its main lesson. German politicians and opinion-makers are not only failing to meet their national responsibility to Israel by extending unconditional solidarity to Netanyahu, Smotrich, Gallant and Ben Gvir. As völkisch-authoritarian racism surges at home, the German authorities risk failing in their responsibility to the rest of the world: never again to become complicit in murderous ethnonationalism.’
An unfortunate irony. The Labour leadership believe we must reduce humanitarian aid to Gaza because 12 UNWRA staff are undesirable. Every week Labour discovers more and more of its members and representatives are undesirable and suspends or expels them. Using Labour’s UNWRA logic we need to suspend support for a political party so infested with unacceptable people
Labour believe genocides committed by our allies are not that bad.
Their terrible response has nothing to do with fear of being called anti Semitic. This is their sincere belief in Western supremacy, at the expense of everything else.