The human slaughter in Gaza is an abomination. The only silver lining is that this may be the global wake-up call we have needed for decades; challenging dishonesties we’ve turned a blind eye to and forcing a complete re-think of international peace-building priorities.
Israel’s saturation bombing of Gaza, and its casual violence against Palestinians has its origins in the last five decades not the last five months. Suddenly, the West is being forced to think about the extent to which we have armed ignorance and humoured the construction of a de facto apartheid society.
The international failure lies not in the absence of a two-state solution, but in the acceptance of a systemic denigration of Palestinians and their treatment as second-class human beings. This is what fostered the growth of extremism in both camps.
But what we learn now in Gaza could shape what we must do elsewhere. In Sudan there are eight million displaced people caught between warring factions. ‘Outside actors’ supply arms, not aid; a pattern repeated across Africa and the Middle East. Aid pledges themselves are rarely paid. Forced migrations throw the displaced into the laps of the destitute. This is no less true in Bangladesh, where a million Rohingya refugees still live in camps six years after the military drove them out of Myanmar. In the meantime, the West creates its own moral panic, in which small minds race in pursuit of small boats.
This collapse of post-War internationalism could not be more ill-timed. Looming over every single conflict hangs the spectre of food shortages, wild weather events and climate breakdown. There could not be a worse moment for the bulk of international leaders to be intellectually out-to-lunch.
This is what makes the outpouring of citizen protests about Gaza so important. Everything Rishi Sunak would seek to ban may be the last (and most important) lifeline we still have. It doesn’t make the choices easy, but it is the public demand for ‘honesty’ that scares politicians most.
Spineless in Gaza
In Gaza itself, the food-aid trucks began to arrive; too few and for many too late. This was even before IDF troops fired on those who had waited through the night for a modicum of flour for their families. So far, 112 people are reported dead and 760 injured. Israel put it down to the crowd. Everyone else put it down to the IDF shooting civilians after inexorably starving them to death.
Back in the UK, politics had got caught up in a maelstrom of distortion and self-delusion. George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election by a landslide. Don’t fall for suggestions that this was just a Muslim backlash. In a majority white constituency it was more an expression of public disgust at parliamentary cowardice; a rebuke to MPs hiding behind platitudes in the face of a genocide that unfolds daily before our eyes.
Galloway described his victory in typically graphic terms: “Labour and the Tories were two cheeks on the same backside, and Rochdale delivered a slap to both.” The imagery was powerful. Galloway has used it before. But stand back and think about it, for the rebuke runs much further than Keir Starmer and Sunak.
Successive parliaments (some of which I was part of) turned a blind eye to Israel’s race to the right and its unremitting dehumanisation of Palestinians. This isn’t just about a two-state solution. It is about the everyday denial of basic human rights.
After 7 October, UK politicians were quick to defend Israel’s termination of water, medical and electricity supplies to Gaza, before rowing back on such comments. Politicians of all stripes described this as a legitimate part of Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’. Never have they looked so foolish or so fraudulent. The collective punishment of civil society is not, and has never been, a right of self-defence.
The sense of relief surrounding America’s airdrop of 38,000 meals into Gaza must be put into perspective. It doesn’t go far in feeding 1.5 million displaced Palestinians in the Rafah corner of Gaza. It doesn’t counter the IDF shooting at the food convoy. America has meekly accepted Netanyahu’s obstruction of food convoys. But still it sent the weapons being used to flatten Gaza. Britain too, continues to supply arms, funds and military support, allowing the IDF to turn Gaza into a duck-shoot.
One might surmise that Netanyahu’s plan was never just about rooting out Hamas. It is about driving the Palestinians out of Gaza. Flattening the whole area would then provide the blank canvas for settler developments once the Palestinians have gone.
This is what turned the arrival of flour into yet another civilian slaughter. Politicians may refuse to say so, but this is what the international protests are all about. Even Eric Cantona joined in.
Pygmy politics
Sunak’s response, however, was to retreat into dog-whistle politics. At the core of his ranting lies a plan to ban MPs and councillors from meeting anti-war protestors and climate activists. If Sunak gets his way it would be an admission that parliament has died.
Only a bigger (more democratic) politics might then rescue us from the mess we are already in. Like it or not, Rochdale may become the turning point.
Let me be clear. What I am calling for is a new politics, not a new political party. Existing politicians can be part of this, but they cannot lock others out or trivialise the process. Different truths have to be told and embraced. And this will be awkward. Those of us committed to Israel’s right to exist must find ways of acknowledging that the choice is between a two-state solution and a no-state solution. Eliminating Palestinians would open the doors to those extremists who would be happier if the land itself was uninhabitable.
So, instead of the chancellor of the exchequer warning that his Jewish constituents are fearful of leaving their homes, he could reassure them; taking people with him to join in the public protests. There they would find lots of Jewish and non-Jewish people eager to welcome them.
So too with other MPs. Those who might (just) embrace calls for a ceasefire still balk at the things parliament could do on its own, including:
- suspending UK arms sales and military cooperation with Israel until genuine, two-state peace talks are underway,
- restoring (and enhancing) UNRWA funding,
- listing Israeli political and military leaders for war crimes charges,
- subjecting all UK citizens who have volunteered for the IDF to the same judicial scrutiny as Shamima Begum, and
- making it clear that any purchase of stolen Palestinian lands by UK citizens would be treated as both a domestic and international crime.
Thou shalt not steal
This last point is of real importance. In synagogues across North America, Palestinian land seizures are being auctioned, but only to members of the Jewish faith. Other members of their own community insist this is a violation of both domestic and international law. They want such actions to be prosecuted, not tolerated. Britain should share their stance.
The world has long denounced the arbitrary dispossession of Jewish homes and belongings conducted by Nazis during World War II. We should be no less critical today, when roles are reversed and the dispossessed are Palestinian. The same human values still apply.
Netanyahu sees none of this, and neither do the bulk of his far-right supporters. Instead he fans atrocities as though they are basic rights. In Hebron, the IDF help settlers take over the streets, fencing in the front doors of Palestinian homes and caging their windows. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinians are shot by settlers when harvesting their olives or lemons. The IDF stand guard over the settlers. Where necessary they bulldoze holes into Palestinian homes, ‘encouraging’ families to vacate their land.
All this is illegal. It has been for decades; as has the denial of access to clean water supplies to Palestinian homes or blocking planning permission for new building. But the West allowed it without ever withdrawing aid, trade or arms supplies to Israel. This is what enabled Israel’s fundamentalist right to drive out its own progressive left.
In Britain, we took it a step further. Labour, beleaguered by allegations of antisemitism from the right-wing press, purging not only Jeremy Corbyn but also members who even mentioned the notion of Israeli apartheid. In reality, we became the surrogate parents to the monster that masquerades as Netanyahu.
Sunak didn’t care. His intention is to strip civil society of any democratic right to reverse the corporate asset seizures his government has facilitated over the last 14 years. The neoliberal fundamentalists on Sunak’s benches make West Bank settlers look positively benign. For they would strip society of the right to avert climate breakdown as well as societal collapse.
Only the protesters seem to grasp this. Only they seem willing to stand up for the social and ecological solidarities the planet needs. In the case of Gaza, it begins with keeping people alive. Saying it with flour is the first step in a long journey to equal rights, independence and food security. Protesters who demand this are not the wreckers but a reminder of how lost mainstream politics has become. They may be the most important get-out-of-jail card society still holds. Let’s hope we have the sense to understand this.
