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Source: The Unz Review
First It Was Corbyn. Now the Whole British Public Is Being Smeared Over Gaza
By Jonathan Cook | March 1, 2024 | 136 COMMENTS
Under cover of fear for MPs' safety, Labour leader Keir Starmer has helped the ruling Tories paint as villains anyone opposed to Israel's slaughter of children
For the best part of a decade now, the British establishment has been weaponising antisemitism against critics of Israel, claiming as its biggest scalp the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
He lost the 2019 general election – and stepped down as leader – amid a barrage of smears that he had indulged, if not stoked, antisemitism in the party's wider ranks.
Corbyn is the only major British party leader to have prioritised the rights of Palestinians over Israel's oppression of them. He was finally drummed out of the parliamentary party by his successor, Keir Starmer, in 2020 for pointing out that antisemitism in Labour had been "dramatically overstated for political reasons".
Last week, that same establishment campaign plumbed new depths. Now it is not just the left wing of the Labour Party – traditionally critical of Israel for its decades of oppressing Palestinians – facing demonisation. Large parts of the British public are finding themselves being smeared too – and for the same reason.
The inciting cause is a parliamentary crisis precipitated last week by Starmer's refusal to identify Israel's slaughter and starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as "collective punishment" – a war crime.
The House of Commons speaker, who is supposed to be strictly neutral, defied convention to allow Starmer to water down a ceasefire motion on Gaza promoted by the Scottish Nationalists, all so he could avert a rebellion in his party's ranks.
But while a bitter row ensued between Labour and the ruling Tories over the abuse of parliamentary protocol, it also brought the two sides together on a separate matter.
For different reasons, they exploited the crisis over the ceasefire vote to imply, without a shred of evidence, that demonstrations against Israel’s flagrant, months-long atrocities in Gaza constituted not just antisemitic behaviour but a threat to the democratic order and the safety of MPs.
As a result, the consensus of the English political and media establishment has swiftly shifted onto even more dangerous, and anti-democratic, terrain than the earlier antisemitism smears.
Willfully deaf
According to a recent survey, two-thirds of Britons support a ceasefire in Gaza – with many of them blaming Israel for killing and maiming at least 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza and imposing an aid blockade that is gradually starving the rest of the population.
Only 13 percent of the public share the two main parties' view that Israel is justified in continuing to take military action.
For months, many hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of London each week to demand that the UK stop its complicity in what the World Court ruled recently is plausibly a genocide being committed by Israel.
Britain is supplying Israel with arms, giving it diplomatic cover at the United Nations, and has effectively joined Israel in its aid blockade. The UK has frozen funds to the UN's main aid agency, Unrwa, a last lifeline to the enclave.
But those demanding that international law be upheld – and castigating the political class for failing to do the same – are now finding themselves demonised as potential terrorists.
Already, the talk on both sides of the Commons – and in the media – is of the need for new police powers, curbs on the right of the public to protest, and further security measures to keep politicians shielded from the people they are supposed to represent.
This week, a committee of MPs used pressures placed on the police to manage regular mass marches in London against the slaughter in Gaza as grounds for introducing tighter limits on the right to protest.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took up the refrain, calling for greater police powers against what he described as "mob rule" that was supposedly "replacing democratic rule".
Please go to The Unz Review to continue reading.
He lost the 2019 general election – and stepped down as leader – amid a barrage of smears that he had indulged, if not stoked, antisemitism in the party's wider ranks.
Corbyn is the only major British party leader to have prioritised the rights of Palestinians over Israel's oppression of them. He was finally drummed out of the parliamentary party by his successor, Keir Starmer, in 2020 for pointing out that antisemitism in Labour had been "dramatically overstated for political reasons".
Last week, that same establishment campaign plumbed new depths. Now it is not just the left wing of the Labour Party – traditionally critical of Israel for its decades of oppressing Palestinians – facing demonisation. Large parts of the British public are finding themselves being smeared too – and for the same reason.
The inciting cause is a parliamentary crisis precipitated last week by Starmer's refusal to identify Israel's slaughter and starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as "collective punishment" – a war crime.
The House of Commons speaker, who is supposed to be strictly neutral, defied convention to allow Starmer to water down a ceasefire motion on Gaza promoted by the Scottish Nationalists, all so he could avert a rebellion in his party's ranks.
But while a bitter row ensued between Labour and the ruling Tories over the abuse of parliamentary protocol, it also brought the two sides together on a separate matter.
For different reasons, they exploited the crisis over the ceasefire vote to imply, without a shred of evidence, that demonstrations against Israel’s flagrant, months-long atrocities in Gaza constituted not just antisemitic behaviour but a threat to the democratic order and the safety of MPs.
As a result, the consensus of the English political and media establishment has swiftly shifted onto even more dangerous, and anti-democratic, terrain than the earlier antisemitism smears.
Willfully deaf
According to a recent survey, two-thirds of Britons support a ceasefire in Gaza – with many of them blaming Israel for killing and maiming at least 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza and imposing an aid blockade that is gradually starving the rest of the population.
Only 13 percent of the public share the two main parties' view that Israel is justified in continuing to take military action.
For months, many hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of London each week to demand that the UK stop its complicity in what the World Court ruled recently is plausibly a genocide being committed by Israel.
Britain is supplying Israel with arms, giving it diplomatic cover at the United Nations, and has effectively joined Israel in its aid blockade. The UK has frozen funds to the UN's main aid agency, Unrwa, a last lifeline to the enclave.
But those demanding that international law be upheld – and castigating the political class for failing to do the same – are now finding themselves demonised as potential terrorists.
Already, the talk on both sides of the Commons – and in the media – is of the need for new police powers, curbs on the right of the public to protest, and further security measures to keep politicians shielded from the people they are supposed to represent.
This week, a committee of MPs used pressures placed on the police to manage regular mass marches in London against the slaughter in Gaza as grounds for introducing tighter limits on the right to protest.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took up the refrain, calling for greater police powers against what he described as "mob rule" that was supposedly "replacing democratic rule".
Please go to The Unz Review to continue reading.
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