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Only one MP attended the recent demonstration in London against the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza – Jeremy Corbyn. Not one word of condemnation for the indiscriminate bombing of the heavily populated and defenceless Gaza strip has come from any member of the three major parties.
The order issued by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to 1.1 million Gazans to evacuate is a war crime – but the totality of the British political and media establishment dodges and fudges every question about it.
Israel’s blockade, depriving 2.2 million Gazans of basic supplies is also a war crime under international law. Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry explicitly defenced Israel’s ‘right’ to commit them. In other words, if Israel feels threatened or angry it can do as it pleases.
When Amnesty International produced evidence of Israel dropping white phosphorous on Gaza – a war crime and provided authenticated videos of the IDF bombing convoys of Palestinian refugees fleeing south, nobody at Westminster or in the British media protested. Over 750 defenceless Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza in 72 hours – countless more horribly injured and maimed, all the result of the IDF punishing them for the crime of being Palestinian.
I have witnessed Labour politicians like David Lammy framing these atrocities as collateral damage – a heinous lie. These children were not Hamas fighters in a terrorist bunker, they were innocents who died screaming in tower blocks, died alone buried under rubble and died in civilian vehicles blown apart by Israeli air strikes. These were not acts of war but acts of fascist revenge and only Corbyn condemns them…because it is politically inconvenient for the rest.
While spineless hacks in the UK were running scared from the Israeli lobby – it fell to a Jewish Israeli who lost both his parents in the heinous attack by Hamas to call for an end to the war – pleading tearfully that his family wanted no part in any Israeli revenge. The grieving partner and mother of an Israeli peace activist said that he would not have wanted his death to be used as an excuse to kill innocents.
What does it say about the state of the British moral landscape that it falls to the Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism to condemn Israeli revenge attacks ? We are witness to the total moral collapse of British public life, a nation with no moral leadership, no moral code – no depths unplumbed in the pursuit of material wealth, careerist ambition and squabbles over domestic and international power.
In this moral inversion I reserve special contempt for those institutions who claim the moral high ground. The Labour Party is now not merely a shadow of a once proud socialist and internationalist moral tradition – it has become a twisted perversion, a ghoulish husk that seeks only to acquire power and fit around the narratives and needs of the elites. The Guardian under Kath Viner has become a tool of military intelligence, a propaganda outlet for Zionism and a cheerleader for war. The BBC’s domestic news coverage is a right wing affront to journalistic integrity and a moral black hole – though some heroic few (on the world service especially) do try to defend its reputation as best they can.
The blanket pass afforded to Israeli war crimes illuminates perfectly also that western (soon to be withdrawn) ‘support’ for Ukraine was always morally bankrupt. None of the people who now wave on the horrors in Gaza ever gave a damn about Ukrainian civilians, soldiers or democracy – their ‘support’ has always been callously self-serving. The west’s geopolitical gambit in Ukraine was dishonestly couched as a moral stand but in truth Ukrainians are every bit as expendable as Palestinians. It is all too obvious now, how and why the west suddenly became comfortable with Ukraine’s corruption, mass conscription and bothersome neo-Nazi elements.
Where we are now is no accident – it is the planned consequence of wave after wave of attacks against morality itself. The Murdoch press, the Conservative Party and the alt-right have all pushed these attacks with glee and every defeat for morality has seen them emboldened. The attackers have had ample help from infiltrators but is the stupidity and moral cowardice of the British political left that has been decisive.
Enmeshed in identity politics and the Westminster bubble, the left gave up on making and winning any kind of moral argument decades ago in favour of working within a political landscape which has shifted remorselessly to the right as a consequence. This self-reinforcing dynamic nurtured knaves like Blair, Mandleson and Starmer and hollowed out the moral character of British political life until there is almost nothing left.
I look out today as if emerging from a shelter after a nuclear war – almost nothing moral is left standing. The UK political / media class are an abomination of a vassal state, socialism, genuine environmentalism and internationalism have become fringe activities derided as extremist and old fashioned. Neoliberalism, militarism, nationalism and fascism have never had it so good.
To succeed in politics now requires the complete abandonment of any moral code and a ruthless pursuit of power as an end in itself – British democracy in such a context is a sham shop front to disguise a complete lack of moral debate or moral choices.
I still believe that there exists a moral majority out there that feels as helpless, angry and frustrated with the state of the world as I do – so I am turning on the emergency broadcast signal in the hope we can get back together and start down the long road back to some kind of decent society…
…hello, hello turn your radio on… is there anybody out there can you hear my song?
The UK government and its opposition, the US government and the EU (save for a few voices like Clare Daley and Mick Wallace) are complicit in the ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinian people by the apartheid state of Israel.. They disgust me.
Not just bystanders either – but active suppliers of the weapons and active participants (like this morning’s disgraceful lying about the al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist hospital massacre) in cover ups of Israeli atrocities.