Neoconservatives and Islamophobes promote anti-Muslim hatred, seek to silence debate on Israel
Protesters hold placards and wave Palestinian flags as they walk over Westminster Bridge during a March For Palestine in London on 28 October 2023
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 27 February 2024:
In all the furore that accompanied the House of Commons vote calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the substance of the debate has been completely forgotten.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) motion calling for an immediate ceasefire would have embarrassed a Labour leadership that has spent the last five months of homicidal bombing of Gaza avoiding saying just that. The SNP motion was clear, unequivocal and totally in line with public opinion in the British Isles.
The SNP called for an immediate ceasefire without conditions. The Labour motion handed the Israeli government a right of veto, by insisting that Hamas release its hostages as a precondition for the ceasefire to start. Labour’s call for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” was no such thing, as it allowed Israel to carry on fighting.
It is an inconvenient fact – both for the Tory and Labour defenders of Israel – that a clear and rapidly growing majority of the British public has had enough of this war. They want an immediate ceasefire. Sixty-six percent of Britons support a ceasefire. The same percentage say that Israel should be prepared to enter peace negotiations with Hamas, up five points from November. Only 13 percent think that Israel should continue to pursue the war, and just 24 percent think the attack on Gaza is justified, a drop of five points.
In other words, the carefully and secretly choreographed effort to derail a vote on the SNP’s motion defied the clearly expressed will of the British people.
The Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle excused his decision to break with precedent by allowing votes on three separate motions, thus scuppering the SNP motion, by saying that he had been “very, very concerned about the security of all members”. There then began a brief attempt to turn the MPs that have backed this vile war into victims, into the targets of “Islamist” hate speech. It takes some nerve to turn MPs, who have consistently justified a war which has killed 30,000 Palestinians into the victims of hate speech, rather than expose them as the deniers of genocide.
Orwellian newspeak
Labour leader Keir Starmer has repeatedly said that Israel had the right to defend itself, long past the moment when it was clear that the war was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole. He has repeatedly prevented calls for a ceasefire.
The former human rights lawyer also defended collective punishment. He clearly said that Israel had the right to withhold water and fuel. For that comment alone, Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions (DPP), could be prosecuted for incitement to genocide, even though he later withdrew it.