DENNIS SKINNER once referred to David Cameron as “Dodgy Dave.” It may have seemed a disrespectful remark from an MP to the (then) prime minister, but Dennis was just telling it like it is. It’s only because Rishi Sunak’s government is so much further to the right that Cameron is now getting an easier ride. But his fundamental politics are just as corrupt.
As you’d expect, Tony Benn put it more analytically: “I don’t think people understand how the Establishment became established. They simply stole land and property from the poor, surrounded themselves with weak-minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.”
You couldn’t ask for a clearer example of this than Cameron’s approach to Gaza.
Some 450,000 Palestinians are being forced to flee Israeli’s bombing of Rafah, driven to a “safer” coastal area with no amenities whatsoever. This is Benjamin Netanyahu’s land seizure plan; a policy that moves Israel steadily from apartheid to genocide.
Cameron rejected calls for a British arms embargo on Israel until the slaughter stops, arguing: “It would just encourage Hamas.” What political flatulence.
Hamas offered ceasefire proposals on 11 occasions, only to have them turned down. This included acceptance of proposals made by Israel itself. From the sidelines it is clear that this is all about land theft and ethnic cleansing.
Cameron looks elsewhere when Israeli settlers set fire to trucks taking food and medicines to Gaza. He is “on the phone” when the IDF fires sniper bullets into designated UN vehicles. And he gets distracted when Israeli soldiers bulldoze Palestinian homes. Cameron’s silences support the land seizure and the plunder.
This is the hypocrisy that global anti-war protesters reject. It’s why today’s Establishment is hell-bent on marginalising and criminalising them rather than challenging the plunderers. For civil society, the risk is that remaining neutral erodes both dignity and democracy.
From the start, the far-right dubbed anti-slaughter protests as “hate marches,” even when the police described them as peaceful. So too with campus occupations.