A year ago, regarding the devastating and murderous Hamas attack on Israel, I pointed out that the attack did not come out of the blue; the antagonism between the Israeli State and its Palestinian population was not a sudden thing; it goes back to 1948, when the Israeli army expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, sending them into refugee camps for generations of exile.

I pointed out that Gaza had been made a concentration camp under permanent siege, occupation and intermittent attack by Israeli forces. The 7th October attack was an act of desperation by angry young men whose lives had been blighted by repression and humiliation.

Gaza’s houses, hospitals, schools and utilities have been systematically blasted to rubble, making civilised life impossible.

Netanyahu has claimed to be targeting Hamas, but his ministers have made no secret of the real aim: to clear Gaza of all Palestinians, so that it can be populated by Jewish settlers. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has  indicted Israeli ministers, describing Israeli occupation of Gaza and other Palestinian areas as illegal.

Israel is now at war in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and with Iran, with Netanyahu still blathering about seeking security for Israel.  Keir Starmer, too, appears to think that Israel’s warmongering is the best way to secure peace and security for Israel.

Starmer claims that Britain stands fully  behind Israel’s every move. This is patently untrue, as made clear by opinion polls and the regular mass demonstrations seen on our streets every week for the past year.

Netanyahu and his ultra right-wing government want no peace until they have ethnically cleansed Gaza, the West bank and southern Lebanon for their grandiloquent ‘Greater Israel’.

The slaughter continues.  Declare that there is a Palestinian activist in a particular apartment block, school, mosque or hospital and that gives the IDF clearance to blast it to smithereens, regardless of the collateral killing of innocents, including women and children. Starmer defends all of this, regardless of the majority view of the British people and regardless of the real interests of the Israeli people.

Starmer should support the UN call for a ceasefire, stop all armament exports to Israel and recognise the Palestinian State.

As to be expected, because Israel can do no wrong, the US and UK governments and Labour, put the blame on Hamas, the Palestinian leadership in Gaza.

What you are about to read is the sort of factual and opinion writing that Keir Starmer calls anti-Semitic and which got me, as well as hundreds of others, including many Jews, chucked out of the Labour Party.

Starmer is less concerned to study the root cause of the Israel problem and possible solutions and more concerned to kowtow to the self-appointed Board of Deputies of British Jews and the US and Israeli embassies.

 

The proximal cause of the current bitter conflict is the attack on Israel by Hamas, but the distal cause is Britain’s 1917 Balfour declaration.

During WW1, in order to win the support of Jews in the allied countries for the war against Germany and the ottoman Empire,  Britain  decided to give Palestine to the Zionist cause, as a homeland for Jews, as if Palestine were an empty country, ripe for settlement as the land of milk and honey, given by God, according to  biblical  ancient legend, to the wandering homeless Israelites.

Of course, Palestine was far from being a vacant lot, having been inhabited by Arab tribes for thousands of years. Furthermore, it was not Britain’s to give away. Britain was merely a colonial power throwing its weight around as usual.

The current Palestinian slogan, “

From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is questionable because it sees the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea as having no place for Israel. But Israel has been widely recognised as a sovereign state since 1948. It has a massive military, thanks to US finance and is nuclear armed, although fatuously denying it.

The slogan reflects the deep-rooted antagonism between the Palestinians and the State of Israel, which has become much worse since the last Israeli general election and the formation of an extreme rightwing government, which pursues racist policies and has made Israel a replica of apartheid South Africa. More than one Israeli minister is a self-professed fascist.

The Labour leadership will not countenance Israel being described as an apartheid state, but how else can one describe a nation which has a law defining itself as the natural and historic home for Jews, although 21 per cent of the population are Arabs?  Only Jews have full citizenship rights.

This pernicious law reflects Israel’s longstanding policy of ethnic cleansing, which began in 1948, when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were forced into exile, where they and their descendants remain.  The Israeli military and armed settlers constantly harrass Palestinians, forcing them from their homes and occupying their houses, villages  and farms.

The Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Its borders and utility supplies are controlled by Israel.  It is a ghetto or concentration camp. Like the West Bank oif the Jordan, which is also designated Palestinian territory, It is subject to punitive incursion by the Israeli military, collective punishment and theft of land.

In its latest devastating attack, Hamas was able to channel the anger of the Palestinian people  ─ the younger generation in particular ─and their thirst for vengeance against their oppressors.

As usual Israel has hit back with devastating might. With the great powers standing back, wringing their hands and bleating their accustomed pleonasms, this long war could go on for much longer.

If Labour were not such a limp lettuce leaf of a political party, it would break with the gutless consensus, assign degrees of blame, demand a ceasefire, demand UN recognition of statehood for Palestine, move at the UN  that Israel be answerable for the international laws it consistently breaks.

The nexus must be broken. Otherwise there could be war and with nuclear weapons to hand, hostilities would not be confined to the Middle East.