Thousands of people took part in a protest in London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. (Photo: via @alihadi68 TW page)
Never again, for anyone, is the message that my parents, who survived Auschwitz, bestowed on me. What possible interest of the citizens of Britain is served by supporting such a crime?
Ever since October 7, 2023, Britain is being perceived and described abroad as the epicentre of opposition to the terrifying Israeli genocide. This may be understandable and superficially correct.
London has certainly furnished the largest protest marches in the West, some with more than a million participants. The number of action groups, political organisations, online and in-person meetings and local protest marches is indeed astounding and without precedent. It seems that the UK population got the message and is now relaying it efficiently and with great commitment.
After 77 weeks of genocide, the protest is not slowing down – the march on Saturday, May 17, was one of the largest and passed without a single violent incident – a popular festival of sharing the pain, but also the solidarity with Gaza and its hounded, starving millions. The Joint decalkaration by the UK, Canada and France does not change this situation – no international sanctions of any kind were ever applied to Israel, and Britain continues to supply the genocidal IDF.
In the case of South African Apartheid, the UN General Assembly suspended the regime from the UNGA in 1974; this marked the beginning of the long campaign that has brought an end to the Apartheid state. It seems that Israel is the only nation immune from international law, safe in the knowledge that the West has its back.
But unfortunately, the truth is much more complex, and less promising. Anyone partaking in the protest will tell you that the main participants in these marches have been Palestinians, UK Muslims, and elderly left-wing Jews, all of whom appear each time, without fail.
The UK population of around 70 million seems to be very efficiently controlled by the state and its machineries of ideological influence – dubbed the ‘weapons of mass distraction’, led by PM Keir Starmer, famously declaring himself a Zionist and a supporter of the IDF genocidal mission in Gaza, echoing the Octpber 2023 Israeli Hasbara memes in Parliament: “The brutal attack in Israel just over two weeks ago was the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.”
Ever since Labour came to power, the number and nature of arrests of protestors, especially of Jewish and Palestinian activists against the Israeli crimes, have rocketed. Members of both groups are some 50 times more likely to be arrested than the general Brit, arguably proving their racist targeting, while Jews supporting Israeli crimes are most unlikely to be arrested, even when they choose to ignore the law.
Some thousands of British Jews are known to have served in the IDF operation, like Jews in the US and France, but to date, the state has not prosecuted a single one of them for participating in what the ICJ has termed ‘plausible genocide’. This is an active disregard of Britain’s duty under international law, as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
In fact, UK Government lawyers have declared that “No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF”, in clear defiance of ICC and ICJ rulings, and of thousands of video clips and mountains of online evidence. Contravening its duty to stop ita support for genocide, the Labour government has not only continued Tory policies of arming and supporting Israel, but has greatly increased such support: “UK Labour approved more weapons to Israel in three months than Tories did in four years”, despite claiming to have cut it by 8 per cent.
The fact that the legal authorities in the UK share their information routinely with Israel and its appendages in Britain – arguably in breach of the law – makes it clear that the support for Israel’s ongoing and unprecedented war crimes is far from being a passing phase or an exception. Britain could hardly be accused of inconsistency – it has been supporting the Zionist project of taking over Palestine and ridding it of its indigenous population for the last 108 years, longer than any other state.
Indeed, without such committed support for the Zionist settler-colonial project ever since the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Israel would not have been there today to commit the current genocide. After such a long time, we are justified in posing a simple question to the UK government – what British interests are being served by flouting international and British law through offering such illegal and immoral support for the most heinous crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing?
There is no doubt that the UK Zionist lobby is responsible for much of the pressure applied on current and past UK administrations, ensuring their continued support of Israel, come what may. This is also the case elsewhere in the West, where the narrative of the West against the Rest is skewing the political decisions of the richest portion of humanity, which is responsible for the horrifying historical crimes of colonial occupation, industrial slavery, exploitation and aggression, imperialism and two world wars – to quote just the main crimes.
It is a shameful historical fact that Britain is the political entity that has supported Zionism, armed and financed its crimes since its inception. Maybe it is also why the number of arrests of Palestine activists and protesters seems to be the highest in Europe, many charged under Terrorism legislation.
The worst part of rationalising this continued injustice and lawlessness is often described in the West as supporting Jewish people and fighting antisemitism, a total misapprehension.
On the one hand, Jewish opposition to the genocide can be seen everywhere, and on the other, this argument, in assuming all Jewish people are active supporters of Israel’s crimes, is clearly antisemitic. Although many Jewish people continue to shamefully do so, Israeli policies and actions should be understood as the most un-Jewish!
Indeed, nothing in Jewish history, experience, tradition and culture during two millennia of diasporic existence in Europe and the Arab and Islamic world can be identified as supporting oppression, settler-colonialism, stealing the land of Palestine, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide.
Genocide committed by Jews in the name of Judaism is a terrifying offence against Judaism itself, let alone the rest of humanity, and cannot be condoned by anyone who cares about Jewish history and heritage, morality, law, or simple human decency.
By supporting the criminal actions of Israel, Britain and the rest of the West are also supporting the continuation and likely increase of the scourge of real antisemitism. To claim that the crimes committed by Israel in the name of and in the interest of Jews elsewhere is an antisemitic blood-libel, unimaginable even a few decades ago. My whole family was destroyed by Nazi genocidaires in Poland during WW2.
Should we allow their terrifying and cruel destruction to be used in justifying genocide committed by Israeli Jews? This is unthinkable and unforgivable. Never again, for anyone, is the message that my parents, who survived Auschwitz, bestowed on me. What possible interest of the citizens of Britain is served by supporting such a crime?