|
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volume 53 Number 30, November 4, 2023 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
Israel has been continually escalating its attacks on the people of Palestine with ever more intense aerial bombings and targeting of hospitals under the pretext that Hamas is using the people as human shields. This is being perpetrated in preparation for an all-out ground invasion, as the crime of genocide has become totally evident for all to see. Israel is seeking to destroy the Palestinian people. No matter how Israel, the US, Britain and other countries try to present what the Israelis are doing as legitimate, the peoples throughout the world are standing with Palestine.
Gaza demonstration, Liverpool Street Station, London, November 1
All over the world, demonstrations and protests are and have been taking place, as millions of people in all corners of the globe demand recognition of the Palestinian people's right to be. In cities across the West Bank also, thousands of Palestinians in Ramallah, Nablus and elsewhere have been protesting in solidarity with those in Gaza, as Israel intensifies its military campaign against the Palestinian Resistance throughout the Gaza Strip. In Britain itself, week by week the protests have been gathering together hundreds of thousands of people, with as many as half a million in the national demonstration in London on October 28, in addition to the many emergency rallies, sit-ins at train stations and student actions in which thousands of people have been participating.
In opposition to the shameful backing of Israeli genocide by the likes of Sunak and Starmer under the pretext of Israeli's so-called right to "defend itself", it is the people who have demonstrated that they are determined to speak in their own name, including many Jewish people declaring "Not In Our Name". The people, while viewing with anguish the sufferings of the children, women and men of Gaza, are seething with anger and a burning determination to see justice done. Their admiration for the limitless courage and determination of the Palestinian people, the journalists, health personnel and humanitarian workers has no bounds. Yes, the world is standing with Palestine and declaring, "We are all Palestinians!".
Opposition to Israel Continues to Grow
Demonstration in Kerala, India, October 26
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been mercilessly attacked by Israel and its accomplices for saying on October 24 that the attacks carried out by the Palestinian resistance groups inside Israel on October 7 "did not happen in a vacuum". He said: "The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing."
As well as the response of the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, who called Guterres' comments "shocking" and demanded his removal from office, in Britain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak shamefully rejected Guterres' comments. Furthermore, the UK was also one of the 45 states to abstain in the vote at the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian truce. Some 120 countries voted for the resolution with only 14 countries voting against. Standing with Israel, Keir Starmer's shameful lack of humanity towards the Palestinian people has been demonstrated not just in his refusal to endorse a ceasefire, but in defining terrorism as coming from Hamas. As he said in the House of Commons on October 23, "We stand with Israel and her right to defend herself against the terrorists of Hamas." And he wipes out the history of Britain's criminal intervention in Palestine over the past century and more, denigrating the Palestinian resistance as barbarism, rather than the cruel and heartless strategy of Britain's ruling elites.
At a time that the peoples of the entire world are denouncing the crime of genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people, the dishonest rewriting of history by the likes of Sunak and Starmer in the name of human rights cannot be allowed to stand. Starmer even claims, "We stand for international law", ignoring that the laws of war are being flouted by Israel, laws which were defined by the events of the holocaust of World War Two and the terror of the Hitlerites.
London, October 28
The world can see that Israel today is seeking to empty the northern part of the Gaza Strip, turn its population into refugees once again and then annex that land as part of their plan for a Greater Israel. They are now doing the same with all of Gaza as well as the West Bank. And Israel is defended to the hilt by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other old colonial powers who partitioned Arab lands after World War I and created borders by carving up territory and putting certain tribes into power to suit their own predatory interests.
Despite the fact that the conception of a modern state cannot be based on religious criteria, but must recognise all its members as equal irrespective of national origin, gender, age, political, religious or ideological beliefs, Israel is presented by the US, Britain and others as a democratic country acting in self-defence while the Palestinians' right to be, right of return and very humanity are denigrated, ignored and slated for extinguishment. As a result of the fact that the US is permitted "indispensable nation" status by Britain and other big powers in Europe, what is called the international community has been powerless to hold Israel to its founding resolution and to all the other resolutions which have condemned its actions against the Palestinians.
The gap between the pro-war stands of the ruling elite of Britain and the stand of the people for Palestine's right to be has never been more pronounced. It must be affirmed that the decisive factor for peace is the peoples of each country and of the world. In the current atrocities Israel is committing against the Palestinian people with the clear support and encouragement and material aid of the US, Britain and other former colonial powers of Europe, the peoples of the world can readily see who pays the price for the striving of the war machines and profiteers to prevail.
Let us all stand as one with Palestine!
University of Manchester, October 27
New Street Station, Birmingham, November
2
Barnsley, October 28
