Israel/Palestine is a political and moral litmus test

blairA man who is so loathed that he cannot appear in public in the UK has viciously attacked Jeremy Corbyn. Speaking from an undisclosed "location in Central London" and widely reported by the mainstream media, Blair joins in with his acolytes such as Margaret Hodge and Sadiq Khan in the attack on someone (whose boots they are not fit to lick) because he refused to follow them into support for "the supreme international crime". All three are militant supporters of Israeli crimes, up to and including the snipers currently slaughtering Palestinian children, double amputees, journalists and others on the Gaza perimeter.

At the end of WWII, the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal ruled that

War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Whereas Blair and his followers worked hard and repeatedly to "initiate a war of aggression" and supported every Israeli war of aggression, Corbyn is a lifelong supporter of Palestinian rights and an opponent of aggressive wars. His consistently left-wing positions have earned him the hatred of:

  • Margaret Hodge. The millionaire head of Islington Council attacked and tried to silence victims of child abuse that took place under her watch then had to pay damages for her loathsome behaviour. Blair then made her Minister for Children. Her support for the murder of Palestinian children does not come out of a blue sky.

  • Sadiq Khan. He had to pay back thousands of pounds in falsely claimed MP expenses. Khan earlier this year joined the absurdly named "Jewish Labour Movement", which reports to the Israeli Embassy as the British affiliate of the racist Israeli Labour Party, with a history of mass ethnic cleansing. The group was resuscitated solely to ensure Corbyn was brought down. A decade before our current Prime Minister announced his intention to criminalise BDS, Khan was an aide to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, from which position he promoted the predecessor definition to the IHRA effort to silence criticism of the Apartheid State. The lead in that campaign was taken by corrupt MP Denis MacShane before he was sent down for stealing public funds.

  • Multi-millionaire Tony Blair. Corbyn said on TV that Blair helped launch "a war that was catastrophic...that lost a lot of lives...If he's committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be [tried].” Corbyn announced this political position during the Labour Party leadership election and was subsequently elected by the members in a damning indictment of Blair.

  • All those who never stood up to Blair and his crimes.

  • Ex-MPs whom voters rejected but who have lost a lucrative parliamentary position to which they feel entitled.

(It is faCorbyn opposed Blair's bombings and invasions as junior partner to the USAscinating how all of the BBC's reporting of the war inside the Labour Party manages to avoid any use of the terms "left" and "right".)

The Israeli regime exists because it makes itself useful to the dominant power in the Middle East (1956, 1967 and more, much more) and it also now serves the most right-wing governments by attacking the left as antisemitic. A group claiming to be the leaders of the UK Jewish community has spearheaded the attack on Corbyn and the left, using British Jews as human shields in order to protect the most antisemitic party in Britain and enable a government that means to do the majority great harm, by no means only with the NHS.

Corbyn's unforgivable sin was to challenge the notion of the Labour Party as a "broad church", i.e. where the pro-war, pro-austerity wing tolerated the left as long as it knew its subordinate place, and the arms companies could make fortunes out of mass killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine and around the globe. Their fury now knows no bounds and those who never criticised Margaret Hodge for attacking victims of child sexual abuse, and who never defended our rights to condemn Israeli State-enforced racism will now proceed to try and crush Corbyn and his faction in the Labour Party. Elites are at their worst when their privileged position has been threatened. The Blairites will be vicious.

Sadiq Khan with the Israeli Ambassador Regev and racist Rabbi Ephraim MirvisA push to expel Corbyn from the Labour Party is quite possible, while supporters of what the UNHCR has identified as Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity will, as ever, be made welcome. Johnson's purge of Ken Clarke and a score of other MPs from the Tory Party will encourage such an ambition.

The experience of the last election campaign has shown how tightly the Tories and the Labour right are bound to the pro-Israel lobby. Any fight for solidarity with the Palestinian people has to work out the implications of this unavoidable conclusion, and so also does anyone who wants to work for a better world for the great majority. Palestine is a very reliable litmus test of who is for and who is against against crime in general.

Mick Napier
18 December 2019