Speaking up for Palestine

by

Hugh Lanning

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I had never thought it so controversial to speak up for Palestine. You knew people would disagree, challenge – but not to try to stop debate and the freedom of expression. 

First, Israel sought to get the three letters BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) outlawed. It resulted in the government’s anti-boycott bill – with Labour meekly toeing the line that, somehow, non-violent action such as BDS was discriminating against Israel, notwithstanding its continuous breaching of international law in its occupation and encouragement of settlements in Palestine.

Next, it was using the word apartheid in the same sentence as Israel – despite copious reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others that Israel was now in breach of international law by committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians in the operation of its regime. Apartheid was deemed to be a nine-letter word to be supressed — despite it being an accurate description of the crimes of the Israeli state: namely, as apartheid is defined by the UN, the domination of one racial group by another.

Now, not only is it necessary to denounce and condemn Hamas, but it is wrong to mention Israel’s crimes, peace, ceasefire or refer to any context or history. 

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was declaring war on Gaza on October 7, he omitted to mention that Israel declared war on all Palestinians in 1948 when, during the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic), it expelled 700,000 people — three quarters of the population — from their homes, land and villages. 

Israel declared war again in 1967 when it militarily occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

It has gone on to wage war building the wall around the West Bank, with the siege of Gaza, the building of settlements on Palestinian land, incarcerating prisoners and children without trial, by encouraging and condoning settler violence. Each of these is an act of war in breach of international law.

As United Nations general secretary Antonio Guterres said, this latest round of the deaths of thousands of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians did not start “in a vacuum” in early October.

The assault on language and acceptable vocabulary is part of the process of dehumanising Palestinians — now openly described by Israeli ministers as animals. It seeks to create a hierarchy of rights in which Israel can do no wrong and Palestine is always in the wrong. 

Israel’s right to “self-defence”, never matched by an equivalent right for those under military occupation in Palestine, comes to mean giving a green light for Israel to go ahead with its plans to use its overwhelming firepower – financed by the West – to slaughter thousands of civilians. 

In Rwanda describing people as insects was the precursor to genocide; Israel is on the brink of, if it is not already, committing such a crime.

Therefore, the call for a ceasefire is more than “let’s just have a break from violence”; it is trying to stop an escalation — and the commission of indescribable war crimes in the name of self-defence. 

In this Orwellian world, a refusal to call for a ceasefire is condoning the onslaughts that Israel says it is about to embark on. It is in this context that the refusal of the Labour Party to call for a ceasefire and the consequential disillusion of the Muslim community and many Labour Party supporters in this country must be seen.

In the past I have described Palestine as a litmus-test issue for Labour’s allegedly ethical foreign policy. 

It is a test that Starmer and Lammy have failed lamentably, and in the process have lost the trust of, and their credibility with, millions of voters, including many young people, who have been demonstrating on the streets in their hundreds of thousands.

This mistrust will not easily be papered over by a new formulation of words – people knew and understood what Labour was saying officially, despite the support of its members for Palestine. It is a stain that will live for a long time, and will haunt Labour if it succeeds in becoming the next government.

International law is indivisible – it is right to abhor and condemn the loss of civilian life, but not just one side: international law is not a pick & mix. 

We, the British, the West, bear responsibility for what is happening. 

In 1993 we persuaded and arm-twisted the Palestine Liberation Organisation to recognise Israel in return for the promise of a Palestinian state on just over 20 per cent of historic Palestine. 

Since then, Israel has continued with its theft and colonisation of Palestinian land with now over 700,000 settlers living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Israel has never recognised the right of Palestine to exist or even defined its own borders. 

While Suella Braverman says it could be illegal for supporters of Palestine to chant “from the river to the sea”, it is the Israeli Prime Minister who travels with maps of a “greater Israel” that shows no Palestine between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

It is Israel that officially wants a second Nakba to drive Palestinians into Egypt and across the river. 

It is the West – the US, EU and UK — that have all failed to deliver on our promises to the people of Palestine. 

The current situation is our fault, our failure. Rather than tamely acting as Israel’s ambassador, Keir Starmer on behalf of the Labour Party needs to be leading the call for peace, for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation. 

We don’t expect better from a Tory government, but people do hope that a one-time democratic socialist party can do better.

Another massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is not the solution. Two wrongs, two new international war crimes, do not make a right and will make any solution harder. 

We should not be condoning force: we should be calling for a major international intervention to apply international law in full, fairly to all to bring about a free Palestine. This will involve the decolonisation of Palestine, giving Palestinians back their land and right to self-determination. This is the only way there will be peace. 

The death of thousands of innocent people should not be wasted, those who believe in democracy should not waste this tragic opportunity: we should seize the time to ensure that the slogan “never again” means just that.

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Rally for Gaza:

Sunday 29th October 2023: Canterbury War Memorial, Buttermarket, Burgate, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 2JJ

Assemble between 11.30 am and 12 midday. Speakers from 12 onwards are – Naomi Wimborne Idrissi from Jewish Voice for Labour, Hugh Lanning, former secretary of the PCS union and former Chair of the national Palestine Solidarity Campaign group, and Dr Shahd Hammouri from the University of Kent Law School. Others to be confirmed. Please join us for a peaceful rally and vigil for all the victims of the latest killings inside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

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HUGH LANNING

Hugh Lanning lived in Whitstable for about 10 years and was Labour candidate for the Canterbury constituency in the 2015 election. Before retiring in 2013 he was deputy general secretary of the Public & Commercial Services union (PCS). He chaired the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for 10 years, and in 2017 was, famously, the first British national to be refused entry to Israel under the Knesset’s Amendment No 28 to the Entry Into Israel Law, which allowed boycott, divestment & sanctions (BDS) supporters to be banned.

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