Bombing
Video: Israel’s ‘error’ killing of WCK food aid workers was 3 attacks over 1.5 miles
‘Error’? The facts say different but western governments still complicit
Israel has claimed that its slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen food aid workers was an ‘error’ and says it is investigating. The attack consisted of three separate bombings – across a distance of 2.4km.
And as a White House correspondent pointed out in questions to government spokesperson John Kirby this evening, the attacks were spread across time, too – with the first strike hitting one vehicle then two more as survivors tried to escape with their wounded in the remaining two: an attack designed to make sure no one got out of it alive:
The ‘error’ also happens to have achieved Israel’s objective of cutting off the only remaining significant supply of food to the two million civilians of Gaza – WCK fed some half million Palestinians – after Netanyahu ordered his forces to prevent any shipping of food by UN agency UNRWA.
Yet the US and UK political establishments remain more than happy to collude in Israel’s fictions – and to allow the war criminals to investigate themselves. The UK has not even ordered Israel’s far-right ambassador to appear to explain Israel’s actions, despite at least one UK citizen being among the murder victims.
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Exclusive: Foreign Office has not summoned Israel ambassador over murder of UK food workers
7 World Central Kitchen workers murdered in air strike as they delivered food to starving Palestinians – but while Australia has summoned ambassador over killing of its citizen, UK has not
The UK government has not summoned the Israeli ambassador to account for the murder of seven food charity workers, including British citizens.
The group also included Palestinians, an Australian, a US-Canadian and a Polish citizen, as well as British. The convoy of three vehicles was bombed despite World Central Kitchen (WCK) coordinating its departure with Israeli forces, according to the Charity’s spokesperson.
All three trucks, which were spaced at least 500m from each other, were hit.
Israel has admitted carrying out the attack, which it claims was an accident. WCK has now suspended its operations, leaving Palestinians even deeper in famine after Israel blocked all deliveries by UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians.
According to the UN and World Health Organization, approaching two million Palestinians in Gaza are in, or at risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade.
The Australian Prime Minister has ordered the Israeli ambassador to attend an urgent meeting to account for Israel’s murder of the charity workers. However, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) press office told Skwawkbox, in response to an enquiry whether the UK had done the same, that the FCDO had nothing to add to David Cameron’s tweet. Number 10 said the matter was being dealt with by the FCDO).
Cameron’s tweet has been shared by the FCDO, but that’s all
The UK government has been exposed covering up the legal advice of its own lawyers that Israel is committing war crimes in it’s mass slaughter of over 40,000 Gaza civilians, it’s wounding of 80,000 more and its imposed famine.
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Graham tells staff/organisers Unite will always put arms jobs before fighting Gaza genocide
‘Unhinged’ letter to all staff, organisers and officers includes ‘disgusting’ section about Palestine
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has sent a letter to all the union’s staff, organisers and officers that has been described as an ‘unhinged’ attempt to counter criticisms. Skwawkbox will publish analysis of the various sections separately – and will first cover what Unite figures have described as Graham’s ‘disgusting’ comments on Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The letter claims that Graham and Unite have led on opposition to the mass murder in Gaza – despite Graham being widely criticised for her silence on the issue and insiders saying that she had to be pressured into a proper statement on Gaza at all.
And the section, which is titled ‘Palestine’, goes on to make clear that while Unite has given a one-off donation (one that Skwawkbox understands was given suddenly and without approval by Unite’s elected executive) to Doctors without Borders, Ms Graham and the union under her will always prioritise defence industry jobs above any outside issues, despite the union’s official, democratic position in support of sanctions and a boycott against Israel.
The full section reads:
Palestine
Of all the issues that have been used in these attacks, probably the most abhorrent is the attempted weaponisation of the conflict and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and the collective punishment of the people of Gaza.
Unite, through the General Secretary and the Chair of the Union and the Executive Council, was the first major union to publicly and unambiguously call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. We were very clear. We have watched on with horror the bombardment and destruction of Gaza, and the unbearable terror, suffering and death of its innocent civilians. We have been unequivocal that the deliberate killing of civilians, hostage-taking and collective punishment are war crimes and should be identified as such.
Unite has also donated £50,000 to Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders specifically to help the many victims of this horrific conflict. Most recently the General Secretary has written to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) offering our solidarity after the horrific bombing of their Gaza headquarters which, alongside providing services to workers, was also functioning as a kindergarten and bakery.
However, we cannot and will not endorse any organisation which decides unilaterally and without any discussion (let alone agreement) with the workers themselves, to support the targeting of our members’ workplaces or their jobs. To be clear, this will not happen. No outside body, no matter what their political position, will be allowed to dictate terms to our Union and our members.
It is important to highlight here that it is a core principle of Unite that as a trade union the ‘first claim’ on our priorities is always the protection and advancement of our members’ interests at work. It is very simple. Unite cannot and never will advocate or support any course of action which is counter to that principle. We are a trade union, not a political party or single-issue campaign group.
Therefore, there is no contradiction for a trade union to hold a position of solidarity with Palestinian workers, while at the same time refusing to support campaigns that target our members’ workplaces without their support. Similarly, we cannot be expected to affiliate to organisations that actively work against our members and their jobs.
Examples include groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS. Whatever anyone may think personally about those objectives is irrelevant. We are a trade union with thousands of members employed in the defence industry. It is the views of affected members that take precedence in a trade union. That will not change and nor should it. Unite members have recently been attacked directly, been spat at and called “child killers”. We cannot and will not endorse this.
Emphases added
One furious senior insider told Skwawkbox:
She’s effectively saying members working in defence don’t care if what they make ends up killing women and children in Gaza – only jobs matter. Has she bothered asking any of them?
Another said:
Unite’s official position, democratically reached repeatedly at conference and confirmed again just last summer, is that it supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. We didn’t add ‘except where it might affect defence jobs’. We’ve also voted for the end of trade agreements with Israel. This is disgusting by Sharon.
Sharon Graham has been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month.
According to human rights group Euro Med Monitor, since 7 October last year Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than double that number, overwhelmingly women and children and many of them with life-changing injuries, while Gaza’s health and school systems have been bombed into collapse, often using US- and UK-made weapons and systems. More than a million people have been forcibly displaced and Gaza is in famine because of Israel’s blockade of food and vital supplies. Israel is formally on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice and ordered to stop its slaughter – and has been found by UN human rights investigators to be committing genocide.
Unite was contacted for comment but did not respond by the press deadline.
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Video: Israeli Knesset member mocked and called liar by UN-linked parliament gathering
Hard right advocate of ‘levelling’ Gaza derided for repeating debunked atrocity propaganda to 148th Assembly of Inter-Parliamentary Union
Danny Danon, a hard-right Likud member of Israel’s Knesset, has been derided as a liar and jeered by attendees at the 148th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a UN-linked gathering of the world’s parliaments, which is taking place in Geneva.
Danon, who advocated for the ‘levelling’ of Gaza almost ten years before the Hamas raid on 7 October last year, blamed Hamas for Israel’s actions in Gaza, ignored the seventy-five years of illegal occupation and slaughter by Israel and regurgitated atrocity propaganda about child rapes and murders, which has been discredited for months – and was booed by delegates and angrily confronted by the Palestinian delegate, before being carpeted by Ireland’s representative for his ‘lots of lies’ on behalf of a ‘failed’ regime:
In 2013, Danon, an opponent of immigration from Africa to Israel – where discrimination against Black Jews is rife – advocated for punishment attacks against Palestinian civilians and infrastructure, including a suggestion that Israel “delete” one whole neighbourhood in Gaza in response for every rocket launched by the Palestinian resistance, an act of collective punishment that is a clear war crime under international law.
A year later, Danon advocated cutting off all electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, prefiguring the blockade by Israel that has pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into famine. A month later, Danon said that Israel should respond to the kidnapping of an IDF soldier by “levelling Gaza”. Since the resistance raid, he has been a prominent advocate for the ‘voluntary’ removal of all Palestinians from Gaza to other countries, yet he clearly thinks he has the right to demand obedience and belief from the global community.
The IDF has admitted that the number of its own people that it killed during the Hamas raid was ‘immense’ – an admission ignored entirely by the UK media. Israel has murdered over 40,000 Palestinians since 7 October and wounded double that amount in its levelling of Gaza, mostly women and children. It is using starvation as a weapon of war and has killed dozens of Israeli hostages while taking thousands of Palestinian hostages and, according to the UN, carrying out summary executions of civilians and raping and abusing Palestinian women and girls.
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Biden Decries Civilian Deaths in Gaza as Pentagon Fails With Its Own Safeguards
As the Biden administration ratchets up its criticism of Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza, it has failed to implement its own civilian casualty avoidance policies for the U.S. armed forces, according to a scathing new government audit.
“The right number of civilian casualties is zero,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of Israel’s war last week.
In December, a year after the Pentagon announced a new program to address civilian casualties, the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for an “urgent” effort to get units and headquarters throughout the military to take on the task of mitigating civilian harm.
“Hard-earned tactical and operational successes may ultimately end in strategic failure if care is not taken to protect the civilian environment as much as the situation allows – including the civilian population and the personnel, organizations, resources, infrastructure, essential services, and systems on which civilian life depends,” says the new Joint Chiefs of Staff directive to the armed services. The January 2024 document, obtained by The Intercept, has not been previously reported.
But as the Defense Department pushes forward to revamp its protocols addressing civilian harm, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, released an audit this month that finds that field commands have so far largely rejected the Pentagon’s effort. The scathing GAO report, “Civilian Harm: DOD Should Take Actions to Enhance Its Plan for Mitigation and Response Efforts,” finds that Washington has failed to inculcate a new appreciation of the impact of civilian harm and that its top down directives have been met with ire and confusion from both military commanders and rank-and-file soldiers alike.
In December 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued an instruction formalizing the department’s new civilian harm response, which “Establishes policy, assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for civilian harm mitigation and response.”
“Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield,” the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan said, as previously reported by The Intercept.
Wide-ranging in its scope, the directive and plan sets in motion 11 core objectives that establish a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Steering Committee, a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, the creation of dedicated staff positions at battlefield commands to help mitigate civilian harm, and multiple initiatives to gather more information on incidents and trends with the goal of reducing civilian casualties.
The new regulation, Dan E. Stigall, director for Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Policy in the Office of Secretary of Defense, wrote in December 2023, “provides important policy guidance to shape how DoD conceptualizes, considers, assesses, investigates, and responds to civilian harm.”
And yet the GAO report, issued earlier this month, finds that despite the Pentagon mandate, Middle East and Africa regional commanders have failed to change practices for how civilian harm prevention is being factored into military operations. The GAO also found that the Defense Department “has not addressed uncertainty about what constitutes improvement and how the action plan applies to certain operations.” In other words, there is an absence of processes and metrics to record civilian deaths and then interpret incidents and causes for the purpose of learning lessons. The Pentagon itself has also failed to think through civilian casualties and harm caused in the context of all types of operations.
The GAO generally excuses the failure of the fighting commands to take adequate measures to revamp their practices given the military’s focus on small-scale counterterrorism operations over the past two decades. According to the report’s findings, “in our discussions with DOD components about challenges in implementing the action plan, some [commanders] indicated that they are unclear about how to mitigate and respond to civilian harm for large-scale conflicts. This is because they felt that the action plan is geared toward counterterrorism operations.” Creating a culture of civilian harm reduction “will require much more time, resources, and personnel than during the counterterrorism or irregular warfare operations of the past 20 years,” the GAO concludes.
Large-scale conflicts refer to potential wars with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But building up a capacity inside the military to assess civilian harm for conflicts like Ukraine and Israel is also a Pentagon goal in order to properly assess the use of U.S. weapons by American arms recipients, experts say.
U.S. Central Command officials, responsible for the Middle East, told the GAO that they didn’t understand the end goal of the Defense Department plan, given that they felt it fails to provide any way to measure the number of civilian deaths. The command also told the GAO that it was already working to mitigate civilian harm even without the new directives, saying that “the [Pentagon] action plan may be more helpful to other combatant commands that have not had recent experiences with combat and civilian harm mitigation.” It is a strange position for CENTCOM to take given that Austin’s directive itself was precipitated by successful lobbying by human rights groups for the military to address civilian harm in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, where it became clear that CENTCOM was not doing enough.
U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, similarly told the GAO that it should be allowed to continue with its operations as they are being conducted and that nothing more needed to be done to implement Austin’s plan. According to the report, a SOCOM official “told us that there is currently no deficiency in DOD’s civilian harm mitigation and response efforts and the action plan codifies what the command is already doing.”
Officials from Africa Command and Indo-Pacific Command expressed similar skepticism about the Pentagon’s effort, according to the GAO report. A Navy officer said that the new regulations were unpopular within the rank and file: “some staff at lower levels of the Navy are asking questions about what DOD is fixing by implementing the action plan,” the officer said.
On December 13, 2023, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a new staff functional task, contained in its Unified Joint Task List, or UJTL, that directs all military organizations to “manage civilian harm mitigation and response.” The UJTL is the standard “library of tasks, which serves as a foundation for capabilities-based planning across the range of military operations.” It is a comprehensive menu of “tasks, conditions, and measures” used to establish standards and even job descriptions across the entire defense enterprise. A printout of the tasks is over 1,600 pages, but the UJTL is maintained electronically.
According to an electronic copy obtained by The Intercept, the “urgent” priority new task directs the armed forces to “plan, integrate, and/or manage approaches for mitigation and response to civilian harm in plans, operations and/or training.”
“This task may include the Civilian Environment Teams at operational commands, composed of intelligence professionals; experts in human terrain, civilian infrastructure, and urban systems; and civil engineers, to assist commanders in understanding the effects of friendly and adversary actions on the civilian environment. This task may also include the development of command red teaming policies and procedures appropriate to relevant operational environments, with a focus on combating cognitive biases throughout joint targeting processes,” the description of the task says. It calls for reporting on the number of “trained, qualified, and certified personnel ready to support civilian harm mitigation and response requirements.”
With Austin’s civilian harm reduction rollout in 2023 and now with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chiming in, demanding that the services and commands incorporate civilian harm reduction into its staff and operations, a fundamental disagreement inside the military comes into focus, pitting top brass in Washington against combat commanders serving overseas. In the field, according to the GAO report, commanders believe that they are abiding by the laws of war and that their jobs which require putting their lives on the line are difficult and dangerous enough without having to modify them to satisfy Washington. They view the Pentagon as out of touch, catering more to public opinion and negative news coverage than to military reality.
The Pentagon, by focusing on “managing” and “mitigating” civilian harm is also being cautious about directing any mandate to count (or account for) civilian casualties because of the legacy of the dreaded “body count” from the Vietnam era, where commanders were pressured to inflate the number of enemy killed to demonstrate the false success of their operations. In Desert Storm (the first Gulf War in 1991), then CENTCOM commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf fashioned his own experiences into a creed that his command would refuse to count not only Iraqi combatants killed, but Iraqi civilians as well. For many in the military, that bias not to count civilian casualties has continued to this day.
Pressure from human rights and civilian casualty organizations began to change this practice after the Kosovo war in 1999, holding NATO and individual military forces accountable for civilian casualties and harm. Two decades of fighting after 9/11 accentuated the need to account for civilian harm, not just for legal and humanitarian reasons, but also because the effort to kill terrorists without accounting for civilian effects was shown to just increase the number of terrorists in succeeding generations.
In the formulation of its civilian harm “mitigation” strategy, the Pentagon has chosen specifically to ignore the work of the human rights and warfare-monitoring community, as revealed in a 2022 RAND Corporation report on “U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures.” The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the report says, rejected the use of “third party” assessments because it did “not want to be held accountable to a range [of number] that is not an accurate estimate.”
The GAO report notes that a Joint Staff official said that the Defense Department still chooses to ignore civilian casualty assessments from third-party sources even though it itself fails to aggregate its own data and make its own efforts. Citing the RAND study, the GAO notes however that “Third-party groups tend to identify a range of estimates and leverage local news, social media sites, and footage of incidents posted to YouTube or other outlets” and that these estimates, though they can vary widely from the DOD’s internal numbers, are still essential to improve the accuracy of the military’s own assessments.
The GAO urges the DOD to establish effective metrics and “to get buy-in from DOD components and officials at all levels implementing the [civilian harm] action plan.” It also says that the Pentagon needs to “better monitor progress in implementing [its own plan] to help ensure that the improvements endure.” It is not an optimistic prognosis for civilians after years of external pressure and more than a year after Austin unveiled his new plan.
The post Biden Decries Civilian Deaths in Gaza as Pentagon Fails With Its Own Safeguards appeared first on The Intercept.
Breaking: UN Special Rapporteur confirms Israel committing genocide (video)
Report to go before UN’s human rights commission against backdrop of starving Palestinian children and continued murder of innocents
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, international lawyer Francesca Albanese, has told Al Jazeera this morning that she will present her expert findings confirming Israel’s genocide to the UN’s human rights commission next week.
In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there is a ‘plausible’ case that Israel is committing genocide, but Albanese – like hundreds of millions of people around the world – knows that the case is far more than merely ‘plausible’, even more so after Israel ignored the ICJ’s instructions to stop bombing, shooting and starving the Palestinians of Gaza:
Albanese’s interview took place against a backdrop of another confirmation of the obvious – that Gaza is now officially in famine and approaching a point where starvation and disease caused by Israel’s continued will kill more than Israel’s bombs and bullets. The harrowing footage of emaciated, dying children shown on Al Jazeera shows that Palestinian children are Israel’s main targets in the starvation campaign, just as they have been in the mass murder of civilians through bombs and missiles.
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Video: ‘Goodbye Palestine’ – deranged US congressman wants Palestine erased
Republican Chuck Fleischmann’s ‘Israel forever’ rant
Republican US congressman Chuck Fleischmann has been caught on video in a deranged rant in which he tells a Palestinian-American ‘Goodbye to Palestine’, appearing – and not denying when asked – to wish for Palestine and its people to be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’.
Fleischmann was challenged by two anti-genocide activists about his support for Israel and began his rant that he will always support Israel before gesticulating in the face of one of the pair and telling them ‘I will never support the Palestinians. Never!’:
Fleischmann’s unhinged rant is a frightening window into the mentality of the US right – and the UK Israel lobby’s murderousness, which differs primarily in being less obviously expressed.
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Video: pensioner among 3 peaceful anti-genocide protesters arrested in Hastings
State repression of civic rights and protection of weapons manufacturers continues to escalate
A pensioner and two other protestors were arrested by police on Thursday 29 February during a peaceful demonstration outside the General Dynamics arms factory in Hastings, East Sussex. The local people were among a broad coalition of community groups that came together to protest against Britain’s role in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The three were arrested and taken to Hastings police station where they were held for nearly fourteen hours before being charged with aggravated trespass and then released on bail. They will appear before magistrates on April 3.
Laurie Holden, 71, a retired train driver from Burwash, was one of those arrested at the demonstration. He said:
It is outrageous that the police are treating us as criminals. We are not the criminals here – we are highlighting the criminal complicity of our government and arms companies in continuing to supply arms to Israel which is in the dock for genocide in Gaza. We will always stand on the side of the people of Palestine.
The Hastings & District Palestine Solidarity Campaign [HDPSC] united with representatives of Jewish groups, trade union bodies, Quakers, climate justice groups, parent groups and political parties to draw attention to the part Hastings is playing in arming Israel.
HDPSC Chair Katy Colley said:
Our brave and principled friends have shown enormous courage in the face of disproportionate and heavy-handed policing of a peaceful, community-led protest.
In January, the International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide in Gaza but since then the slaughter and starvation have worsened. Over 30,000 are dead and thousands more will die if this continues. Yesterday Israeli troops gunned down starving civilians in the north of Gaza as they waited for food – over 100 were killed and 700 injured in the ‘the Flour Massacre’. This latest horror underscores the urgency of stopping all arms sales to Israel. UN experts have warned that any arms transfers to Israel will breach international law and ordered all countries to stop all arms sales immediately.
Our government has refused to halt export licenses to Israel so it is our duty as citizens to stand up for peace, international law and human rights.
We will not stand by as the UK continues to arm this genocide of the Palestinian people. It must end now.’
The protest started at 7am at the Sidney Little Road factory, one of the two General Dynamics sites in Hastings, timed to coincide with workers as they arrived for work. Demonstrators held placards, sung songs for ‘Ceaefire Now’ and handed out leaflets which informed workers of their right to refuse to take part in handling components used in breach of international law.
Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza has run for five months so far, killing almost 40,000 people and wounding and maiming double that number. The UN is now warning that a quarter of the population is at risk of death from famine and the World Health Organisation has said that more than a million are starving. Protests have been mounted outside arms factories all over the country, including in Kent, Leicester, Bristol, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Cambridge, Brighton, London, Lancashire, Belfast and Monmouthshire, to demand an end to UK’s ongoing complicity and enabling of genocide. This is HDPSC’s fourth protest at General Dynamics’ sites in Hastings since the campaign began.
According to the organisers, almost all of the ‘MK80’ bombs being dropped on Gaza are made by General Dynamics, which is the 5th biggest arms company in the world. The Hastings facilities provide avionic systems for fighter planes and tactical communications equipment for ground vehicles.
At the demo, Leah Levane of Jewish Voice for Labour said that Israel could no longer ‘act with impunity’.
It is shocking that the UK government is granting arms licences to Israel,’ she said. ‘This makes the UK partners in the occupation and the genocide in Gaza. As a Jewish organisation, we are one of several Jewish groups in the UK and the many more across the world who are protesting loud and clear – NOT IN OUR NAME.
Jen Rouse, representing Parents for Future Hastings & St Leonards, said:
We’re here today because as parents we cannot stand by and watch as our government supports a genocide of children.
The thought of our own kids having to live through even a fraction of the terror and trauma that Israel inflicts on Gazan children every day is unbearable. So the only right thing for all UK parents to do is to be here today, demanding an immediate end to the bloodshed. We will never give up until we see a free Palestine.
Simon Hester, Chair of Hastings & District Trades Union Council, added:
Hastings & District Trades Union Council supports the calls for end to all arms sales to Israel and for an immediate ceasefire to end the genocide in Gaza.
We demand that General Dynamics UK stop supplying equipment to the Israeli army or to get out of Hastings. We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Olivia Cavanagh of Hastings Community of Sanctuary and Hastings Supports Refugees said:
We continue to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank.
We support an embargo on arms sales from the UK to Israel and stand with the Hastings community to call on the local General Dynamics factories to stop supplying arms to Israel and to act to end the unprecedented killing of Palestinian civilians.’
Yunis Smith from Hastings Green Party said:
Years from now the children of the world will ask what did you do to stop this calamity? I for one hope I will have a good enough answer!
And Chris Goodchild of Hastings Quakers said:
The poor tell us who we are, the prophets who we can be. Yet we kill the poor and kill the prophets. We are all Palestinian and civil disobedience is divine obedience. Stop arming Genocide.
The arrest form part of an escalating campaign of repression and demonisation of peaceful protesters demonstrating against genocide. PM Rishi Sunak, who like ‘opposition’ leader Keir Starmer has constantly backed Israel’s murderous actions, has today smeared demonstrators as divisive and hateful and has threatened to deport those who fall foul of what he considers the limits of acceptable protest.
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Starmer admits spoke to Israeli president before torpedoing SNP Gaza motion. Sky deletes vid
Starmer’s admission too hot for Sky News to handle?
Keir Starmer admitted today that he had spoken to Israeli president Isaac Herzog before embarking on the parliamentary manoeuvres – including alleged threats to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, though Starmer has since denied it – that torpedoed the Scottish National Party’s motion calling for a full ceasefire in Gaza and condemning Israel’s war crimes.
Starmer quickly attempted to row back on his comment to Sky’s interviewer and tried to replace it with ‘to the people who are actually involved’ – which means the same thing, since Starmer certainly didn’t get the Palestinians’ ok to his betrayal – but the words were captured loud and clear:
The short clip was published by musician and pro-Palestinian campaigner Lowkey, but a fuller excerpt shows that it was not misleadingly edited:
It seems the admission was too explosive for the ‘mainstream’ broadcaster, since the clip appears to have been deleted.
Starmer may well deny ever saying this – after all, he denied saying Israel had the right to cut off food, water and fuel from the people of Gaza, even though he said that on camera too. He went on to say that Hoyle did the ‘right’ thing in caving to his bullying urging. Hoyle was, of course, breaking Parliamentary protocol and depriving the SNP of a vote on their motion, even though it was their ‘Opposition Day’, so that Starmer could replace their clear wording with a spineless, Israel-friendly version that gave the apartheid state a veto over any ceasefire and made the whole thing about Israel’s rights instead of Israel’s war crimes. Hoyle now rightly faces a no-confidence motion by SNP and Tory MPs.
Israel has murdered some 35,000 civilians in Gaza so far and maimed tens of thousands more, with 1.5 million on the verge of famine and dying from disease after the destruction of their healthcare system. The regime is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
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Breaking: 55 MPs (so far) sign motion of no confidence in Speaker Hoyle
Wednesday’s farce and chaos after Speaker allowed Labour to ‘hijack’ SNP’s opposition day motion calling for Gaza ceasefire leads to ‘Early Day Motion’
Fifty-five MPs – and counting – from the SNP and Conservative parties, plus one independent, have signed a motion of no confidence in Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle this morning, including more than half of the SNP’s Westminster MPs, after last night’s fiasco in which Hoyle broke parliamentary protocol to allow a Labour amendment to enter the debate and derail the SNP’s ‘Opposition Day’ motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Labour’s amendment, which watered down a motion condemning Israel’s war crimes in Gaza into an Israel-friendly version that gave the apartheid regime an effective veto over any ceasefire, should have been ruled out by the government’s own attempted amendment, leading to a straight fight between the SNP and Tory versions. But Hoyle – allegedly under threat by Labour whips of removal under a Labour government – allowed Labour’s amendment to stand. It passed without a formal vote after Tory and SNP MPs stormed out in protest amid chants calling for the return of Hoyle’s predecessor John Bercow. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said last night he would ‘take significant convincing’ to believe it was tolerable for Hoyle to remain in the role.
The Speaker position is held during a parliament until death or resignation, but a large proportion of the Commons signing the motion would be likely to put immense pressure on Hoyle to step down. His position already looks untenable after he allowed Keir Starmer to hijack a vote on a situation in which some 34,000 Palestinian civilians have been murdered and hundreds more are being killed each day.
Update: in the few minutes since this article was published, the number of MPs has risen to 57.
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