ethnic cleansing
Labour ‘shuts out’ Black MPs and groups from ‘race equality’ launch
Black MPs and groups were ‘shut out’ of Keir Starmer’s ‘race equality’ launch last night. Several had expected to attend the event in Tottenham, but were not given the new location after Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy cancelled the original meeting to avoid facing protesters eager to challenge them over their support for Israel’s war crimes.
Black paper The Voice has reported that:
Black MPs, community media and leading campaign groups were not invited, leading to accusations from party members we spoke to that the Labour party intentionally excluded them in a bid to censor opportunities to grill party leader Keir Starmer and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds preventing any real scrutiny of the Race Equality Act plans which were launched back in 2020.
This appears to have left Doreen Lawrence, a Starmer supporter, as essentially the only Black attendee – and ensured that no Black MPs or activists who might have challenged Starmer and his equalities spokeswomen Anneliese Dodds about the lack of substance in their ‘plan’.
Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, dismissed Labour’s plan as ‘window dressing’:
The proposed Race Equality Act is just window dressing. The foremost Black media organisation, The Voice, was not invited to the launch and most Black MPs were excluded. This reveals the reality of where Keir Starmer’s Labour party really stands on fighting anti-Black racism.
Even the paper-thin plan is unlikely ever to come to fruition under habitual promise-shredder Keir Starmer.
Labour’s issues with Black people and other racialised groups under Keir Starmer go back to the beginning of his tenure, when he named an all-white ‘diversity panel’ and excluded Labour’s most senior ethnic minority staffer. Since then, the party has been embroiled in rampant Islamophobia, attacks on Black women MPs and other senior elected figures, wholesale deselection of Black councillors and blocking of Black candidates in areas with large Black communities and more, as well as disgraceful racism toward Gypsy Roma people and naming an entirely male, entirely white panel to select local authority election candidates.
This report is true. I can confirm that Black journalists were excluded too.
https://t.co/G4BUu9hXXA
— Nadine White. (@Nadine_Writes) February 6, 2024
The party has also done nothing to root out the embedded racism exposed by the Forde Report, which Starmer reluctantly commissioned under pressure, then ignored when he could no longer delay its publication.
Read the full story on The Voice here.
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Nicaragua brings ICJ case vs UK, Germany, NL, Canada for complicity in Gaza genocide
While individual UK politicians face potential personal liability for collusion in Israel’s slaughter, UK government as a whole is now also on hook
The Nicaraguan government initiated proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday against the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Canada for complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza by providing the Israeli occupation with weapons and support used in the killing of Palestinians.
A statement by the Nicaraguan government notes that it had warned these states of their likely complicity in “flagrant and systemic violations” of the Genocide Convention, urging them to immediately stop providing Israel with weapons and tech that were likely to be used in violation of the Convention and that the ICJ’s ruling against Israel last month had put a duty on all countries to stop supplying Israel with the means to conduct its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
The ICJ ordered Israel not just to stop its own killing of Gazans but to “take all measures” to prevent their deaths and to improve the dire humanitarian situation.
UK PM Rishi Sunak, so-called ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer and other senior politicians have already been warned by the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) that it will prosecute them for their personal liability for colluding in and providing cover for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians.
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Protest planned in Tottenham as location of Starmer’s latest ‘pledge’ leaks
Starmer’s ‘equality’ promise is a farce after years of unpunished racism in the Labour right – and Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide
Keir Starmer and local MP David Lammy will appear in Tottenham between 1pm and 3pm on Monday for what is expected to be Starmer’s announcement of his latest ‘pledge’ – this one promising equal pay protection for ethnic minority groups.
Starmer’s record shows that any ‘promise’ will be worth nothing and jettisoned as soon as convenient – but his decision to stage his blether in one of London’s most diverse boroughs, while he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza and has not even mentioned the International Court of Justice’s binding orders on Israel to stop the slaughter, has prompted outrage and a planned protest:
Starmer’s regime has constantly ignored racism, misogyny and abuse from the right-wing faction that has destroyed the party as a meaningful opposition, often protecting alleged perpetrators – even paedophiles – and covering up even the most serious allegations, while doing nothing to act against perpetrators exposed by the Forde Report. His latest disposable pledge is clearly a feeble attempt to con diverse groups that he cares a jot about their best interests – and his decision to hold it at the centre named after Labour’s first Black MP, who would no doubt have regarded him with contempt, adds insult to injury.
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UNRWA nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – but Israel freezes its bank accounts
Israeli move likely to mean even faster starvation for hundreds of thousands
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestine, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The news comes as the assault on UNRWA’s funding intensifies.
A number of nations have, inexcusably, used Israel’s claims – that twelve of the agency’s more than 13,000 employees in Gaza took part in the 7 October raid – as a pretext for cutting off funding to UNRWA despite its central role in providing relief for the two million Palestinians in Gaza who are in starvation because of Israel’s blockade.
And Israeli bank Leumi has today locked all of UNRWA’s accounts, claiming UNRWA is unable to provide sufficient receipts to be able to prove no funds are going to ‘terrorists’. The UN has said it has no alternative mechanism to fund UNRWA if international donations are cut off and a number of nations – including Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize – have said they will continue to provide funds. But if UNRWA is unable to access them where it needs them, it will be even more severely hampered.
Norwegian Labour MP Asmund Aukrust told Dagbladet that he had nominated UNRWA,
for its long-term work to provide vital support to Palestine and the region in general.
Israel bombed the relief offices last week of Belgium, another country whose government has committed to funding UNRWA.
The nomination is an apt response to Israel’s smears against UNRWA and the collusion of some western nations, including the US and UK, in the genocide in Gaza. But it will not feed the starving – and despite being officially on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and ordered by the ICJ to protect Palestinian lives, the Israeli apartheid regime’s murderousness toward the millions of civilian Palestinians in Gaza appears to know no bounds.
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Video: Israeli forces dress as hospital staff, Muslim visitors to assassinate paralysed patient in West Bank
Yet more war crimes – and in the West Bank where Hamas does not operate
Israeli troops dressed as medical staff and Muslim visitors to infiltrate a hospital in the West Bank today – where Hamas does not operate – before assassinating a paralysed man and two visitors in his room, as well as terrorising genuine staff and visitors, including forcing one man to kneel with a coat over his head as they milled about with guns. Some of the Israelis appeared to be men dressed as women:
Israel later claimed the man they killed was about to launch an attack on Israel similar to the 7 October raid from Gaza – in which Israel killed ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens, a fact now common knowledge and discussed by media in Israel but ignored by western press and broadcasters – despite being paralysed, in a wheelchair, and a patient in hospital.
Just days after the ICJ’s confirmation that it is on trial for genocide, Israel has added to its war crimes the crime of ‘perfidy’, using civilian dress to claim protected status and then attacking – and added to its already horrific tally of summary executions, the slaughter of civilians and bombing of hospitals and schools.
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Israel ‘runs sick AI propaganda ad’ on streaming service: ‘Come visit beautiful Gaza’
Israel has been running a sick AI-generated ‘ad’ on US streaming service Hulu, showing Gaza as a lush beach resort full of five-star hotels – a grim contrast with the reality of mass slaughter and levelled buildings inflicted by Israel on Gaza’s civilians.
The video, posted to social media platform TikTok by user ‘leftoftheprojectorpod’ and highlighted on Twitter by journalist Mario Nawfal, claims to show “what Gaza would look like without Hamas” – a complete inversion of a reality in which Israel has intentionally flattened most homes, hospitals and schools, killing around 35,000 people and wounding, often maiming, double that number:
The text of the video reads:
Come visit beautiful Gaza. With its stunning beaches and charming boardwalks, you can stay in one of our 5-star hotels and get a taste of the best in Middle Eastern food. Embrace the vibrant nightlife of the city. And experience a culture rich in tradition. This is what Gaza could have looked like without Hamas.
Other users of the service said that the video was really run on the streaming service:
It's real. Zionists made a bunch of AI clips of Gaza and blamed Hamas as the reason it's a leveled concentration camp instead of some tourist trap. Shame on Hulu. They would never do this for Russia which means they know what they're doing. pic.twitter.com/OpMIhCXuui
— Justin is tired! (@ThatGuyYus) January 27, 2024
The content of the propaganda video is as accurate as Israel’s claims that it is adhering to international law in its slaughter of innocents – and its attempts to pin the blame for the bombing of hospitals and the mass killing of its own citizens on Palestinian resistance.
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Video: Webbe challenges govt over support for Israel already flouting ICJ ruling. Meaningless reply
Leicester East MP continues strong record on Gaza and Palestinians, challenging government to say what it is doing to obey ICJ when Israel is already murdering hundreds more civilians – and government continues abject collusion
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe has been one of the few MPs to stand up strongly for Palestinians and to challenge the government over its complicity in Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza. In Parliament today, during urgent questions, she asked the Tories what they are doing to protect Palestinians when Israel is already killing hundreds of Palestinians a day and intensifying its genocidal incitement despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) explicit order to take every measure to prevent them being killed.
The answer was utter, meaningless platitudes:
In fact, the UK continues to aid and abet Israel in its wanton slaughter of innocent Palestinians and to impede the arrival of desperately needed food, fuel and medical supplies – while attempting to accelerate then death rate from hunger and disease still further by smearing the UN relief agency UNRWA. The UK, like the US, has cut off its funding to the vital relief organisation on which millions of desperate Palestinians are relying, despite Israel’s long record of blatant and already-discredited lies to excuse its actions – and the prospect of a change of government sometime this year promises more of the same, as so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer is just Pavlovian in his support for the apartheid colonisers.
Few MPs bothered even to turn up to the ‘urgent question’ session.
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Exclusive: bank locks customer’s account after donation to UNRWA
Woman grilled minutes after payment to UN body defunded by US and UK after Israeli smears
A UK bank locked its customer’s account – and subjected her to a security grilling – minutes after she made a donation to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides a lifeline to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.
The Sunak and Biden governments have stopped providing funds to the vital agency after Israel made what appear to be unevidenced claims that some of its employees took part in the 7 October raid. Israel’s record of lies about events in Gaza – and its now-clear slaughter of many, perhaps most, of the Israeli victims on the day of the raid – means that any allegations should be treated with extreme suspicion unless thoroughly proven. Israel has also murdered dozens of UN employees as well as well over a hundred journalists.
The woman, who has asked not to be named, said:
I’ve been with my bank for at least twenty years. Today, two minutes after donating a fiver to UNRWA, I received a security call and they had blocked my card.
Skwawkbox understands that the account was later unblocked, but if this incident is not a one-off, UK banks may be helping the government enforce its decision to cut off UNRWA and the desperate Palestinians who depend on it – a move that many analysts believe is a measure to accelerate the slaughter in Gaza before Israel has to report back to the International Court of Justice on its compliance, or gaping lack of compliance, with the court’s orders to stop and prevent genocide of the Palestinians.
Update – this appears not to be an isolated incident:
I'm receiving multiple reports that British banks are blocking querying and otherwise disrupting their customers legitimate personal donations to @UNRWA A United Nations Agency! What a country we are rapidly becoming… #Gaza
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) January 29, 2024
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Israeli ministers speak to extremist conference about clearing Gaza for settlement
A day after the ICJ’s damning verdict that found Israel’s genocidal acts as fact, government ministers call for more war crimes
Around twenty Israeli government ministers and Knesset members have attended a right-wing extremist event demanding the clearing of Gaza and the replacement of the indigenous Palestinian people with Zionist settlers.
Security minister Itamar ben Gvir, communications minister Shlomo Karhi, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke at, and a string of other members of the Netanyahu government and government parties attended, the event – titled “Conference for the Victory of Israel – Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria”.
Ben Gvir – himself an illegal settler – told the far right gathering of the imperative to ‘voluntarily’ move the Palestinian population out of Gaza:
We need to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians] and impose death sentences on terrorists.
I turn to you, PM Netanyahu: this is time for brave decisions.
Smotrich, according to Israeli paper Haaretz, said:
We are rising, we have a nation of lions [and many children] are returning there as combat fighters. We must make sure they return there as settlers to protect the people of Israel.
Karhi clarified what a farce all talk of ‘voluntary’ migration is:
‘…voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent.
Katz added, in chilling language:
Today, after 18 years [from disengagement from Gaza], we have the opportunity to rebuild and expand the land of Israel. This is our final opportunity.
The conference came just a couple of days after another far-right event titled ‘Victory Convention: Conquer and Colonise Gaza’.
Israel has continued to slaughter hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its interim ruling, despite being ordered by the court to take all measures to prevent any Palestinians being killed. Now, after the court found as fact the genocidal language used by Israeli government figures, others are piling the evidence still higher.
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Ignore Israel’s spin: ICJ HAS ordered a ceasefire – and much more than a ceasefire
Desperate damage control by genocidal regime can’t hide the facts – the ICJ has gone well beyond a mere ceasefire: Israel has been ordered to protect Palestinians in Gaza, not just stop shooting at them
In the wake of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) historic verdict that officially put Israel on trial for genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s spin doctors, apologists and mouthpieces have desperately been trying to spin the court’s crushing judgment as some kind of victory on the basis that the ICJ did not ‘order a ceasefire’.
Unfortunately, some supporters of Palestine have fallen into the trap – but in fact, the ICJ went way beyond merely ordering a ceasefire. As the president of the court announced, Israel has not just been ordered to stop shooting at and bombing Palestinians.
It has been explicitly ordered to protect them by preventing anyone killing them, inflicting psychological harm on them, preventing reproduction or any other means:
A ceasefire is an agreement to cease hostilities between two countries engaged in a war – in a genocide, the murderous party is ordered to stop the genocide, but the court went further and told Israel it must prevent the killing of Palestinians, as well as pursue any who try to do so and to ensure evidence of such war crimes is not destroyed, as Israel has routinely been doing.
Craig Mokhiber, who resigned as a UN genocide expert last autumn because the UN was failing to prevent Israel’s ‘textbook genocide’ against the people of Gaza, agreed in an interview on Friday night:
Of course Israel will ignore the ruling and the orders that come with it – decades of impunity have instilled such an arrogant sense of entitlement in Israeli politicians that they will flout the ruling. But – vitally – Israel’s backers and enablers are now explicitly breaking international law every single time they provide materials, funding or practical assistance, or political cover, for Israel’s mass murder. And in a month, Israel has to come back to the court and detail its compliance or lack of compliance with the court’s order.
And every country that wishes to uphold international law will be able, and even obliged, to use their own jurisdiction – granted to them by the ruling – to issue warrants for the arrest of anyone committing or complicit in the genocide, in addition to the vast political damage those complicit, criminal regimes will be doing to themselves.
And the UN General Assembly, if Israel and its backers flout the ruling, will be entitled to remove Israel from the UN community of nations and even to refuse to recognise Israeli passports, as was done to apartheid South Africa.
The extent to which this damages Israel and its international standing can be seen in the outraged, petty, desperate and clearly coordinated reaction of its mouthpieces.
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