Why does the Labour Party expel anti-racists whilst Zionist supporters of Israel’s war crimes remain members?

It’s time to expel Luke Akehurst and break the links with Labour Friends of Israel 

Palestinian supporters and anti-Zionists are suspended from the Labour Party at a drop of a hat. They are guilty of what the head of Momentum Jon Lansman calls ‘unconscious anti-Semitism’.

Luke Akehurst has been untiring in his efforts to defend Zionist war crimes 

Yet absolutely nothing is done when supporters of Israel openly justify and support Israel’s murder of over 60 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators this week, injuring over 2,000.  Many of those injured will be permanently crippled because Israel is deliberately using dum dum bullets which expand inside the body.

Labour Friends of Israel's tweets excusing the slaughter in Gaza

We should reflect for a moment that Labour Friends of Israel, Louise Ellman, Joan Ryan and Luke Akehurst are justifying the deliberate and premeditated opening of fire against unarmed demonstrators. It is the kind of thing that fascists usually do yet these racists continue to be members of the Labour Party. 

Of course Israel can do this with impunity because it has the support of Donald Trump and the alt-Right in the United States.  What is outrageous is that supporters of Israeli war crimes have a free pass under the regime of new General Secretary Jennie Formby.

Formby has started where the hated Iain McNicol left off. Mention Israel and a Labour MP and you are likely to be put under investigation. She and Corbyn are running scared from the false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations made by the Board of Deputies which has this week justified the slaughter in Gaza.

Criticism of Israel and its ideology, Zionism is verboten. But if you engage in any amount of anti-Arab racism then you can be sure that no action will be taken against you.  The continued presence of Luke Akehurst in the Labour Party is indefensible.  Labour might as well admit Nick Griffin of the BNP to membership.  At least Griffin is an honest racist and fascist. 

People should email the Labour Party demanding that action is taken against Luke Akehurst and for the Labour Party to cut off links with Labour Friends of Israel. The far-Right leader of the Israeli Labour Party Avi Gabbay announced he had cut all links with Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’.  Perhaps Corbyn will have the courage to return the favour? 

Email  complaints@labour.org.uk with copies to jennie_formby@labour.org.uk, corbynj@parliament.uk and leader@labour.org.uk

Only the idiots of Labour's leadership treat the unelected Board of Deputies as representing British Jews

Akehurst, a former member of Labour’s NEC, Director of We Believe in Israel and a prominent member of Labour First has openly defended Israel’s deliberate murder of unarmed Palestinian civilians demonstrating against the terrible conditions in which they have been confined. Akehurst has blamed the Palestinians for their own deaths yet nothing has happened to this racist wretch of a human being. Israel’s murder of Palestinians in Gaza these past few weeks now totals 111, exceeding the 69 who were murdered in the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa in 1960, which marked the beginning of the world wide anti-apartheid movement. 

We need to ask why it is that anti-racists such as Mark Wadsworth and myself have been expelled whereas the supporters of Israel’s war crimes have been granted immunity? Part of the problem is that Momentum is led by a racist Zionist Jon Lansman. The other reason is that Corbyn has effectively surrendered to the Right and the Zionist lobby over ‘anti-Semitism’.

An old man is shot

80 Labour MPs are sponsors of Labour Friends of Israel. They are a roll call of the Right – Chuka Ummuna, Jess Phillips, Mike Gapes, Emily Thornberry et al.  When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it marked the break between Zionism and the Labour Left.  Both Tony Benn and Eric Heffer immediately resigned. Today under the baleful influence of Momentum’s dictator, most of the parliamentary left has become infatuated with an Israel which has moved yet further to the racist right. 

When you have the Defence Minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, talking about cutting off the heads of Palestinians and wanting to drown Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea and when his deputy, Eli Dahan, describes Palestinians as ‘animals’ and sub-humans one has to ask why it is that people like Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry continue to give cover to a state every bit as racist as White South Africa.

The attack on Gaza city in 2014

Even by Israel’s abysmal standards of murder and child abuse, this week’s events were horrific.  Amongst those murdered were children and an 8 month old ‘terrorist’ baby.

The thoughts of Israel’s apologists in the Labour Party were with the murderers and Israeli ‘democracy’. It was all the fault of Hamas thus denying any agency to those who died.  Those who died were merely puppets.  Zionism’s ventriloquists are fond of talking about conspiracy theories but there is no greater conspiracy theory than the idea that Hamas were able to gather thousands of people near the fence with Israel knowing full well they could be killed.

Hamas is a conservative Islamic organisation, elected by the Palestinians. Despite being vilified as a genocidal, anti-Semitic, terrorist organisation, it is none of these things. The history of the Israeli state is a history of a succession of enemies who have been demonised. From the ‘new Hitler’ Nasser in the 1950’s to that other ‘Hitler’ Yasser Arafat. 

What the Akehursts and the Israeli propagandist will never tell you is that Hamas was the creation of Israel in an attempt to undermine the secular nationalists of the PLO.

Other lies include the allegation that the Palestinians were seeking to break through the ‘borders’ of Israel.  It is a lie because Israel is unique in having never defined borders.  It is an expansionist settler state whose ideology, the biblical land of Israel extends far beyond Israel’s current borders.

Israel’s real fear is the return of the refugees which would upset the demographic majority of Jews in the ‘Jewish’ state. The fiction of Israel as a democratic state can only be preserved by preventing those in Gaza and the West Bank being Israeli citizens and having a vote.  That is the role of the fiction of a ‘peace process’.

Israel is in occupation of Gaza and its people have every right to want to return to Israel from where they were expelled, especially since Israel’s blockade has made Gaza virtually unliveable in with the water toxic and undrinkaeble.  It is also in accord with UN Resolution 194.

An injured woman

You can read Akehurst’s despicable justifications for what happened in these articles, Update on Gaza border crisis and Please email your MP about Hamas and the Gaza border

Below is an excellent article by Leon Rossellson, the famous Jewish socialist folk singer.

GAZA

 “I don’t believe in liberation — I believe in ending the apartheid system in Israel, like the end of the apartheid system in South Africa, and we all live in one democratic state.”
 Ahmed Abu Artema, organiser of the Great March of Return, as reported in the Guardian 6 April 2018.

In 2007, I wrote a song called The Third Intifada. It’s been eerie in the last few weeks watching something very like the scenario in my song, albeit in a different context, being enacted on Gaza’s border with Israel. But the reality has been more horrific than anything I envisaged. In Gaza the slaughter was premeditated and calculated. The snipers were primed to kill. They had their orders. They used the protesters, men women, children, for target practice. According to the latest reports, 109 Palestinians — including children, one an 8 month old baby — have been killed and over 6,000 wounded, including nearly 1000 children. The wounds were particularly debilitating because Israeli soldiers used dumdum bullets which expand when they enter the body. 

The bullets used are causing injuries local medics say they have not seen since 2014. The entrance wound is small.The exit wound is devastating, causing gross comminution of bone and destruction of soft tissue.

The UN has stressed that “lethal force may only be used as a measure of last — not first — resort, and only when there is an immediate threat to life or serious injury. An attempt to approach or crossing or damaging the fence do not amount to a threat to life or serious injury and are not sufficient grounds for the use of live ammunition.”

What has been the response of the Israeli authorities to the charge that their soldiers have committed war crimes? Predictably they lied. They lied shamelessly and with the confidence born from years of practice. Yes, these protesters, led by Hamas, yes, even the children and the 8 month old baby, were on the verge of tearing down the fence and swarming into Israel, overrunning the Israeli army and massacring untold thousands of Israelis, yes, and all with their bare hands.

Protester near Gaza border

“The mere fact of approaching a fence is not a lethal, life-threatening act, so that does not warrant being shot. It seems that anyone is liable to be shot dead.” (Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights).

And here is the Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev, formerly Israel’s propaganda chief and long-time apologist for Israel’s crimes, explaining to the BBC: We use live fire only in a very measured way, in a very surgical way and only when there is no alternative.

6,000 wounded? 106 dead? Measured? As for the BBC itself, that model of fair and balanced reporting, I rarely listen nowadays but did catch Jeremy Bowen talking about the ‘violence’ on the Gaza border. No mention of how many Palestinians had been killed. No mention of Palestinians being killed and wounded at all. Just ‘violence’.

And what about the collection of ghouls who proudly dub themselves Labour Friends of Israel? How have they managed to defend this latest atrocity?

How pathetic. They didn’t even have the imagination to concoct their own lie but simply swallowed the steaming pile emanating from the bowels of the Israeli Embassy and regurgitated it.

How can anybody be a friend of a state that turns its sons into murderers?  (continued go to original)