‘You have all the independence of a snarling dog on a leash but without
the charm’
Chris Ward was
parachuted in as candidate for Brighton Kemptown in the General Election. Out
went Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the equivocating ex-socialist MP.
Not one Labour
Party member voted for Ward. His only qualification was that he was a friend
and crony of Starmer. Therefore when I sent him a letter about Gaza I expected
no better from him than the letter which I copy below.
However I also decided that it was time to respond to his turgid and repetitive prose, dishonest in every strained syllable. Chris Ward was a political lobbyist in Hanbury Strategy a corporate lobbying group. Keir Hardie must be turning in his grave at what his namesake has done to the Labour Party.
OK everyone, gather round, here's a lovely little story for you all.
— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) May 30, 2024
Chris Ward - Keir Starmer's former chief of staff - was a longtime close friend.
He stayed at my parent's flat in Edinburgh. We got drunk together, made repetitive Alan Partridge-based gags.
We argued about… https://t.co/suplRCArxh pic.twitter.com/8MAwCJJEGT
chris.ward.mp@parliament.uk
Dear
Chris Ward,
The
only reason that you were selected to stand at the last election, in place of
the existing MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, was that you were a crony
of Keir Starmer. I would no more expect an
independent opinion from you than I would expect it from a snarling dog on a leash.
Except that you have less charm than the average Rottweiler. You are a human dictaphone
ready to mouth whatever trite phrases Starmer pours into your ear holes at any time.
Israel
is, at this moment, starving and massacring 400,000 people in northern Gaza. It
has refused to allow the entry of food, fuel and water and it has barred
6 international medical NGOs. It has destroyed every hospital in the north
of Gaza and virtually every medical facility in the whole of Gaza.
In
Poland and Russia a similar policy, ‘death
by hunger’ was pursued by the Nazis and the Governor-General of Poland,
Hans Frank. Israel’s behaviour ranks with the worst atrocities of the Nazis. It
has just declared
UNWRA, the UN organisation responsible for feeding thousands of Palestinian refugees,
a terrorist organisation and banned it from working to alleviate the famine in
Gaza.
Puppets
like you can only repeat mindless, sanctimonious phrases about Israel being
under threat as some form of justification. Nazi Germany also claimed that Poland
was a threat as did Britain and America
when they invaded Iraq in 2003.
On
Tuesday 93 Palestinians were killed,
including 25 children, and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential
building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. This was one of a series of
never ending massacres.
All
you can say is that the government is right to continuing to grant 92% of arms
export licenses. You are an accomplice
to genocide. Every single bullet should be embargoed, instead we are providing
parts for Israeli fighter jets in order that they can commit more atrocities
and massacres.
The Steve Bell cartoon banned by Guardian Editor, Kath Viner. Bell was the Guardian's prize winning cartoonist who Viner sacked. Razan al Najjar was a Palestinian medic, aged 21, murdered by an Israeli sniper in 2018 as part of the Great Return.
You
say you want to see ‘an immediate and
lasting ceasefire in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon’ yet you continue to support
the supply of weapons that ensure that there will be no ceasefire. You are nothing but a tiresome dishonest hypocrite.
There
is only one way to call a halt to the genocide, a word that seems to be missing
from your vocabulary and that is to sanction all trade with Israel. Israel needs to be subject to the same
sanctions regime as South Africa was.
When
it comes to Ukraine you have no hesitation in supporting sanctions against
Russia but when it comes to Israel you say you don’t agree ‘all exports’ should be terminated.
Why? Because you support ‘Israel’s right to self defence’ which in
practice means its right to commit genocide.
If
you really believe the murder of thousands of civilians, including 16,000+
children, is acceptable for an occupying power, then you are sick in the head.
It is likely when the carnage is finally over that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
will be dead thanks to monsters like you. All in the name of eradicating the ‘terrorist’
Hamas when the real terrorists wear Israeli military uniform.
Israel
has no more right to self-defence than Nazi Germany did when it occupied France,
Poland and Czechoslovakia, to name but three countries. It is the occupied people and they alone who
have an international
law right to self-defence not the aggressor. Every occupied people have the
right to self-defence against their occupiers. Why do you find this concept so
difficult to understand? Is it a mental
or political block that you suffer from?
The
International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s
occupation of Gaza and the West Bank are illegal. Israel should therefore get out of Gaza
without any preconditions.
Alon Misrahi - committed suicide
You
talk about the ‘appalling and sickening
attacks on October 7th’ but I notice that such adjectives are
not reserved for the actions of the Israeli military, the torture
camps, the mass
graves and the shooting
of doctors. To give but one example CNN recounted
the suicide of an Israeli soldier, Alon Misrahi and the experiences of his friend Zaken:
In
a testimony
to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in June, Zaken said that on many
occasions, soldiers had to “run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the
hundreds.”
“Everything squirts out,” he
added.
It
wasn’t of course ‘terrorists’ that were run over but women and children. There
are countless testimonies to the fact that Israel is burying its victims alive
and deliberately
shooting children in the head.
When
Israel began the attack on Gaza its Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant declared that ‘we are fighting human animals and will act accordingly’. In
a speech in Poznań (Posen) on 4 October 1943, Heinrich Himmler, who presided over the
Final Solution, praised
the Nazis as ‘the only people in the world who have a decent attitude
toward animals’ and who ‘will also take a decent towards these
human animals’ referring to the Jews.
CNN, being another pro-Zionist propaganda outlet, covered the story not from the point of view of the victims but the perpetrators. SS men too were traumatised by their role in mass shootings. The SS even established a mental hospital in the East to take care of them. That was the reason that the Nazis introduced the gas chambers. But imagine if the press were to cover the holocaust from the perspective of what effect it had on the SS. This is the sublime logic of the war criminal.
Let
us also be clear about October 7. 1139 Israelis were killed, one-third of them soldiers
and the majority of the remainder by Israel itself as a result of putting the Hannibal
Doctrine into operation. But 1139 was a fraction of the deaths that Palestinians
in Gaza and elsewhere have suffered. In Operation
Protective Edge in 2014 twice as many Palestinians were killed without a
murmur from pipsqueaks like yourself.
You
of course are silent about Palestinian suffering because like your controller
Starmer, you are nothing if not an imperialist and racist.
Your
ignorance is only matched by your malevolence. Israel is an apartheid society,
just as South Africa was. It was
established by ethnic cleansing in 1948 and is now ethnically cleansing Gaza
whilst shills like you emit warm honeyed words of concern. Israel has always
been the aggressor in the region and it is not Israel but the Palestinians and
the Arab people who need the right of self-defence.
You
speak of the two-state solution. This nothing but a cover for continued
colonisation of Palestinian land. In case you hadn’t noticed the Israeli Knesset
voted
by 68-9 in July to support a resolution opposing two-states. What is it about
that which you don’t understand? A two-state solution would simply mean another
form of apartheid with a Palestinian bantustan.
In
2018 Israel passed as a basic (constitutional) law The Jewish Nation State Law
which declared that Israel is a state, not of its own citizens but only of its Jewish
citizens. In other words Israel is officially an apartheid state. In the words
of Benjamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister,
“Israel
is not a state of all its citizens. According
to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the
Jewish people – and only it.
When
Europe’s Jews, including members of my family, were exterminated in the fires
of Auschwitz and Treblinka, people could at least claim that they were ignorant
of what was happening. Today, with the Internet and modern means of
communication there is no excuse whatsoever for pretending that what is
happening in Gaza is not genocide. You are therefore nothing more than an
apologist for war criminals and people should understand you as such.
Keir
Starmer and David Lammy, along with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are war criminals
just as the Nazi war criminals who were executed at Nuremberg in 1947.
Apologists for genocide like you should be removed from parliament and given lengthy
prison sentences for justifying genocide. You are, Chris Ward, a despicable
human being who would, 80 years ago, have turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and
supported, like Labour’s Herbert Morrison, keeping out Jewish refugees.
My
only consolation is that after the next election you will no longer be an MP. I
would prefer a genuine Tory to a Starmer poodle.
Tony
Greenstein
Letter from Chris Ward MP Justifying Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
Dear Tony,Thank you for writing to me about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
I agree that the situation in Gaza is intolerable. I want to assure you that I continue to support an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon, which sees hostages released, civilians protected, and aid flow in. This is the only way to alleviate the heart-breaking suffering we are witnessing on a daily basis, and I am acutely aware that there can be no military solution to this dreadful conflict.
I am also concerned about the flow of aid being allowed into Gaza, and I support the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary’s calls to Israel to guarantee support for those in desperate need on the ground. The Government is working tirelessly to help resolve this and secure a diplomatic breakthrough, which ultimately can see a peaceful two-state solution, including the formal recognition of Palestine. An immediate cease-fire is the first step to achieving this.
Regarding the export of arms to Israel, the Government’s recent decision to suspend certain arms exports to Israel – including those that could be used in Gaza – followed a careful review of Israel’s compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL), given grave concerns about the conduct and consequences of the war for civilians. I support this, but I do not agree that all exports to Israel should be halted. Israel faces a number of extremely hostile regional and local threats – as witnessed by the appalling and sickening attacks on October 7th - and I support Israel’s right to self-defence.
I believe that the Government is taking the right approach by assessing each export license against IHL while supporting Israel’s right to self-defence. I hope this approach, allied with strong diplomatic pressure on both sides to reach a ceasefire, can help lead to the peaceful and immediate cessation of violence we all want to see.
Best wishes,
Chris Ward
What is the definition of 'weasel words'? Often, examples are better than attempts to define. As in, 'We said this, we said that, but we did the other.'
ReplyDeleteTony, you have a powerful way with words and your letter/blog conveys the unspeakable, sickening massacre of women, children & men. Words fail me. The horror is the stuff of nightmares.
ReplyDeletePathetic sanctimony. Similar in tone and content to the reply I received from my own Labour MP. These are not humane Socialists. They are nothing more than base, career politicians who will do anything to further and protect their position on the greasy pole.
ReplyDeleteMay these bestial genocidal Zionist murderers perish in the hell of their own creation. May the resistance prevail, honouring the memory of their leaders and all who have been slaughtered by these fascists. And, Tony, may you continue to articulate all that the rest of us are finding increasingly difficult to give expression to. The Western alliance that sponsors this evil, and persecutes and oppresses all who expose their iniquity, is a manifestation of a Fourth Reich. Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich and Ben Gvir are not only those who should be dragged kicking and screaming to the Hague - Biden, Harris, Trump, Blinken, Starmer, Macron, Scholz, Von Der Leyen and the rest, should accompany them.
ReplyDeleteTony, I don't think Chris Ward can have read your letter, so much of which which is words that could have come from my heart. His reply seems to be a standard response drafted to issue at all protests against the policy of supporting escalation of this war and the extermination of Palestine as an idea, a place, and an identity . The catholics did the same for South American cultures in the 16th century, so it is with some irony that I quote from Simon Weil's notes on personality that " in all the crucial problems of human existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand and evil on the other." Israel will become a wonderful place to live for those who can celebrate, with divine impunity, their parts in the atrocities, or represent the choices as supporting
ReplyDeletea lesser evil!! One might say of Plato's morality that it was the worst guide to political action, apart from all the others..perhaps we should all die with moral safeguards, rather than live with political and military ones.
When "we" choose the lesser of two evils, it is the "other" who suffer the greater... Immediate sanctions on Israel is with any shadow of uncertainty the good which is incalculable , if not supernatural!
Yuck. I have to feel sorry for the political hack whose job it is to write stuff like this. Chris Ward didn't write it himself.
ReplyDeleteThe tragedy is that there are many more contemptible, snivelling 'Chris Wards' now in the Labour Party who are either afraid of Starmer or are only too willing to be his toe rags - or both.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree, very likely a pro-forma response to any letter critical of government policy. The fact is the original letter is so (rightly and righteously) abusive and deeply personal, that if he was replying as to the actual content and tone of Tony Greenstein's letter, he could not have composed a letter so anodyne.
ReplyDeleteI am sickened by what is happening to the people un lucky enough to be living anywhere near Israel. This is worse than anything I can remember in my pretty long life in terms of deliberate acts of human barbarity perpetrated by a state. I find it incomprehensible that allegedly civilised countries are aiding and abetting these actions by Israel. If the USA elects Trump it will be in no small measure due to Bidens appalling failure to let Israel know how
ReplyDeleteTried then was axed after many words ...too late to try again except to say I agree with virtually all comments above.
ReplyDelete