Open Letter to Chris Ward, the Genocide Supporting Starmer Puppet and Crony, MP for Brighton Kemptown

‘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.

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

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) May 30, 2024

 

chris.ward.mp@parliament.uk

 Wednesday, 30 October 2024

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 7^th’ 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

Galloway’s Victory Produced Panic & Fear in the Establishment Because Their Lies Are Increasingly Seen As An Attempt To Justify Their System of Legalised Theft

When A Ruling Class Is Seen As Morally and Politically Bankrupt Then That is When It is Both Weakest & Most Vicious

Victory Speech

The reaction of Rishi Sunak to Galloway’s election victory last Friday morning was a sight to behold. He slithered out of 10 Downing Street to spew his venom at an audience that was no longer listening,bar the media circus that is little more than an echo chamber.

Sunak is an empty suit, a bundle of clichés, spewing racism and threats of state violence under the pretext that he is combating ‘extremist disruption and criminality’. What he meant of course was the mass demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza that he is encouraging and which 76% of the population support.

It is one of the hallmarks of the political dishonesty of our politicians that opposition to genocide is violence and support for genocide is making peace.

Sunak is the least impressive Prime Minister since the last one,  Liz Truss, whose reign was less than the lifespan of a lettuce.

Sunak’s speech

Sunak demonstrated the moral and political turpitude of an elite that has systematically transferred the wealth of the UK from the poorest to the richest. Sunak himself is the richest man in parliament and he is married to the tax-dodging daughter of a billionaire.

Comedian Tez with voting advice to British Muslims pic.twitter.com/ZgqmXWXrej

— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) March 5, 2024

Every action of the government is designed to impoverish the vast majority of people. The NHS is in chaos and underfunded, schools are being privatised, welfare benefits have been systematically cut, Brexit has reduced the volume of trade and yet according to Sunak and Braverman the greatest threat to Britain comes from refugees. Racism and divide and rule  are the order of the day.

Yet it is over Gaza that their moral depravity shines out. In his speech Sunak mentioned October 7, when Palestinian fighters killed 1,139 Israelis, a third of whom were military and police and half the remainder were killed by Israel under the Hannibal Doctrine, which stipulates that in the event of an Israeli being captured it is better to kill both captor and captive than allow the latter to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners at a later date. A fact carefully hidden by a compliant media.

Galloway Interview with Sky TV

When genocide stalks Gaza, when Israel perpetrates the flour massacre, Sunak says nothing. One Israeli Jewish life is worth more than 100 Palestinian lives. Which is exactly the ratio of hostages killed that the Nazis exacted  when one of them were killed.

Israel is armed to the teeth by Sunak and the US government and soldiers opening fire on starving people waiting for food does not disturb Sunak, Starmer or our political elite in the slightest. Of course if Russia had committed such an atrocity it would have filled the airwaves. Instead Sunak condemned a non-existent violence on the streets of Britain as a pretext for removing yet more of our rights to protest.

Aaron Bushnell’s Brave Sacrifice to Stop Biden’s Genocide

Rochdale is a constituency which has been held by all 3 major parties and was for much of the 19^th century a stronghold of radicalism and the supporters of free trade and opponents of the Corn Laws, notably Richard Cobden. So it is not altogether a surprise that the voters of Rochdale have elected in George Galloway another radical.

There was one issue above all other that dominated the election and that was Gaza. As Galloway said in his victory speech, ‘Keir Starmer this is for Gaza.’

Sunak leads an openly racist party. 58% of whose members say that Islam poses a threat to this country. 43% of members don’t want a Muslim Prime Minister, a survey by YouGov found. Substitute Judaism/Jewish for Islam/Muslim and you get a flavour of the state of the Tory party.

The same study found 45% believe there are “areas in Britain in which non-Muslims are not able to enter” and 67% believe there are areas “that operate under Sharia law”. Conspiracy theories are rife in this racist party yet Sunak’s only concern was the false claim that Jewish school students are fearful’ to wear their uniforms ‘lest it reveal their identity.’

Sunak’s concern for British Jews, almost all whom are White, economically prosperous  and not subject to state repression or discrimination is touching but what he is doing is using Jews as a moral alibi for his support for Israel as a ‘Jewish’ State. When you are enabling genocide it helps to point to distract people’s attention by pointing to a non-existent problem.

Sunak declared that:

It is beyond alarming that last night the Rochdale by-election returned a candidate who dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7^th, who endorses Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the BNP... you cannot use that to call for the eradication of a state or any kind of hatred or anti-Semitism.... It is the public’s expectation that they [the Police] will not only manage these protests but police them.

We have had 30,000 killed and 70,000 injured in Gaza and rising but this is not enough for Sunak who had nothing to say about Palestinian deaths and injuries.

Calling for the dismantlement of the Apartheid State of Israel is anti-Semitic. Was the destruction of the Nazi and South African states also racist? 

Galloway at University Debate Destroys Zionist Claims That He is Anti-Semitic 

Sunak’s real agenda was left to last. Unable to ban the mass demonstrations outright like Braverman wanted, he called for wholly peaceful mass protests not only to be managed by the police but to be ‘policed’ by them. Which is code for coercion, violence and harassment of marchers by arresting them for chanting things and holding placards he doesn’t like. 

Police repression is Sunak’s response to the political crisis and the mass movement that has arisen since October 7. No doubt the Met, a byword for corruption, racism and misogyny will step up their harassment of protestors and if violence breaks out it will of course be the fault of those who were harassed.

The irony of Sunak talking about racism is breathtaking. He has been forced to suspend the former Vice-Chair of the Tory Party Lee Anderson whom he appointed in the first place because he was a racist. Yet two-thirds of Tory members support him and Sunak himself refuses to call his attack on Sadiq Khan for being in the grip of Islamists Islamaphobic.

Not surprisingly Starmer echoes every word Sunak says. There was a time when the Labour Party was an Opposition party but today we have a choice of identikit politicians whose only interest is in scapegoating minorities.

Starmer has pursued a consistently racist and Islamaphobic policy in the Labour Party, all in the name of opposing ‘anti-Semitism’. Both party leaders are committed to Zionism and support genocide in Israel.

Galloway condemned the SNP for supporting the protesters

The victory of George Galloway should be welcomed by all those on the left who want change. Of course Galloway is not the perfect socialist. His views on refugees leave a lot to be desired as does his attitude to social oppressions and abortion. But where he is right is in stressing the importance of class as opposed to identity politics.

Most people on the left realised that Genocide in Gaza was the main issue in Rochdale and supported Galloway. The SWP did not.

Nine days before the election the headline in Socialist Worker was ‘Galloway is not the answer for Rochdale - We need a better expression of Palestinian liberation than George Galloway’s party.

Presumably the SWP’s decision to march with Glasgow Friends of Israel on March 16 to mark UN anti-racism day is what they mean by a better expression of Palestinian liberation! Supporters of Israel’s genocide will be taking part in an ‘anti-racist’ march.

10 days later the SWP headline was ‘The Rochdale by-election was a referendum on Rishi Sunak’s and Keir Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide.’ which rather begs the question why, in that case the SWP did not support him!

Azhar Ali

The claims of Starmer that Labour would have won if they had not suspended their candidate Azhar Ali is more Starmer’s lies. Nothing that Ali said was anti-Semitic. Given the warning Israel had over October 7 it is quite reasonable to believe that it might have let it happen. It certainly is not anti-Semitic to propound such a theory.

The  truth as everyone knows is that Ali was suspended because Starmer knew he was going to lose and he decided that it was preferable to sack him than lose to Galloway.

Never has it been so obvious that whatever else Britain, America, Germany and the West is they are not democracies. Majorities in every European country see Israel’s attack on Gaza as unjustified. Even in Germany 44% oppose Israel’s attack to 35% who support it.

Even in the US 68% support a ceasefire and 43% oppose sending Israel weapons compared to 31% supporting it. Yet the governments of nearly all the countries chose to ignore public opinion. And when, as in the UK, the public is resolutely opposed to the government’s policy the government attacks the marches as ‘hate marches’ and seeks to restrict them.

Even the Economist is not impressed with Sunak's attack on the right to protest

Rochdale indicates that we face a profound political crisis with both government and opposition in lockstep. You could not put a piece of paper between Sunak and Starmer which is one reason why in Rochdale the two main parties got just 20% between them. No wonder Sunak was so furious.

The question for the left is whether they can get their act together to pose a unified challenge in the next election when the main task will not be defeating Sunak so much as ensuring the defeat of Starmer.

We should be under no illusions that Starmer is the main enemy. He stands for the continuation of the Tory attacks on the working class and poor. There isn’t even one promise that he hasn’t broken. Not one of his 10 pledges that secured his election as leader that he hasn’t torn up.

The call by Andrew Feinstein for a unified left, the Collective, is welcome. What would be even more welcome would be if Jeremy Corbyn, together with those MPs who Starmer has removed the whip from, were to seize this opportunity to give a lead rather than cowering in the shadows. Corbyn hasn’t even declared whether he will restand for parliament. One can only wonder what is keeping him.