Torture couldn’t happen to a Jewish child - 16 year old Ahed Tamimi’s Detention is Extended by Israel's Military Court

Please Support – Crowdfunding Appeal to Sue fake Zionist charity ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’

Labour’s Zionist Apologists Ellman, Newmark and Ryan keep silent as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ incarcerates children

A posse of heavily built soldiers - all for one slightly built 16 year old girl

Ahed Tamimi appeared in an Israeli military court on Xmas day, after 4 days inside without seeing a parent or a lawyer.  She appeared in handcuffs.  This slightly built child is in the warped fantasy of the settler regime perceived as a danger to Israel’s military might.

Israel’s military courts have a 99.7% conviction rate, higher one suspects than the Labour Party’s National Kangaroo Court!

Ahed Tamimi’s ‘crime’ was to slap and mildly chastise armed Israeli soldiers who invaded the grounds of her house, after a cousin of hers Mohammed Tamimi 15 was shot in the head with a plastic bullet at close range.

Israel’s racist media ignored the fact that her cousin had nearly been killed and focused on the insult to national pride occasioned by Ahed’s slaps and the soldiers failure to strike back.

Miri Regev, Israel’s ‘Culture’ Minister, who previously compared African refugees in Israel to ‘cancer’ and then apologised to cancer victims for comparing refugees to them, spoke of her ‘humiliation’ and suggested they should have opened fire.

Naftali Bennet, the Education Minister went further and stated that she should end her life in prison.  Of course from his perspective it is logical.  A non-Jew striking a Jewish Israeli soldier is a heinous offence whereas shooting a Palestinian child in the head is just one of those things.  After all Bennet is on record as boasting ‘I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.’

Ben Caspit, a senior journalist on Maariv, Israel’s major evening newspaper, makes what amounts to a call for Ahed to be raped.

Ahed, a 16 year old girl who, in the West would be thinking of exams, the latest boy (or girl) friend, going to concerts and doing all the things that teenagers of her age do, has to cope with the presence of soldiers and an army in her village, walking into her house, shooting her relatives and acting with impunity.

Ahed in the court case today came in looking tired and strained.  Her lawyer managed to snatch only a few words with her, such is the nature of Israeli justice, before she was whisked away again. Clearly she is being put under immense pressure to confess without the benefit of a lawyer or relatives.  It is reported that she has been physically assaulted and almost certainly deprived of sleep.  This amounts to torture.  Yet where is the pressure from Theresa May or indeed Jeremy Corbyn?  Why have just 12 MPs, 5 of whom are Labour, signed an Early Day Motion condemning Ahed’s incarceration? 

Shackling and handcuffing a child is in itself a war crime.  Transferring her out of the West Bank is yet another breach of international law but Israel is allowed to break the law with impunity. 

Tony Greenstein

Israel Extends 16-year-old Palestinian Girl's Detention Because She Could 'Pose a Danger'

Ha’aretz, Yotam Berger Dec 25, 2017

Ahed Tamimi, who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers, gets four more days as judges say she might obstruct investigation, with one saying she could endanger soldiers

Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers in her village, Nabi Saleh, had her detention extended on Monday for four additional days, through Thursday.

Her cousin, Nour Tamimi, the second girl who appeared in the clip, and Ahed’s mother, Nariman, also had their detention extended. Nariman is suspected of incitement by filming the incident and posting it on Facebook.

According to police, the investigation of the incident in Nabi Saleh has developed and Ahed and Nariman are suspected of being involved in additional incidents of attacking IDF soldiers.

Police said the extension of their detention was necessary due to the danger Ahed poses, and to prevent obstruction of the investigations.

A judge in the military court of Judea, Major Chaim Bililti, wrote in his decision that while he was not sure her release would pose a danger, there was a chance she would try to obstruct the investigation, and so he was extending her detention. He added that the investigation has led to developments that Nariman Tamimi is connected to other offenses, and is suspected of other charges not yet presented to her.

The court postponed the appeals regarding the extension of Ahed Tamimi’s custody, and during the deliberations police brought up additional suspicions against her. According to the president of the court, Col. Netanel Benisho, “The evidence consolidated a framework regarding three other incidents that took place in May 2017 and in April 2016.”

Judge Benisho accepted police claims that Ahed Tamimi presents a danger, and that she could impede soldiers in their work.

Last week, Judge Maj. Limor Drachman of the Minor’s Court in Judea extended Ahed’s detention to Monday, on suspicion that she would try to injure IDF soldiers.

Video: Resistance icon Ahed Tamimi in Israeli military court

Israeli military court

Ali Abunimah 24 December 2017

 

 This video shows Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli military court on Sunday.

The 16-year-old appears to be in handcuffs as she is led in by Israeli officers. As a lawyer talks to Ahed, a woman, likely the person filming the video, can be heard asking her how she is doing.
Ahed looks at the camera and nods and smiles in answer, indicating she is doing fine.

The video was shared on the Facebook page “Free the Tamimi women.”

Ahed Tamimi has become an international focus of solidarity since Israeli occupation forces seized her from her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during a night raid last week.

Boy shot

That followed an incident the previous Friday, when Israeli occupation forces shot and gravely wounded her cousin 14-year-old Muhammad Fadel Tamimi.

Ahed and two women from the family – her mother Nariman and cousin Nour – then attempted to remove Israeli soldiers from the family’s property. Ahed was seen in a video lightly slapping and shoving one of the armed men.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, explains in an article for Newsweek that less than half an hour before this incident, “a soldier shot Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin in the face at close distance with a rubber-coated steel bullet, causing severe injuries and leaving him in a coma. Then, two soldiers had jumped the wall of our backyard and forced their way on to our property when Ahed confronted them in an effort to make them leave.”

“Israel’s military occupation is in contrast to all that is just and humane, from the abuse of our children to the abuse of our land,” Bassem adds. “As parents, we try to shelter our children against the occupation and all its violence, inequality and lack of freedom, but there is only so much we can do to protect them.”

According to Naji Tamimi, Nour’s father and one of Muhammad’s uncles, Muhammad barely survived his injury.

But he is now recovering after a complex hours-long surgery and will require long-term care and rehabilitation. A photo posted by Naji Tamimi on Facebook shows the extent of the injuries to Muhammad’s face and head.

Nariman and Nour were also arrested as part of a revenge campaign instigated by Israeli political and military leaders bent on expunging the humiliation of heavily armed men being confronted by women from a family known for its sacrifices as part of Nabi Saleh’s ongoing resistance to military occupation and settler-colonization.

Damage control

According to family sources, Ahed’s lawyer requested the hearing on Sunday in an attempt to get the teenager released.

Ahed was held in the notorious Russian Compound interrogation center in Jerusalem overnight and was previously in Ramleh prison.

The Free the Tamimi women Facebook page stated that Ahed “spent the night alone in a cold cell” after enduring several transfers between Israeli prisons.

According to her father Bassem Tamimi, Ahed, Nariman and Nour had previously been held in HaSharon prison.

Arbitrary transfers between prisons under harsh conditions are another way Israel abuses detainees.
Ahed Tamimi is one of hundreds of Palestinian children who each year are subjected to night raids and Israeli military detention each year, where many suffer abuse including torture and solitary confinement.

Concern over this systematic violence against Palestinian children prompted US lawmakers last month to introduce a historic bill to prevent US military aid to Israel being diverted to such practices.

Revenge in the dark

The Israeli army’s attack on the Tamimi family was meant to appease its virulently right-wing and anti-Palestinian domestic audience, but it has become an international embarrassment, prompting The New York Times to go into damage control mode to mitigate further harm to Israel’s tattered reputation.

Writing at Mondoweiss, James North notes that the Times’ coverage “does everything it can to reduce the power of the case” and “make the Israeli soldier look like the victim.”
Ben Caspit, a journalist with Israel’s Maariv newspaper and the online publication Al-Monitor caused shock Saturday when he was quoted by the Associated Press stating in reference to the Tamimi family, “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”

This was widely interpreted as incitement to violence including possible sexual assault, though Caspit has vehemently denied this.

Caspit claims that comments he made in a radio commentary were taken out of context and mistranslated.

But as Jonathan Ofir points out, also at Mondoweiss, Caspit had also made the statement in his Maariv column.

After calling for revenge in the dark with no witnesses present, Caspit writes that the “Tamimi family needs to learn the hard way that such systematic provocations against Israeli soldiers will cost them dearly.”

He added that the Israeli army has the “capabilities, creativity and means” to do this “without paying an exorbitant public price.”

Ahed, Nariman and Nour are due to appear in military court again on Monday.
This article has been updated since initial publication.

The New York Times tries to make the Ahed Tamimi story go away

James North December 23, 2017

The New York Times ran a piece today on the very different ways that Israelis and Palestinians see the slapping incident involving 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and an Israeli soldier. It is titled, “Acts of Resistance and Restraint Defy Easy Definition in the West Bank,” and is by David Halbfinger.

The article does everything it can to reduce the power of the case, in which a brave 16-year-old girl whose cousin was just shot stands for the inhumanity of the occupation. No, the whole point of the article is to make Israel supporters who may have heard about the incident shake their heads over Dual Narratives, and then move along.

Here is the Times‘s model for the whitewash:

1. Make sure the print edition does not include a single one of the striking, now-viral photos of Ahed Tamimi’s brave resistance.

2. State nowhere that Israelis are occupiers, and settlements (colonies) are illegal under international law.

3. Slyly slip in the following paragraph: “That her family appears to encourage the children’s risky confrontations with soldiers offends some Palestinians and enrages many Israelis.”

4. Barely mention the fact that the illegal settlement/colony of Halamish has taken over the village of Nabi Saleh’s access to its spring, and make no effort to report on who is right. Instead treat the matter as On the One Hand/On the Other.

5. In the first sentence, make the Israeli soldier look like the victim: “A teenage girl, a kaffiyeh over her denim jacket, screaming in Arabic, repeatedly punches, slaps and kicks a heavily armed Israeli army officer, who faces her impassively, absorbing some blows, evading others, but never hitting back.” (Make sure you stick in the kaffiyeh and the “screaming in Arabic:” perfect Orientalist gems.)

6. Have settler Yossi Klein Halevi drive home the point, that the Israeli is the victim: “My first reaction was I was proud of the soldiers, but I was also ambivalent: Is this going to invite more attacks, and more serious ones?”

7. Add another obnoxious paragraph: “.  .  . the scene of the young woman being hauled away may have given the Palestinians the clear-cut propaganda coup they had been denied by the original confrontation.”

8. Leave till the 13th paragraph the information that hours before the encounter an Israeli soldier shot Ahed Tamimi’s cousin in the face. Leave out the cousin’s name, Mohammed, and the extent of his injuries. No, you have to go to al Jazeera for that.

Mohammed Tamimi, who is 14 or 15, following a six hour operation after being shot in the face. Photo from Al Jazeera.

9. Quote 6 Jewish Israelis, and only 4 Palestinians. But above all, don’t quote any member of the courageous Tamimi family, even though they were featured in Ben Ehrenreich’s landmark New York Times magazine piece on Nabi Saleh. And even though the slapping incident took place when the soldier had invaded their property.

P.S. Louis Allday, a PhD candidate at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, who is digitizing colonial records, agrees:

[A correction: The original post said, “(Most people still engage with the Times on paper).” In fact, the Times has 2.5 million digital subscribers vs. 1 million print subscribers.]

And a Merry Yuletide to All Our Readers (Zios excepted)

As You Celebrate Xmas Today 

Please Think of Ahed Tamimi and the thousands of other Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel's Colonial Prison Gulag

The Israeli Labour Party Attacks Netanyahu for being too soft on African Refugees

The Jewish Labour Movement’s ‘sister party’ supports the physical expulsion of refugees from Israel to Eritrea

Demonstration of Eritrean Refugees Outside the Eritrean Embassy in Tel Aviv

For those who are not aware, after Palestine had been ethnically cleansed of Palestinians in 1947-8, those who tried to return to their lands were called ‘infiltrators’ and were shot on sight.  They were not wanted because Israel, being a Jewish state, could not allow any more non-Jews to live in the State. On the contrary, throughout the 1950’s thousands of Palestinians and Bedouin were deported.

The Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated as a ‘socialist society’ to the Labour Party describes itself as the ‘sister’ party of the Israeli Labour Party. 

In an article The ethnic cleansing of Africans in Israel, David Sheen wrote that ‘Another one of the ways that Israeli society becomes increasingly racist is when centrist parties like Labor adopt right-wing rhetoric in order to chase after right-wing votes.’   I might take issue with David Sheen over whether or not the Israeli Labour Party is centrist but essentially he is correct.  The Israeli Labour Party’s position over the pogroms in South Tel Aviv and the virulent racism directed against Israel’s African refugees, is no different to that of Likud.

As Sheen noted,  in its attempt to win votes from Likud ‘In recent years, Labor has not played the foil to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but instead acceded to almost all of his hawkish proposals. Instead of standing firm against Israel’s lurch to the right, Labor has attempted to ply votes away from Likud with right-wing proposals.'

That tendency has increased ever since Isaac Herzog was elected to lead the party in November 2013. It has been especially evident in Herzog’s support for Netanyahu’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank, but also in his support for expelling Africans from Israel.

It was not always so. When the Knesset first voted to amend the country’s “anti-infiltration” law in January 2012 to sanction the roundup, detention and expulsion of African refugees, Herzog opposed the measure.

When the Knesset voted to amend the law a second time in December 2013, Herzog didn’t show up for the vote. And by the time the Knesset voted to toughen it a third time in December 2014, he voted in favor of the amendment, along with several other Labor lawmakers.

In May 2012, Herzog wrote an opinion piece, challenging arguments by human rights groups that Eritreans in Israel deserved protection as refugees.

In March 2015, Herzog repeated this refrain in an attempt to peel anti-African votes away from Netanyahu on the eve of the Israeli national elections, saying, “We need to negotiate with Eritrea on the return of the Eritreans back to Eritrea.”

The Jewish Labour Movement describes the Israeli Labor Party as its 'sister' party

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) explained how nearly 37,000 Eritreans applied for asylum in 38 European countries over the first 10 months of last year, compared with about 13,000 in the same period in 2013. It puts the total Eritrean refugee population at more than 321,000.

The reasons for the exodus are not hard to fathom: last month, a UN inquiry accused the government of President Isaias Afewerki – who has ruled the east African country since its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 – of operating a system of “ruthless repression” and “pervasive state control”.

The chair of the inquiry, Mike Smith, noted a culture of “extra-judicial executions, enforced disappearances and incommunicado detentions”, all aimed at silencing critics of the regime.

Human Rights Watch tells of how, after ‘25 years of rule by unelected President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s citizens remain subjects of one of the world’s most oppressive governments.’

‘In May 2016, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI) established by the Human Rights Council in its final report said it found reasonable grounds to believe the government has committed numerous crimes against humanity. The government’s “totalitarian practices” and disrespect for the rule of law manifested “wholesale disregard for the liberty” of Eritrea’s citizens, the CoI concluded.’

This is the state that the Israeli Labour Party wishes to return refugees in Israel to.  What is worse is that the British Labour Party allows the ILP’s overseas wing, the Jewish Labour Movement, as an affiliate.

This year, Labor led a successful effort to abolish the Knesset’s committee on foreign workers, one of the few forums in which the concerns of refugees could receive a hearing in parliament.

In September 2015, quite unbelievably the Israeli Labour Party publicly complained that Netanyahu’s government has not done nearly enough to expel Africans from the country. In a public statement, Herzog’s Labor Party wholeheartedly adopted the far-right’s propaganda points, insisting without any basis that most refugees in Israel have no valid claim to refugee status.

“The crisis of the refugees from Syria is not similar to the issue of the infiltrators from Africa who are mostly migrant workers,” the statement read. “If only Bibi’s government had created immigration laws, it would be possible to send back to their country those who are in Israel for their welfare and for work. But the Likud government is only good at talking, and it is responsible for the troubles of the residents of south Tel Aviv.”

Of course the opposite is true.  It is Likud MKs like Miri Regev who have led the racist agitation against the African refugees of South Tel Aviv.  Regev herself notoriously called the African refugees a ‘cancer’ and then when criticized, apologized to cancer victims for comparing them to refugees.

The Israeli Labour Party subscribes wholeheartedly to the idea that non-Jewish refugees threaten the Jewish nature of the Israeli state.  This is another example of how a ‘Jewish’ state cannot be other than a racist state.

Tony Greenstein

Avi Gabbay, the Israeli Labor Party's racist new leader

Israeli Labor sells out African refugees, as ‘infiltrators’

Jonathan Ofir

Avi Gabbay

”What has become of you? Are you the Zionist Union or the expelling union? Have you gone mad? In your tactics for wooing votes, you’ve abandoned your fundamental values and ability to tell right from wrong.”

Tamar Zandberg, a lawmaker from the leftist Meretz Party, shouted that at the left-bloc Zionist Union members who yesterday backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s draconian legislation to forcibly deport the remaining roughly 40,000 African asylum seekers to a third country – Rwanda. 

Zandberg’s party leader Zehava Gal-On, added that the Zionist Union leader, Avi Gabbay, has “forgotten what it means to be human” – playing a bitter pun on the Gabbay’s recent echoing of Netanyahu, where he said that “the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” 

Prime Minister Netanyahu told the cabinet on Sunday that it is time to “increase the pace of deporting African migrants”, as the Jerusalem Post reported, introducing a bill which passed 53-10 on Monday – much thanks to Gabbay’s support of a policy that is contrary to Labor’s former position.  

Jerusalem Post Gil Hoffman yesterday summarized Gabbay’s many shifts rightwards since his being elected chair of Labor this summer:

Gabbay said recently that there would be no need to evacuate settlements in a peace deal, that he would not sit in a coalition with the Joint (Arab) list, that he was not sure if there was a partner on the Palestinian side, that “the Left forgot what it means to be Jewish”, and that “the whole land of Israel is ours, because it was promised to our patriarch Abraham by God”.

Tamar Zandberg of Meretz, from her Twitter feed.

Indeed, with an opposition like this, who needs Netanyahu? As Meretz leader Gal-On put it, Gabbay was moving so far right, that he could even “outflank Bayit Yehudi [Jewish Home] leader Naftali Bennett”.

Netanyahu’s legislative move comes after a Supreme Court ruling two months ago that limited the state’s practice to coerce refugees to accept being deported to a third country, through indefinite imprisonment. At that point Netanyahu, together with Culture Minister Miri Regev (who has earlier called African refugees “a cancer in our body”), went on a major incitement tour against African refugees in southern Tel Aviv, saying that “We are here on a mission to give back south Tel Aviv to the Israeli residents”. 

Netanyahu was making clear that he will not be deterred by the court ‘limitation’:

“We’ll have to enact new laws that will enable us … to send the illegal infiltrators out of our country”, he said.

As the Times of Israel rightly noted at the time, “expulsion to a third country is largely unprecedented in the Western world. Italy and Australia signed similar agreements with third-party countries — Italy with Libya, and Australia with Malaysia — but both proposals were shot down by local courts. In both cases, courts ruled the bills inconsistent with international law and the 1951 UN convention on refugees — to which Israel is also a party.”

But the court did, in fact, not rule against Israel’s practice of deportation to a third country – which is now known to be Rwanda. It merely limited the state’s practice of indefinite detention aimed at putting pressure on refugees to agree to be deported. It limited the imprisonment period to 60 days. In other words, refugees who seek to hold on to their human rights could still be imprisoned for it, but ‘only’ for 60 days.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was clear at the time about the necessity of this coercive measure, in her statement condemning the Supreme Court decision:

“The High Court removed from the state the ability to pressure the illegal infiltrators,” she said. “It turned the [migrant’s] lack of cooperation into a reward. We will fight this until we achieve the necessary results,” she said.

So Israel is now working on moves that would simply legalize what the court has struck down, and let’s see how far it goes before it’s challenged. As Ilan Lior reported in Haaretz on Friday, “The border authority will formally announce within a few weeks a new policy, under which asylum seekers will have to return to their countries of origin, agree to be sent to Rwanda or be jailed indefinitely in Israel.”  

Gabbay’s recent push to support Netanyahu’s bill has divided the Labor leaders, and even Shelly Yachimovitch of Labor– the one who demanded immediate pardon for medic-killer Elor Azarya– said that it’s “morally impossible to support this.” 

Labor lawmaker Zouheir Bahloul said, “I don’t understand how the party can support such an immoral move by the right, which seeks to throw refugees to hell.” He added: “Angela Merkel was willing to take the political risk until Election Day and take her moral stance of accepting thousands of refugees, and we hesitate and squirm here. Israel can handle a few tens of thousands of refugees and spread them across the country.”

In the end, most of the Zionist Union MKs who are against refugee rights (and that’s the plurality of the 22 Zionist Union members) were absent from the Knesset vote. But the measure still passed, as mentioned, 53-10.

With all the dissent, let’s look at what the leaders of the Israeli left say in the end:

Gabbay’s predecessor Isaac Herzog (still leader of Zionist Union in Knesset as Gabbay isn’t MK), said that “The infiltrators took Israeli Arab jobs.” Wow. The ‘infiltrators’. Netanyahu uses the same term. And is Herzog’s concern now really about ‘Arabs’ – the one who warned the Israeli center-left not to be seen to be ‘Arab lovers’?

Think about it – “Arab jobs”. Does anyone in Israel even notice the vile, blatant, racism here?

And Labor’s Merav Michaeli, (who recently said that “a lot of the BDS movement is good old anti-Semitism”), backed Herzog’s line, just a touch more “liberally”, without the ‘Arabs’ and substituting “infiltrators” with “migrants”:

“Residents have been left at home with no work, because of the migrants”, she said. “There are MK’s in the opposition who cannot look in[to] the eyes of residents who are screaming for us to save them”, she added.

Gosh, what empathy. The Israeli residents are screaming to be saved. Nonetheless, the cries of the refugees, who at best are called “migrants” and commonly regarded as “infiltrators”, even by the left, appear inaudible.

Gabbay is no doubt wooing votes from the right, and he said behind closed doors yesterday that “this is not an issue of right or left”. Already assuming his future constituency, he said that “we would pay a price for arguing with the public”.

So whilst not wanting to argue with “the public”, Gabbay apparently didn’t mind arguing with his own party leadership to support Netanyahu’s bill.

The Israeli Labor is further shedding masks. But let us not forget, that this is also the movement whose leaders contemplated genocide in Gaza in 1967, as newly declassified documents show. This is the same political movement that was responsible for the major ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, subsequent major ethnic cleansings in 1967 and on, and the settlement project since 1967.

The movement that has so arduously created such a great Palestinian refugee crisis for the sake of the Jewish State– what is the meaning to Labor of another 40,000 African refugees after all?   

6 Months after the Election & 3 Resignations Later Labour Has Still Not Found an Effective Message

Theresa May Should Have Gone by NowLabour’s Incoherence Over Brexit is Hurting 

Corbyn should not be afraid to call for a Second Referendum

It is said that Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them.  However that is not altogether true.  How an Opposition plays its cards can have a decisive effect on the fortunes of a Government.  At the moment Labour gives every impression of sitting back and hoping that the Tories will simply collapse of their own accord.  The problem is that the Tories can survive if the price they make us pay is high enough.

Brexit is a key political issue and it also has an impact on every other area.  There is not only a lack of clarity over the Brexit but on the NHS, Housing, Student Fees and much else besides.  All of these issues are tied to Brexit, for example the opening up of the NHS to US multinationals in any new trade agreement will increase the rate of privatisation.

As the only blog to predict a hung parliament from the start of the General Election in April and again in June it is clear to me that the failure to oppose Brexit is hurting Labour.  Having a lack of clarity is not a bonus in politics where people expect you to provide them with answers to problems not offer a half way house.  Labour is not leading on Europe it is following.

We have had 3 cabinet resignations in a fortnight, Theresa May lost a crucial amendment on the European Union Withdrawal Bill last week and yet, Labour is still treading water.  Far from being on the political ropes, Theresa May’s position has stabilised. Labour is not offering an alternative to Brexit other than some vague notion of a soft as opposed to a hard Brexit.

It is, or should be clear that Brexit is already affecting the economy negatively.  Not only is there a rise in inflation but the economy is suffering from reduced growth.  If Britain loses access to European markets, in particular financial markets the economy and production will take a severe hit and with it working class living standards.

Nobody seriously believes that Brexit will have a positive economic effect other than the lunatic fringe of the Tory party.  Yet Labour’s position of remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union whilst remaining outside the EU is incoherent.  If you are going to pay, as you must, to remain in both then what is the purpose or point of leaving Europe?  

The only argument I have heard from Emily Thornberry, who is proving disastrous as shadow Foreign Secretary, is that we must ‘respect’ the vote to leave?  Why?  It’s one thing to recognise it for what it is, a disastrous mistake, it is quite another to respect it as if it were some ancient god.

It is clear the negotiating strategy, if you can call it that, of Theresa May and David Davies, is based on a wing and a prayer.  Davies admits there hasn’t even been an impact study in the different economic sectors.  May’s request or was it a plea, that the transition period be at least 2 years was contemptuously rejected.  21 months it is.  Jeremy Corbyn needs to grab the reigns of power not smile at them.  This government could be put on the ropes by a determined opposition.

The reality is that although people voted narrowly for Brexit they did it for a number of incoherent reasons – such as a protest against the effects of austerity and in the mistaken belief that immigration was the cause of the decline in living standards.  As is becoming blindingly clear, immigration has a positive not a negative effect on the economy and services - e.g. the NHS.

What  people didn’t do was to deliberately vote for a reduction in their standard of living and the services they expect.  It was an act of protest mainly by those in the North of England against deindustrialisation and the transfer of wealth from poor to rich.

People did not vote to make themselves poorer yet that is what the result of Brexit will be.  Crashing the economy is not a socialist strategy.  It is also clear that Brexit will mean a new assault on workers’ rights such as the Working Time Directive.  Free of the Brussell’s bureaucracy there will be no ‘red tape’ inhibiting the ‘setting free’ of the Labour market.

Those on the Left who supported Lexit swallowed the nonsense of economic nationalism in one country.  Tony Benn always argued that we would regain our economic sovereignty but this always begged the question, did Britain ever have it, at least since the early part of the 20^th Century?  And even more pertinently what we are talking about is the sovereignty of the wealth and the rich.  Working class people have never had control over their destiny or the political economy.

The reality will be that Britain’s economy outside Europe will be in hock to the United States and Donald Trump.  The idea that Trump is going to cut Britain a quick and easy deal flies in the face of his American First policy.   The Tories in the shape of Liam Fox are going a begging to the court of Donald.

What then should Labour do?  If Labour believes that the Brexit vote was a mistake, and most Labour voters and most Labour Party members do, then there is only one conclusion.  That people should have the right to change their mind.  There is nothing undemocratic about having a second vote given the lies about £300m a week going to the NHS.

Of course Nigel Farage and Rees Mogg and co. will kick and scream ‘betrayal’ but the truth is that a second vote will be more not less democratic than the first vote.  People will now have seen something of what Brexit is likely to look like.  How can anyone object to another vote on democratic grounds?

Of course this doesn’t mean that in an increasingly right-wing Europe that socialists should be content with things as they are.  We should be firmly opposed to a bankers Europe, neo-liberalism and the growth of the far-Right as in Austria where a far-Right government has been elected.  In or out the politics of Europe are shifting in a nationalist and racist direction.  Labour should make it clear that Britain retains the right to for example nationalise the major infrastructure areas of economic activity such as rail, the utilities and post office.  However anyone who believes that there is anything ‘socialist’ in leaving Europe for Trump’s warm embrace really does need their head examining.

I also suspect that a clear policy difference on Europe will help splinter the Tories and hasten the demise of Strong & Stable.  Instead of treading water we will be treading Tories!

Tony Greenstein