This dialogue followed on from my posting on Facebook and X of an article published by the Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) regarding BBC bias in the reporting of Israel’s actions in Palestine, and my comment on it which stated that the report confirmed what many of us were already thinking. My Zionist interlocutor speaks first:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias/?fbclid=IwAR11gPLnCJfuceW8D1oX_tO3h5szCkEzWQuS3h9UB_u2yMwEVodEFgedDd8

• This is nonsense: the BBC’s coverage has been superb and even-handed: especially from Jeremy Bowen If you think not, please provide examples, and not just vague, unsourced anomymous accusations, eh?
• If you think that this article is mistaken in its analysis of what has passed for reporting and comment on the BBC, then you would need to deny the examples it provides you with. As for Jeremy Bowen, he is trying to be fair, I know, because he has known longer than most what has really been going on in the occupied territories: but maybe you should be asking why so much of what he knows happened in the many years before the Hamas attack has been missing from his reports. Maybe because he too has been warned? And just because the sources in this article are anonymous doesn’t mean they’re lying: it means that they are being intimidated, just as they themselves explain. Since Corbyn, the lies about whom the BBC consistently repeated but never questioned, the BBC has treated Israel and Palestine differently, and that has been plain to many from the start. I remember the reporting of Operation Protective Edge: what was missing there was any interrogation of Israel’s motives. What a difference it might have made if the BBC had accepted its responsibilities then!
  [a comment appeared here in response which has gone missing somehow; but which referred to anybody who disagreed with my opponent in this argument was a loon and and an antisemite]
• You have just called me a ‘loon; and an ‘antisemite’. I am insulted by being called a ‘loon’, but I am especially offended ar being called an ‘antisemite’ as I am one of the many proud Jews who oppose Israel as a matter of humanitarian principle. Too may of us have observed how the BBC has behaved over the years in relation to Israel, and it has been deeply angering. Just because you yourself can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And that’s my last comment to you since I don’t debate with people who believe personal abuse can stand in place of rational argument.
• Be insulted if you like, Richard: the charge stands. Jewish people can promote antisemitism (eg Gilad Atzmon, Tony Greenstein, the late Tony Cliff). I note you have provided no evidence whatsoever of alleged BBC “bias”. Over to you, pal.
  [I was too angry not to rise to this bait; and given what follows I feel fully justified]
• 1. The sheer stupidity of supposing that there are Jews who wilfully promote anti-semitism is beyond comment. The only Jews I know who have been routinely accused of antisemitism are those who have had the temerity to dare speak up against Israel’s unspeakable behaviour in Palestine. 2. You simply ignore the article which prompted this thread. So try this one: https://www.theguardian.com/…/may/03/israel.broadcasting. 3. If you are yourself a Zionist, which is what it sounds like, then say so. Then we both know where we stand. It sounds as if you are, since your point, and the insulting and condescending way your make it, has a very familiar ring to it. 4.The only news channel available to us here in England which makes any serious effort to depict the full horror of what is happening in Gaza is Al Jazeera. It is doing what the BBC ought to be doing, giving a realistic representation of what Gazans are currently experiencing, which is appalling beyond belief. This is the cruellest of cruel wars, and the way it is being fought simply cannot be justified on any military or moral grounds. And it is NOT antisemitic to say so, because Zionism is a political philosophy which many Jews have rejected from the time it was conceived, mindful of the possibility of what the logical consequences might be if it was implemented. Now, last thing: withdraw your accusation of antisemitism: it is not true, indeed it is libellous. I am proud of my heritage, even though I stand against my mother’s family who helped found Israel. Being Jewish does not require me to be loyal to a country other than the one in which I was born and raised.
• “the sheer stupidity of supposing that there are Jews who wilfully promote anti-semitism is beyond comment”: yeah? explain Tony Greenstein, Gilad Atzmon and the Late Tong Cliff, then, Richard. Ten we’ll come on to the rest of the nonsense in your post. Oh , and your closing remark “Being Jewish does not require me to be loyal to a country other than the one in which I was born and raised” is in line with all those antisemites who accuse Zionist Jews of being disloyal to thier country: do you really want to line up with those antisemites, Richard?
• That’s enough. You throw a few names at me while discounting the growing number of Jews around the world who are turning against Israel as much as anything because its actions competely contradict their understanding of what it is to be Jewish.
  And I, along with every other Jew who accept themselves as having no loyalty to the state of Israel because it is not where they were born and raised, am sick and tired of being accused of therefore being disloyal to the Jewish people. That is a logical nonsense. I am English, as are many other Jews; as there are Jews loyal to the USA, to Canada, to France, to where-ever else Jews have lived for generations.
  And I note you do not care to mention those Israelis, loyal to Israel, yet who nevertheless speak up – or try to in the face of increasing censorship – against Israel’s actions: and that includes many of those who have family being held by Hamas.
  It is an increasing act of desperation by you Zionists to accuse anybody and everybody who has the smallest criticism of the Israeli State’s actions as being intinsically haters of all things Jewish, which is what ‘antisemitism’ is. It is desperate, it is sick, and as a tactic it is failing.
  https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/…/oh-for…/…
  That is my last word to you. Keep spouting your poison if you wish; but you have had my response, and your unwarranted and unfounded denigrations will not change it.

In answer to the letter I received from Starmer’s office, I thought I’d pass on to it a letter I wrote in January 2022 but for some reason never sent. This is the letter, which I prefaced in my email with the comment that since their letter failed to address any of the questions which were at the centre of mine, I wanted to put this forward as an appropriate response. Of course, when I wrote it over a year and a half ago I was unaware of what Hamas was going to do in October 2023, nor of the extent of the opposition to Starmer’s position as revealed during this week’s Parliamentary debate in which a significant number of Labour MPs rejected Starmer’s preferred position regarding a ceasefire in Gaza. So I am quite pleased with the prescience of this letter’s final paragraphs:

‘ Sir,

It is to the eternal shame of the United Kingdom that its political representatives in the UK Parliament, most notably yourself, are willing to give their unstinting and unwavering support to the state of Israel.

Israel claims to be, and is accepted by the UK as being, a democratic nation. However, Israel’s actions in relation to the ordinary people of Palestine and to its own Arab citizens have since its founding in 1948 run counter to every accepted definition of democracy as we understand it in the UK.

Israel also claims to be the only truly Jewish state, a characterisation which has been all too readily accepted by its sponsor nations, especially the UK and the USA.

But it cannot be a Jewish state for two reasons: one, that about 50% of its population is not Jewish, and two, that there are a significant number of Jews, both inside Israel as well as outside it, who do not agree with Israel’s attempt, fundamental to its underlying political philosophy, at dishonouring and displacing the Palestinian people.

Indeed, Israel’s ambition to be a Jewish state at the expense of the non-Jews living in the region it controls by military force is racist by its very nature.

This racism is the foundation on which it has built its particular system of apartheid in Israel, and which justifies its various and highly injurious actions in the occupied territories, including the ghettoisation of Gaza and the forced evictions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel goes so far in its pursuit of affirming its image as the true Jewish state as to deflect all reasonable criticism of its actions by characterising such criticism, regardless of its source, as being anti-Semitic.

Anti-Semitism once upon a time was defined very simply as being Jew-hatred, i.e. a sense of enmity to all Jews and all things Jewish. Now, under pressure from Israel, there is a new definition.

This is encapsulated in the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which the Labour Party, against all reason, has woven into its own policies and which you are using in the most arbitrary fashion as an excuse to exclude members from the party whose political convictions do not fit into the game of realpolitiks that you have chosen to play.

According to your interpretation of the IHRA definition, any-one who speaks out against the Israeli enterprise in Palestine for any reason is speaking out against the whole Jewish people, on whose behalf and with whose complete approval Israel is acting.

This blanket approach to criticism has resulted in Israel routinely accusing even its Jewish opponents of anti-Semitism, and has established a concerted campaign against its Jewish opponents which allows for the most personal and abusive terms to be used against them that cannot be used against non-Jews, because it is their Jewishness which is brought into question.

You have adapted and adopted this position to meet your own political ends.

So, because many anti-Zionist Jews believe that Israel is attacking them for their particular interpretation of Jewish history, political philosophy, and religion, it can hardly be surprising that their understanding of Israel’s response to their views, and your response likewise, is that it is in itself anti-Semitic.

In other words, the Labour Party, historically an internationalist and anti-racist party, has chosen now to stand, under your leadership, with a strongly nationalist and racist state whose claim to be a full democracy is entirely false, and is indeed carrying out its own version of the desperately unjust and demonstrably anti-Semitic campaign which Israel is waging against its opponents, opponents who are acting solely on humanitarian grounds.

That is irony enough.

But there is an added, and very bitter, irony, which is that Israel has won the support of real anti-Semites. Israel is admired round the world by far-right parties and organisations because they approve of the scope and effectiveness of Israel’s anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination, and who likewise approve for their own reasons of Israel’s message to the Jews of the world that Israel is the only safe place for Jews to be.

This inevitably feeds the rise in anti-Semitism round the world. Israel’s words and actions feed the notion that all Jews are racially antagonistic to the Palestinians because all Jews believe Palestine is theirs by natural right. Accordingly this confirms the traditional anti- Semitic stereotype which depicts Jews as thinking of themselves as a superior species of human being.

So it is that Israel finds allies among those who promote anti-Semitism in the world; and yet, Israel does not concern itself with that, so long as it benefits as a state from such alliances.

All of this seems to have passed our political masters by, as it has passed you by. And why would this be? Because of the benefits they themselves gain from Israel’s role in maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East which favours the global capitalist states of the West.

This being said, I fail to understand what earthly benefit can there be for the Labour Party in all this.

Maybe it has something to do with the existential fear shared by most of Israel’s allies, a fear of being tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism, as they do not wish to be associated in any way in the public mind with any policy that connects with Hitler’s Germany.

So it’s all about the next election. Realpolitik, no more, no less,

Or maybe it has something to do with more personal considerations, which should have no place in deciding party policy. But that’s for you to know.

In any event, the Labour Party is now an embarrassment to a significant number of its supporters – and ex-supporters – as the present membership count clearly demonstrates compared to the count when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.

Now, I do not expect this letter on its own to make any substantial difference to your way of thinking, or any difference at all

You are fully aware of the effect the punitive actions are having which you are taking against the Jews in your party who oppose Israel’s violent oppressions in Palestine and its systematic displacement of the Palestinian people from their own homes; and you are fully aware of the deleterious effect these and other actions of yours are having on the whole of your party.

You clearly have an agenda which does not include these things as matters of any importance.

Notwithstanding, I feel that I must express my personal outrage that you should lend your support to a violently oppressive, racist, militaristic, nationalist and expansionist state whose pretense that it is a democracy is nothing but a sham.

Why would you stand alongside the extreme right-wingers, the neo-Nazis and the altright, in their support for a regime which is both offering them a simple solution to the problem of where Jews should be sent to and giving them practical lessons in how to treat racial minorities? Why stand with a state which for all its claims that it is a Jewish state is severely undermining the fight against anti-Semitism in the world?

I am a Jew and proud of it. I resent the Zionists telling me that they are acting in my name and my best interests when both of these things are blatantly untrue. Also, I am English, and I love my country with all its faults. But I resent you as the leader of a party which has always opposed itself to narrow nationalism pretending that you are acting in my interests when you support a state whose brand of nationalism is creating such agony for a people whose worst crime is to be in its way.

You are a deep disappointment to those of us who expect a leader of the British Labour Party to stand up to extreme right-wing nationalists such as govern from the Knesset.

So do not read this is a plea for change. You have no intention of listening to people like me however much we protest.

However, consider that eventually you may find yourself being held to account in the court of public opinion for your failure to address one of the great humanitiarian crises of the modern world, as the opposition to the Israeli regime grows stronger each day, in the UK, in the USA, in Israel itself, and around the world, a significant part of that growing opposition being Jewish.

I for one look forward to that day.

Sincerely,

Richard A Snell.’

(Netanyahu: ‘God Has Given’)

How do you do it?
How do you persuade yourself
That it’s right
To give the order
Which will see the crushing,
The tearing apart,
The shattering,
Of so many living human beings?

How do you feel, thinking about
How they must feel,
The horror of what they see
Happening around them
To their children,
Their mothers and fathers,
Their friends and neighbours;
The confusion of flesh and metal,
blood and stone,
brick and bone,
The stabbing terror of knowing
That their own existence on this earth
Will end an hour,
A minute,
A second from now
The constant shock of the noise
Hammering into their brains,
The explosions,
The screams,
And the longing
For it all to stop, just stop, just stop?

How do you persuade yourself
That what you are doing is right?

Actually, I think it’s easy for you.
You just don’t think about these things.
You don’t care.
You’ve placed yourself
So far above these people
Who are not you
That when you look down
You don’t see human beings,
Sharing all the human passions
And all the human hopes.

You don’t see men,
The husbands, the workers, the craftsmen,
The traders, farmers and shopkeepers,
Looking after their families
Sharing their lives with their friends.

You don’t see women,
The wives, the workers, the mothers,
Tending to their crafts,
Tending to their homes, their sons and daughters,
Full of hopes of what these might become.

You don’t see the children,
Just learning the lessons of what life means
And what they want from it,
Living in the worlds they imagine,
Discovering the power of dreams,
Hope and trust
Their chief instincts.

And nor do you see the newborn
Whose lives will not only be short,
But will be nothing but pain;
Babies:
Fragments of sudden
And inexplicable anguish,
Loveless, joyless,
Lonely in their absolute dread.

No,
You see microbes, germs,
dangerous in their insignificance,
Needing to be cleansed
From your world,
Your world of bitterness, of hate,
Of arrogance, of greed,
Of supreme self-regard.

I wouldn’t expect any of this
To mean anything to you,
Even if you did ever read or hear it.
Although you live in my world
What you do not do is live in my world.
You hear the word compassion
And it is just a sound,
While to those you are killing
It is everything,
Because they now long for it
With their entire beings
Even knowing
That it is too late
And they will never find the relief,
The soothing,
That comes from the kindness
Of those who wish to help
To transform their suffering into peace,
But cannot
Because you will not let them.

I don’t usually hate,
Because I,
A Jew like yourself,
Was always taught that hatred is wrong
Destructive of humanity,
Damaging to the soul,
But now I can’t help it:
I hate you,
You, the absolute master of hate.
For that, and for all else,
You have my curse.

When your time comes,
And you feel your own life dribbling to a pointless end,
May you look upon your life,
And realise
That your death robs that life of its reason,
That you have lived to no purpose.

May you in your last moments,
Hear each and every cry,
Each and every scream,
Raining from the bloodied mouths
Of every-one you murdered,
And so feel in your flesh,
Your blood,
Your bones,
Every pang they felt
In the hours, minutes and seconds
Before their deaths.

May you see the ruined faces of
Each and every one of those souls;
May these souls load you down
With the whole burden of their infinite pain
And may your last agonised thought be,
Even as their endless anguish
Burns its way through you,
That you should have lived a different life.

Then may you realise,
In a single scorching flash of despair,
That the God whose name you were given
Didn’t even know you existed.

I have taken this from my Facebook page, posted in January 2022. I am sharing it now because current circumstances encourage me to do so.
It is a useful example of how too many Israeli Jews all too often think and of what they have been taught. They have been subjected to Hasbarah all their lives, they have no idea of the truth. Their compassion extends only to themselves: they define self-pity.
And this individual was clearly very angry with me for something I’d said in a previous comment. I didn’t assume for one moment that my words would make any difference to her; but if we don’t speak of what we know we stand no chance of making a difference to anybody.
[‘Neshema’: soul or spirit, Hebrew]
Comment: ‘…….,yes you are anti Semitic even though you claim to be a Jew, just like the Jews of “breaking the silence”. You have turned against your own people, spreading lies and propaganda coming from Jew-haters in the PA and Arab media. Your arrogance is breathtaking! Your progressive agenda means more to you than the innocent Jewish blood spilled by the knife wielding, car ramming, rock throwing Arabs who rejoice and celebrate when a Jew, child or mother , young father or grandparent is attacked and killed. You do not have a Jewish neshama.
…….you repeat lies on this site? Israel has been more than kind to the Arab
Citizens of israel. Those who call themselves Palestinians, a name created for them by Yasser Arafat, live under the cruel domination of Hamas in Gaza and the PA in parts of Judea and Samaria.
Hamas uses aid money to increase terrorism using their own people as human shields when attacking israel.
PA used aid money to pay murderers of Israelis! Anyone who criticizes the PA is arrested and tortured.
You are biased and one sided. That is anti Semitism.’
My reply: You accuse me of not being a Jew! Why? Because YOU cannot accept the truth of what Israel is doing, because YOU won’t even dare to find out the truth because you are so frightened of what you might learn!
Not only am I a Jew, but I am one of an increasingly great number of Jews, inside as well as outside of Israel, who have come to understand the painful truth of what Israel is doing in our name; and we resent it, we are shamed by it!
And believe me, it has not been easy for those of us who were raised to the idea that Israel was our homeland to come to terms with the terrible things Zionist Israel has done so that it can be our homeland.
I understand, as any feeling human being would, never mind any Jew, what the Jews of Israel have endured.
But what the Palestinians have had to endure and are enduring at the hands of Israel is infinitely greater; the suffering of Palestinian men, women, children, families has over the last seventy years reached almost incalculable levels.
And it is because I am a Jew I understand this suffering; as should you, as should every Jew.
A nation which oppresses a people in its charge because it does not fit a particular racial or religious profile is a nation committing crimes against humanity. Does that have a familiar ring to it? It should.
So before you accuse me of lies, consider the bitter lies you have been taught to believe by the Israeli government: there is a lack of neshama if ever there was one.’

This is the letter I got from the Labour Party in response to my letter to Kier Starmer which began with these words:

‘Sir, I am writing this letter to express my personal disgust at your incomprehensible support of Israel in its war against Palestine and its entire people. Your position does not befit the leader of a party which was established to defend the democratic rights of ordinary people….’

‘Dear Richard,

Thank you for your email to Keir Starmer MP in relation to Israel and Gaza. At this point in time, Keir is receiving an extremely high volume of correspondence, so he has asked me to respond on his behalf. I’m very sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I can confirm your strong views, arguments and observations have been duly noted and shared with the relevant policy teams.

Understandably, Keir’s office has been inundated with emails on the conflict in Israel & Gaza. We know this is a challenging time for many, with communities across the UK shaken by the ongoing events in the Middle East. Keir and the entire office would like to share our deepest sympathies for those who have friends and loved ones caught up in the conflict.

While our office is unable to reply to each individual email, Keir is keen to provide you with clarity on Labour’s position.

Families are grieving, across Israel and Gaza, and here in the UK. Keir knows this is a terrifying and distressing time for everyone.

Keir is concerned about the impact on communities here in Britain. We stand against the worrying rise in Islamophobia and against the antisemitic abuse, threats and assaults that we have seen on British streets. Labour has met with both Tell Mama and Community Security Trust (CST) and we urge anyone who has experienced Islamophobic or antisemitic attacks to report them to the police or to these anti-hate crime organisations. You can find links for these organisations at the end of this email.

At every stage during this crisis, Keir’s approach has been driven by the need to respond to the two immediate tragedies. Hamas’s appalling terrorism against Israel on 7 October led to the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, while the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is playing out on an unimaginable scale, with thousands of civilians dead, streets flattened and more than a million people displaced. Every loss of life in this conflict is a tragedy.

We must recognise that Israel was subject to an unimaginable terrorist attack. They have the right to go after the terrorists who carried out the attacks and get their hostages back, but this is not a blank cheque. Our position has always been that Israel must submit to the rules of international law.

It’s clear that the amount of aid and essential utilities getting into Gaza is completely insufficient to meet the humanitarian emergency on the ground. That’s why we have repeatedly said that we have to get food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel into Gaza, with many more aid trucks across the Rafah crossing. And it is why we are calling for pauses in the fighting for clear and specific humanitarian purposes, and which must start immediately.
Labour is also calling for a coordinated Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) fund appeal with matched government funding to provide essential humanitarian emergency aid in Gaza, and to create a longer-term fund for its reconstruction.

While Keir understands calls for a ceasefire, at this stage, he does not believe that is the correct position now. First, a ceasefire always freezes any conflict in the state where it currently lies. At this point, that would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October the 7th. Second, calling for immediate pauses in fighting for clear and specific humanitarian purposes is the only credible approach that has any chance of achieving what we all want to see in Gaza; the urgent alleviation of Palestinian suffering.

Over time, the facts on the ground will inevitably change in relation to both hostages being rescued and Hamas’s capabilities. And we must move to a cessation of fighting as quickly as possible.

The reality is that neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets. In the long term, there can only be a political solution to this crisis which is why we need to restart the hard work of talks for a two-state solution: a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.

For too long, the international community has put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the ‘too difficult’ box and Britain, on this essential issue, has lost its way. It is intolerable that no government has put in sustained effort towards a two-state solution since New Labour. Recent Conservative governments have, at times, been dangerously irresponsible, leaving the two-state solution out of their recent UK-Israel road map and announcing plans to move the UK embassy to Jerusalem.

The task will be hard and Britain’s influence in the region has limits, but Labour recognises Britain’s historical responsibility. We will appoint a new special envoy dedicated to Middle East peace and recharge diplomacy with all parties in the region to gain maximum influence. Labour will work with international partners towards the recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a negotiated, just and lasting peace.

You can watch Keir’s speech at Chatham House on 31 October setting out his position here, and read his recent statements and questions in Parliament on this matter here. You can also watch Keir clarifying remarks recently made on LBC here.

Thank you, once again, for getting in touch. If you feel you need any further support, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Best wishes,

Alistair

Membership Services and Correspondence  

The Labour Party’

Read this carefully. Sounds good doesn’t it: even-handed, fair to all parties. All good.
But what’s missing? Where is his response to these parts of my letter:

‘ The idea that there are Jews who believe they have the right to treat non-Jews with the same contempt that Jews have met with throughout their history is truly appalling; and I, like a quickly increasing number of Jews, now realise that Israel can no longer claim to be a Jewish state. It is a profoundly unJewish state, betraying every ideal that the Jewish people once stood for.

For Jews to show such a total lack of compassion, such a degree of cruelty, is deeply angering.’

And:

‘…But now, Israel is parrotting the phrase ‘right to self-defense’ as an excuse for punishing the whole Palestinian people, including all those Gazans who oppose Hamas, and all those West Bankers, now facing the assault of settlers, who have never had anything to do with Hamas.

Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps, villages, these are Israel’s military targets, showing that in their supposed pursuit of Hamas operatives they are not concerned with how many innocent lives they destroy.

Israelis complain about the Hamas Holocaust. If the Israeli armed forces are not creating a Holocaust for the Palestinian people, then what are they doing?

What, really, does it mean to be a Jew if this is what Jews think is good?’

In other words, where is the explanation for Starmer’s willingness to encourage a state which has been committing war-crimes for seventy-five years to go on committing those crimes today?

Surely, the way things are going, by the time a Labour government has an opportunity to negotiate for a two-state solution, the potential Palestinian state will have been reduced to rubble and its people into insupportable poverty and total subjugation.

Why is Starmer wasting time on supporting a political process which is losing credibility by the day, by the hour, with every child newly murdered by the IAF’s bombing of Gaza, happening even as I write?

More than that: what is the explanation for supporting a State which is only pretending to be a Jewish state, if only because it is losing the support of an increasing number of Jews because it does not represent what they as Jews want from it?

Why is there such a complete lack of explanation regarding Israel’s violent colonisation of Palestine? Where is the explanation for the specific historical circumstances, created by Israel, which led to the development and growth of Hamas’s extreme militancy?

The Labour Party is doing nothing to prevent the creation of an Eretz Israel, a new Israel being built on the backs of the Palestinian people and the derelict land which was once theirs.

This letter is no more-or -less than a copout, designed to make Starmer look reasonable.

But neither Starmer nor the Labour Party is being reasonable. This letter is an attempt to play its readers for fools.

I refuse to be fooled. I recognise condescension when it’s shoved in my face.

The Labour Party will only regain its credibility in this particular argument when it recognises that what Israel is doing is committing mass-murder, and that it should stop, just stop – the one thing Starmer absolutely refuses to even consider.

I would ask him, as I would ask every other Zionist, to consider the original and true meaning of one of most important and basic Hebrew words, ‘Shalom’, because they’ve clearly forgotten it.

But I don’t see them bothering. I also wonder if they even know there is such a word as ‘Hypocrisy’, such as is at the heart of the crocodile-tears letter I have reproduced here.

Here is a handy summary of Israel’s position in response to the world-wide calls for a cessation of the bombing of Gazan refugees and the settler’s violent insurgence into the West Bank: ‘Israel is not interested in a negotiated peace. Nor will Israel accept criticism of its current actions in relation to Palestine. Israel has the absolute right to protect itself against the sorts of crimes Israel has been committing against the Palestinian people since its foundation in 1948. Regardless of the cost in human life, Israel will, as always, have its own way.’

‘Sir,

I am writing this letter to express my personal disgust at your incomprehensible support of Israel in its war against Palestine and its entire people. Your position does not befit the leader of a party which was established to defend the democratic rights of ordinary people.

I am a Jew. My home is England and I have no intention of living anywhere else. I certainly have never, and would never, contemplate living in Israel.

I believe that Israel has been committing crimes against humanity in Palestine for seventy-five years, and is now using the disgusting Hamas attack as an excuse to commit even worse war-crimes than it had ever committed before.

And given the scale of destruction and death the Palestinian people have already faced in the last seven decades that is a horrific thought.

Israel has planned on wiping Palestine out for a long time, to create an Eretz Israel. Now it is taking the opportunity to finish its work.

The idea that there are Jews who believe they have the right to treat non-Jews with the same contempt that Jews have met with throughout their history is truly appalling; and I, like a quickly increasing number of Jews, now realise that Israel can no longer claim to be a Jewish state. It is a profoundly unJewish state, betraying every ideal that the Jewish people once stood for.

For Jews to show such a total lack of compassion, such a degree of cruelty, is deeply angering.

And don’t tell me about Hamas. I know that what Hamas did was unconscionable, horrific, inhumane, deserving of punishment; and if Israel was confining its war to Hamas I would not complain.

But now, Israel is parrotting the phrase ‘right to self-defense’ as an excuse for punishing the whole Palestinian people, including all those Gazans who oppose Hamas, and all those West Bankers, now facing the assault of settlers, who have never had anything to do with Hamas.

Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps, villages, these are Israel’s military targets, showing that in their supposed pursuit of Hamas operatives they are not concerned with how many innocent lives they destroy.

Israelis complain about the Hamas Holocaust. If the Israeli armed forces are not creating a Holocaust for the Palestinian people, then what are they doing?

What. really, does it mean to be a Jew if this is what Jews think is good?

That is a question these must answer in their own consciences; and one to which you should be demanding an answer. Perhaps while you’re about it you should also listen to those Israelis, even among those who suffered in the Hamas attack, who see nothing good in what Netanyahu is doing in their name.

But it would seem that right now your conscience is having problems of its own.

Sincerely,

Richard Snell

I am a Jew, trying to deal emotionally both with what Hamas may have done to distant members of my own family, and also with the great cruelties inflicted by Israel, the country they went to at the time of Nakba, on an innocent people who have done nothing to deserve the horrors they faced then and face now. So I found myself writing, as I tried to calm myself earlier today, this secular prayer. It may mean something to others, or nothing at all:

AN ENGLISH JEW PRAYS FOR PALESTINE

May peace return to Palestine

After its long and painful absence.

May the Palestinian people be free

To live without fear in their own land.

May there be an end

To their anger, their despair.

May they no longer have to pay in blood

The cost of crimes they did not commit.

May Israel also be freed from

The rule of lies, greed, corruption, and fear.

May Palestine yet prosper.

May Israel yet let Palestine live.

May Palestine yet prosper.

May Israel yet let Palestine live.’

Witnessing what is happening in Israel and Palestine is deeply saddening and profoundly angering. We are confronted by a terrible act carried out on behalf of the whole Palestinian people by an organisation which does not have the support of the whole Palestinian people. Its callous viciousness, its complete rejection of the general call amongst Palestinians for peace must be acknowledged even by the Palestinians’ supporters.
By imposing such a cruel fate on the Israelis it has ensured an even more cruel fate for the people of Gaza. It has acted knowing how the Israelis would respond. This cannot be right. And the great irony is that in the course of their attack Hamas forces will have inevitably murdered, captured or bereaved some of the many Israelis who understand, despite a lifetime of being conditioned by Zionist propaganda, that Palestine’s call for freedom from Israel’s oppressions is just, fair, and should be heeded.
But ultimately, Hamas is not reponsible for this. What it has done, as unconscionable as it is, is a logical, maybe the only possible, outcome of the evils Israel has imposed on Palestine in the last seventy-five years and which it has spent the last nine or so months exacerbating with its extended military and civilian drives, both bringing violence and death with them, into Palestinian territory .
Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is not original to the event. It is simply and extension of what Israel has been doing to Palestine regularly and as a matter of policy since its inception in 1948. All the Hamas attack will achieve will be to confirm Israel’s supporters in their certainty that Israel is justified in doing what it does and has always done. These will not question the morality of Israeli policies nor the violently oppressive means it has always employed to make those policies work.
Israelis now are bound to mourn their dead, and fear for their futures. They are human, it would be inhuman not to acknowledge their grief. I feel it myself, along with all those Jews around the world who have been affected as never before by these events.
But then, even as my heart goes out to all those Israelis who are suffering these new cruelties, I cannot help feeling that it is a relatively few Israelis, in this relatively short space of time, who will have suffered the same degree of fear, of loss, of grief, and of anger, that their government, unopposed, has been provoking in every Palestinian for the entirety of their lives.
If Israel’s fresh agony is barely supportable, then how is the historic agony of the Palestinian people to be measured? If the Israelis directly affected by the Hamas assault are having to find in themselves the patience to see this terrible crisis through, then what incredible forbearance has it taken for the Palestinians to survive the constant assault on themselves and their lands by Israel for the last three-quarters-of-a-century?
This agony is a new experience for Israel: it is the norm for Palestine. That is the great lesson to be learnt from what is happening today and has happened every day in Palestine for as long or longer than most Palestinians have been alive.
If only Netanyahu and his government had the compassion to realise that, and the ability to reflect on themselves with some degree of humility. If only they could appreciate and respect that too many Jews have supported Palestine’s cause for it to be said that Israel speaks for every Jew. If only they could bring themselves to understand that they are destroying human beings whose lives have worth and whose pain is no less then the pain any Israeli, any Jew, is experiencing right now. But they do not. They never have.
They are unworthy to rule a nation, and unfit to carry out the role they have been granted by the great powers, who have their own consciences to scrutinize, to defend that nation. It’s a simple question:
If Hamas is wrong to be doing what it is doing – and it certainly is – then how can it be argued that what Israel is doing and has always done is right?

I tried. I really did try to listen Liz Truss’s leadership acceptance speech, But I couldn’t do it. In some pain, I listened to her (she has the charisma of a hand-puppet) right up to the point where she described the Tory Party as ‘the greatest party on Earth’, having only just heard her also say that ‘Boris’, having amongst other things ‘crushed Jeremy Corbyn’ (something he was not the slightest bit responsible for), and was ‘admired from Kyiv to Carlisle’; at which point I had no choice but to switch over to the joyful pointlessness of Bargain Hunt.
I don’t like being rude about people, and work very hard not to be, and most of the time I succeed. Even whatever I have said about ‘Boris’ in the past has been but a pale reflection of what I’ve really wanted to say.
But first I have to say that the degree of Liz Truss’s vacuous stupidity is exceptional, even compared to the all the other dullards who fill the Tory benches; and second I have to say that her election is very clear evidence that the Tory Party itself has descended to new depths of amorality and opportunism such as has not been since the eighteen-forties.
As much as I mistrust Sir Keir Starmer, and am seriously worried about what he will bring to the Prime Ministership when he wins it, I cannot help but feel that any government he runs, whatever its failings may be, will be infinitely preferable to the morass of silliness which will be Truss’s version of government. I might actually find myself supporting him, if only because he is hugely unlikely to do the kind of extreme damage Truss is threatening to do to the UK.
And yes, I did say ‘when’. I would be amazed if the Labour Party did not win the next election should Liz Truss be allowed to do whatever she thinks is a good thing to do. The fact that she was chosen to be the Tory leader must in itself make it very clear to a lot of people what a catastrophic mess the Tories are now in. If ‘Boris’ came to be hated, I predict Truss will come to be both hated and despised.
Even as I write this, that part of her speech has been broadcast in the news in which she says, to mildly rapturous applause, ‘ we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.’ What he hell does that actually mean??