ON THURSDAY, Palestinians commemorated the 77th anniversary of Nakba, the Catastrophe, when the unarmed population of Palestine was forcibly driven from their land by Israeli terrorist groups.
Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven off their land in 1948 by the Zionist terror gangs with over 15,000 killed through a programme of ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
While Palestinians remembered Nakba last Thursday, the Zionist regime marked the day by launching another wave of attacks across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 115 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in 24 hours.
Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) troops attacked three hospitals in north and south Gaza, while Israeli warplanes directly targeted nine houses without warning in the city of Khan Younis, wiping out entire families.
The Israeli regime has now killed over 53,000 people in Gaza according to the Gaza ministry of health, with thousands more unaccounted for, with their bodies buried under rubble.
While the overwhelming majority of the bombs and weapons used to kill Palestinians in Gaza are supplied by the US, its faithful allies in the UK are also actively arming and giving unswerving political support to the embattled regime of Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Labour government under Keir Starmer was accused this week of approving $169 million of military equipment to Israel in the three months following the partial suspension of arms exports they were forced to introduce last year.
Export data released on Thursday shows that 20 different licences, involving categories such as military aircraft, radars, targeting equipment and explosive devices, were approved by the Labour government between October and December 2024.
Emily Apple, from the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade, said: ‘This is the Labour government aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.’
This week, the High Court in London was hearing a legal action against the Department for Business and Trade over decisions to grant licences to export weapons and military equipment to Israel, including parts for the F-35 fighter jet that has wreaked devastation in Gaza.
Raza Husain KC, opening the hearing on behalf of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, told the court: ‘What is happening in Gaza is live-streamed genocide.’
It may be live-streamed genocide for the tens of millions of workers and youth who witness the barbarism of the Israeli war on Palestinians, but that doesn’t stop Starmer’s government from denying it.
According to the Labour government’s submission to the court, an ‘in-depth assessment’ last year before it brought in the partial suspension of arms exports found there was ‘no serious risk’ of genocide in Gaza.
Starmer hasn’t made any reassessment despite genocide being ‘live-streamed’ every day.
Instead, Starmer has banned the word ‘genocide’ from the lips of Labour MPs, and this week shut down an attempt by backbench Labour MP Kim Johnson to raise in Parliament the issue of the use of the UK’s air force base in Cyprus in support of Israel.
Only the support of the imperialist governments, led by the US and faithfully followed by Starmer’s Labour government, is enabling the Israeli regime to wage its genocidal war to drive Palestinians from their land.
The only way to put an end to the UK arming Zionist genocide is to bring down this treacherous Labour government.
While the working class has demonstrated its overwhelming support for Palestine, the leadership of the TUC have worked to divert this mass movement away from any real action against the Labour government into the dead end of just remaining a protest movement.
The time for just protesting over Gaza is over.
The central demand of the Nakba 77 March must be for the powerful working class to use its strength to sack the TUC leaders who remain silent and refuse to act against Starmer’s government, and replace them with a new leadership that will immediately organise a general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government.
A workers government will end all complicity with Zionist genocide, recognise the independent state of Palestine and provide all the weapons and support required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution.
This is the way forward!
