Labour leader Keir Starmer, in a speech yesterday, reaffirmed his commitment to the genocidal war being waged by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Starmer once again rejected the growing demands within the Labour Party for a humanitarian ceasefire on the grounds that a ceasefire would only aid Hamas and prolong the war to exterminate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Instead, Starmer supports the useless call for a ‘humanitarian pause’ to allow a trickle of aid into Gaza, a call designed to head off the accusations that Starmer and the Labour Party leadership don’t have any concerns over the full scale murder of men, women and children in Gaza.
The scale of the atrocities being inflicted on Gazans by the relentless bombardment, alongside the crippling siege of the Strip, has plunged the most densely populated area in the world into a humanitarian crisis on an epic scale.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, between October 7th and 24 over 2,900 children were killed – 40% of the total death toll of 7,000 at the time.
Last Sunday, Save the Children International reported that number had increased to around 3,200 children killed by the Israeli regime.
This figure is growing every day and every hour with hundreds of children missing, trapped under the rubble of residential buildings targeted by the Israeli army and air force.
This figure of child deaths in Gaza is bigger than the number of children killed across all the world’s conflict zones since 2019!
None of this concerns Starmer. His only desire is to prove his loyalty to his US imperialist masters’ desire to ‘stand with Israel’ and offer all support to the Zionist regime to conduct a war designed to slaughter Palestinians and drive them from their homeland.
In Britain, Starmer stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories in his support for Israel, and his determination to attack and slander all those who refuse to go along blindly with all the crimes against humanity being carried out in Gaza.
On Monday, Starmer suspended Labour MP Andy McDonald for the crime of marching last Saturday in London – along with over half a million workers, students and youth – calling for an end to the genocidal bombing and invasion of Gaza.
In a speech, McDonald told the rally: ‘Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.’
Even using the words ‘from the river to the sea’ in the context of seeking a peaceful solution for both Israelis and Palestinians is a crime to Starmer and the Tories. Starmer was eager to keep in step with PM Rishi Sunak who had earlier sacked Tory MP Paul Bristow who had broken ranks and called for a permanent ceasefire.
Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been campaigning for weeks to make this a legal offence and called for the police to arrest and lock up anyone daring to chant these words or demonstrate any support for Palestine.
She surpassed herself on Monday when, following a meeting of the government COBRA emergencies committee, she denounced all demonstrations supporting Palestine as ‘hate marches’. The Tories and Labour Party are completely united in the determination to be the poodles of US imperialism and all its financial and military support for the Israeli war to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.
The working class is much stronger than the Tories or the reactionary Labour leadership and far stronger than the forces of the capitalist state that Braverman is demanding be used against anyone supporting Palestine.
The time has come to use this strength by forcing the TUC to act.
The overwhelming support of millions of workers and youth for Palestine and their hatred of the massacres taking place must now be put into action by demanding that the TUC immediately call a general strike in support of the workers and their families in Gaza and to bring down the Tory government replacing it with a workers’ government and socialism.
This is the way to stand with Palestine by bringing down the Tories and smashing the US-UK-Israeli alliance hellbent on exterminating Palestinians in order to assert imperialist domination over the Middle East.
