DAVID Pratt’s brilliant article on Sunday (Biden sends bombs while Gaza faces famine, Mar 31) exposes for all to see the hypocrisy prevalent in the USA but here too – what of the UK’s hypocrisy? We should remember that Margaret Thatcher was tougher on Israel than Keir Starmer and Labour. In 1981 Thatcher warned Israel against bombing other countries without justification and in 1988 whilst in Tel Aviv she urged Israel to live in peace within secure borders giving “Palestinians their legitimate aspirations”.
Fast forward to the Tories now: a Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, writing a letter in February to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons. After all, he’s a Lord and cannot enter the lowly Commons, far less attend and take a grilling from the committee. No accountability, writ large with an unelected appointee. Go tell that to Gaza and the Palestinians. But then lack of accountability along with hypocrisy is something they’ve lived with since the Nakba.
READ MORE: BBC slammed as it fails to cover major 'Gaza war crimes' story
This past weekend it’s been reported that the Tory MP Alicia Kearns, chair of that committee that Cameron didn’t go to, has indicated the UK Government has been given the legal advice that Israel is not complying with international law. So what? Well, if that is the case, then the UK Government would have to immediately stop selling arms to Israel or itself be in breach of international law. What a tangled web of trade, deceit, vote-chasing and trailing behind the USA.
But how different are Labour these days? Are they standing firm for the embattled, agin the weaponising of food and water? Or are they hoping we’ve forgotten Starmer’s LBC interview last year saying “Israel has the right” to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians? Or February, forced into openly using political shenanigans as Speaker Hoyle “allowed” Labour to put forward its own amendment to the SNP motion on Gaza (was he threatened? Bribed?). Cue confusion, mayhem and the SNP’s motion derailed to save not Gaza and its people, but Labour and the threat of a massive rebellion by its back-benchers.
READ MORE: UK Government lawyers say Israel breaking international law
This is partly why London Labour are so fond of lauding Thatcher: a copy-cat strategy of political cunning and barely disguised threats and bribery: anything to gain and retain power. Should we be surprised at Labour? Surely not.
Labour’s tilt towards Maggie is to win over any doubting, disillusioned soft Tories in England. Labour aren’t courting Scotland and definitely not via Thatcher. They’re hoping to gain here through default. The default of the SNP being in power for too long, and folks beguiled into wanting change for change’s sake. But I wonder if Labour are surprised, worried even, at their loss in membership?
The NEC reported just last week that it had dropped from 390,000 in January to 366,604, with more than 11,000 members in arrears. That’s not to say they’ve lost their lead in the run-up to the General Election. It is, however, indicative of the binary Hobson’s choice the rUK faces. Will voters hold their nose, and sacrifice public ownership for creeping privatisation, disregard possible complicity in the current indiscriminate bombing and the continuing of weapon supplies to Israel, not to mention all the other top spin from Labour and their policy-lite rhetoric?
Scotland’s stance on the streets and in Westminster is indicative of how in this aspect of foreign affairs we can show our independent bent, away from Westminster. But you have to ask, how long will Western guilt over centuries of pogroms and the horrors of World War Two allow the current massacres and man-made starvation to continue? Until it’s too late? Until a people are gone, a land is subsumed and then someone says: never again? Until the next time, that is.
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh
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