A supposed antisemitism crisis in Britain’s Labour party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader has erupted back into the headlines.
This time barely any effort has been made to conceal the fact that the accusations relate to the “danger” that Corbyn could soon win power, with Britain gearing up for a general election in less than a month.
[Preliminary Note: This post devoted to health and human rights in Gaza. It is based on a video presentation some weeks ago to a conference on this theme held in Gaza. It makes no effort to update by reference to the latest cycle of violence sparked by the targeted assassination of Baha Abu-Ata, an Islamic Jihad military commander, on November 12. I feel strongly about the issues raised by this post not only because I have witnessed living conditions in Gaza and have friends in Gaza who have endured hardship and injustice for so long without losing their warmth or even their hope.
The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.
There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.
[Prefatory Note: What follows is a slightly modified interview conducted by Daniel Falcone on the theme of ‘The Renewal of Violence—Gaza/Israel’ in Jacobin, Nov. 2019. This latest cycle of transborder violence initiated by a targeted assassination of a well-known military commander in Islamic Jihad in Gaza, leading to a rocket barrage directed at southern and central Israel, followed by many air strikes and artillery shells fired at Gaza targets.
Imagine if following the recent federal election in Canada, where the Liberal Party was left with a minority government, that prime minister Justin Trudeau had stated, “We are facing an emergency that is unprecedented in the history of Canada.”
Why?
Imagine that Trudeau explained that “setting up a government that depends on the First Nation parties is an even bigger disaster. It’s a historic danger to Canada’s security. It will gravely hurt the security of Canada.”
Would that be acceptable for most Canadians?
An Israeli attack on Gaza was imminent, and not because of any provocations by Palestinian groups in the besieged, impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli military escalation was foreseeable because it factors neatly in Israel’s contentious political scene. The war was not a question of “if”, but “when”.
The release on November 6 of two Jordanian nationals, Heba al-Labadi and Abdul Rahman Mi’ri from Israeli prisons was a bittersweet moment. The pair were finally reunited with their families after harrowing experiences in Israel. Sadly, thousands of Palestinian prisoners are still denied their freedom, still subjected to all sorts of hardships at the hands of their Israeli jailers.
It has been a week of appalling abuses committed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank – little different from the other 2,670 weeks endured by Palestinians since the occupation began in 1967.
The difference this past week was that several entirely unexceptional human rights violations that had been caught on film went viral on social media.
