Len McCluskey was recently interviewed by the Jewish News: given Unite the Union’s influence within the Labour Party, and McCluskey’s recent comments on the question of anti-Semitism within the Labour movement, we feel it’s important that his views, as expressed here, are more widely known. By linking to this interview, Shiraz is not necessarily endorsing what McCluskey says, or the commentary of his interviewer:
EXCLUSIVE interview with Len McCluskey: ‘Ken’s comments were indefensible’
Leader of Unite tells Jewish News he’s ‘uncomfortable’ about part of his union’s boycott policy and how Prime Minister Corbyn would have purchase with Hamas
Above: an earlier interview that Len now says could “be taken the wrong way”
Len McCluskey is big in size and influence, but his voice is soft and his messaging simple. The country’s top trade union leader, the boss of Unite was ‘what won it’ for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership, as the undisputed power broker in left-wing politics, with 1.5 million members. Whatever you think of him, his views count, so it’s interesting to talk to him about Jews, Israel, beating up anti-Semites, talking to terrorists, and what Jeremy Corbyn would do as prime minister. I ask how long we have. “As long as it takes,” he says. The others can wait.
We start on Trump’s Jerusalem embassy announcement – “not in the slightest bit helpful to Israel” – although he understands why Netanyahu would welcome it. His main issue is that “it makes the process of bringing both parties together – of peace – that much further away”. Has the US relinquished its role as peace broker? “I think so. I mean, how can [Trump] offer an olive branch to both Israel and the Palestinians and say ‘come to Camp David’ when he has done this? Even when Russia recognised West Jerusalem, I think the world sees East Jerusalem as a legitimate Palestinian area. I just think this is so sad. It makes peace more difficult.”
The British government criticised it, to no effect, just as it does Israeli settlement building, so what would a Jeremy Corbyn government do differently, if anything? Nobody has a magic wand, he says, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perhaps the world’s biggest problem today. “It’s about trying to create a process, climate and culture where people can sit down and – in a reasonable and realistic fashion – try to see if there’s a way forward.” To that end, he says Labour should recognise a State of Palestine, because “we all agree about a two-state solution,” although he acknowledges growing calls for a one-state solution.
In mid-December, Theresa May agreed to keep British economic regulations “aligned” with the EU, thus opening the way to talks on a transition period and a Brexit trade deal. And rebellious Tory MPs defeated the Government in the House of Commons, to limit the Government’s ability to legislate by decree over Brexit.
The hard-Brexit press, the Mail and the Express, backed the “alignment” deal, but were furious at the Tory rebel MPs. On 9 December the Mail‘s headline was: “Rejoice! We’re On Our Way”, and the Express had: “Huge Brexit Boost At Last”.
On 14 December the Mail‘s front page accused the Tory rebel MPs of “betraying their leader, party and 17.4 million Brexit voters” and opening the way to “a Marxist in no.10”. The Express said: “Outrageous! Rebellion by 11 stubborn MPs threatens Brexit chaos”.
The hard-Brexiters are in disarray.
In 2016 Brexiters claimed that their choice was democratic because it would “take back control” of British affairs from the EU authorities. Now they assent to Britain being “aligned” with EU regulations in which, after Brexit, it has no say, but rage against Parliament saying that the Government cannot use the June 2016 referendum result as a mandate for autocratic powers to do what it likes.
The EU Single Market is a system of “regulatory alignment” within the EU to ease trade. No more, no less. If Northern Ireland remains sufficiently “aligned” with the EU to allow everyday free movement across the border within Ireland, and also “aligned” with Britain, then Britain must remain “aligned” with the EU.
Norway and Switzerland opt out of some Single Market provisions (on fisheries for Norway, for example), but in return comply with the rest, in bulk, without having any say in them. “Alignment” means Britain being either a Single Market member, or an associate of the same sort as Switzerland or Norway.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s talk of Britain being in “a single market” with the EU, but not “the Single Market”, is obfuscatory.
In contemporary neoliberal capitalism – which, despite what its champions say, is a regime crammed with regulations and codes and box-ticking – easy trade involving rapid movement of relatively small items requires agreement over regulations. If you want to trade with the EU, with EU regulations.
A British government could change the Single Market from the inside, but it can’t change the structure from the outside into a different single market.
Before June 2016 Brexiters talked of making many new trade deals which would allow a Britain outside the EU wider world trade. There is no movement on that front. The chances of a big deal to speed trade between Britain and the USA (by far the UK’s leading export destination after the EU) are slight in the era of Trump.
So the Tory government, pushed on, no doubt, by big-business lobbyists who want the trade routes open, is edging crabwise towards some sort of “soft” Brexit. The explicit hard-Brexiters are on the back foot.
Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the few right-wing Tories who openly criticised the “alignment” agreement, is reconciled to May’s way. He said on 17 December: “She has to stay until Brexit is completed”.
In some ways all this is to our advantage. It means that the Tories are constrained to deflate, bit by bit, the hopes of those who really expected good things from Brexit. The evidence is that most Brexit voters didn’t really expect good from Brexit, but rather voted to express “identity” and “values” and hostility to immigration; still, those who did expect good face discredit and demoralisation.
The Tories will still be avid to limit the rights of people wanting to move from EU countries to Britain, but are likely to settle for much looser limits than Ukip types would want.
All such advantages could however prove slight or entirely illusory. Mishaps and crises in the Brexit talks, causing higher barriers than any rational capitalist calculation wants, remain likely.
Needed, in order to give substance and sticking-power to the advantages, is a solid positive campaign for free movement, for keeping borders low and easy, for solidarity and social levelling-up across Europe – and, in fact, to give people the democratic right to a second verdict on Brexit when the shape of any deal emerges. Labour should be waging that campaign.
Instead, it is still equivocating. On 17 December, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, who spoke up occasionally for free movement in the months after the 2016 referendum, and had said in a constituency newsletter that the electorate should have the right to vote on a final deal, backtracked and said: “The Labour party does not support a second referendum”.
John McDonnell is taking refuge in obfuscation about “a” single market and “the” single market. Labour still rules out continuing free movement, though front-bench Brexit spokesperson Keir Starmer has talked vaguely of “easy movement”.
Theresa May refused eight times yesterday to rule out scrapping vital workers’ rights after Brexit .
The 48-hour week and paid holidays are under threat in a plot by Brexit-backing Tories to axe the EU’s Working Time Directive.
But quizzed by MPs, the Prime Minster would only say: “I have said that we will maintain workers’ rights and indeed enhance workers’ rights.”
Over the weekend reports suggested Brexiteers in the cabinet will demand the scrapping of the vital protections in order to agree a phase one deal.
Labour’s Wes Streeting said: “Today has underlined how weak Theresa May really is. She is at the mercy of the Brextremists in her own party.
An economists’ study says Brexit is already costing Britain £350 million a week in lack of growth, investment and output.
Remainers were quick to point out the figure bore a remarking resemblance to the figure that certain pro-Brexit campaigners suggested would be available for the NHS after the UK’s departure.
Above: August Bebel: “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools”
By Tony Greenstein in the present issue of the Weekly Worker (and it should go without saying that whilst we welcome Mr Greenstein’s belated recognition that anti-Semitism exists on the left and – specifically – within his and the CPGB’s ‘Labour Against the Witch Hunt’ outfit, we regard much of the rest of this piece as incoherent nonsense):
On December 2 a Labour Against the Witchhunt meeting was effectively ambushed by a small Trotskyist grouping, Socialist Fight. A series of close votes was taken, the result of which meant that the previous decision of the steering committee, that Socialist Fight should no longer participate in meetings of LAW, was overturned.
Stan Keable, the secretary of LAW, had written to inform SF that it was no longer welcome at our meetings, but despite this their comrades turned up. For various reasons – not least that most people were unaware of the full extent of the anti-Semitic positions of Socialist Fight – those present voted against the steering committee position.
It is now incumbent upon LAW to demonstrate clearly and unambiguously that it wants to have nothing to do with Socialist Fight. Not only because its positions are anti-Semitic, but because a campaign whose purpose is to reject the false anti-Semitism campaign of Iain McNicol, the compliance unit and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement cannot retain any credibility if it includes a group whose positions are anti-Semitic.
I was not aware, at the time of the last meeting, that Ian Donovan – a ‘left’ supporter of the overtly anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon – had penned an obnoxious and anti-Semitic article the day before, entitled ‘Third-camp Stalinoids bring witchhunt into Labour Against the Witchhunt’.
There is no future for Labour Against the Witchhunt if Socialist Fight and its members remain an integral part of the organisation. For that reason I believe that it is essential that the next meeting, on January 6 should overturn the previous decision. If my views do not prevail, then I will resign from the organisation – as I believe will Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth of Grassroots Black Left.
It may seem incongruous to have an anti-witchhunt group itself excluding people, but we have no choice. It is a fact that the Labour Party’s witchhunt primarily takes the form of the weaponisation of anti-Semitism – the smearing of people as anti-Semitic for no other reason than their support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism.
It therefore flows, as night follows day, that LAW cannot include in its ranks people who advocate politics which are anti-Semitic. To include Socialist Fight or its members within LAW, given their stated policies, would be to concede that the Zionist attack on the left as anti-Semitic has some substance. It would be political suicide.
It is extremely unfortunate that a socialist group believes that in the age of modern capitalism the Jewish question survives. It was primarily a question of the social and economic role in the feudal era of Jews as what Abram Leon termed a “people-class”. It only survived politically in the capitalist era as a result of the memory of that role, combined with the delayed and arrested development of capitalism in eastern Europe.
It is noticeable that even today in countries like Poland and Hungary there is still considerable anti-Semitism because of their underdevelopment compared to western Europe. The Pew global attitudes survey shows the difference in anti-Semitic attitudes very clearly between western Europe and eastern Europe (leaving aside Greece and Italy). In France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Britain, anti-Semitic attitudes can be found in 10% or less of the population.
And, oh yeah, the women you sexually assaulted and then called “liars”? They aren’t going away. They held a press conference this week, and they want Congress to do something about your crimes–and, yes, they are crimes.
In a down-to-the-wire election, Alabama Democrat Doug Jones defeated Bible-thumping sexual predator Republican Roy Moore in a special election Tuesday to fill the Senate seat left open by Jeff Sessions when he became attorney general.
But the big winner in this election is the women of #MeToo–who broke the silence about sexual harassment and assault committed by powerful men.
But in the end, it was the women who came forward to tell their stories of being abused who turned the tables on him–including one woman who said the holier-than-thou evangelical forced himself on her when he was a district attorney, and she was just 14 years old.
Moore’s response to these calls for justice was to smear the women as liars and double down on his nauseating bigotry.
This election was about far more than vote in Alabama for a Senate seat. It was a test of support for Republican monsters like Moore, their bigoted policies and the presidency of Donald Trump.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
MOORE’S CAMPAIGN presented itself as a referendum on the Trump administration–and threatened that the Republicans’ big plans for next year would be in peril if he lost. “If they can beat [Moore], they can beat [Trump’s] agenda, because Judge Moore stands with Donald Trump and his agenda,” Moore strategist Dean Young told ABC’s This Week.
Sections of the Republican Party fled from Moore, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Alabama’s longtime senior senator Richard Shelby, who said he cast his vote for a write-in candidate instead of Moore.
But not Trump. Though the president reluctantly campaigned for the GOP establishment’s choice, Luther Strange, Moore’s opponent in the Republican primary earlier this year, Trump eagerly jumped on board when Moore became the nominee–despite the allegations of sexual harassment.
Trump recorded a robo-call for the candidate and made an appearance at a pro-Moore rally in Florida–the day before he was scheduled to visit the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, no less. Former Trump White House adviser and alt-right celebrity Steve Bannon has also been a fixture of the Moore campaign.
Trump and Moore have a lot in common. Like trying to silence women who accuse them of sexual assault.
As Alabama voters were casting their ballots, Trump went on the attack against a group of women who are calling on Congress to investigate their sexual assault claims against the president. In a sexist tweet, Trump said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand “would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them).”
Trump’s refusal to go along with Republican Party leaders and continue promoting Moore was a calculated pushback against the #MeToo campaign and its hundreds of women stepping out of the shadows to tell their stories of abuse and, in some cases, bring down their abusers.
At first, the Republican National Committee withdrew its support for Moore’s campaign when the allegations of sexual assault emerged. But it flipped on that decision after Trump decided to continue endorsing Moore.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
BUT THAT wasn’t enough to push Moore over the top. With absentee ballots still to be counted, Jones had defeated the Republican candidate by some 20,000 votes, with about a dozen counties that voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election switching over to the Democrats in this race.
The margin of victory for Jones is about the same as the number of voters who wrote in another candidate. As FiveThirtyEight.org pointed out, of all Alabama senate races since 1990, only the 2014 race, in which Jeff Sessions ran uncontested, had a higher share of write-in votes.
But while the media will focus on this number, Jones built up his margin of victory in counties with major cities like Birmingham and Huntsville, where African Americans especially voted overwhelmingly for him. Jones also had a stronger advantage among women and younger voters, according to exit polls.
In Birmingham’s primarily Black Woodlawn neighborhood, Genesis Johnson told the Washington Post that he hadn’t voted since 2008, when he supported Barack Obama for president. He felt compelled to cast his vote for Jones this time. Read the rest of this entry »
By Will Sefton (this article also appears in the present issue of Solidarity)
We may well have reached ‘peak Momentum’. These are the most favourable political circumstances Labour’s hard left could envisage.
They feel politically vindicated by the general election result, have a well-funded, well-staffed organisation holding a vast amount of data on Labour members and have reshaped Labour’s membership through successive rounds of mass recruitment.
So says Luke Akehurst, secretary of Labour First, writing a sober article about Momentum and local council selections in the course of the last couple of weeks of right-wing hysteria from the bourgeois press, with Roy Hattersley and Angela Rayner making (politically differentiated) contributions.
Akehurst is relatively realistic on Momentum’s political advances. The “centre-left”, as he calls his wing of the party, did okay on nominations to Labour’s National Executive, although Eddie Izzard still has 100 fewer Constituency Party nominations Momentum-backed candidate Yasmin Dar. One of the “centre left” candidates — Izzard, Johanna Baxter or Gurinder Singh Josan — could win a seat.
Across the UK, the left of Labour is, in fact, not sweeping the board. The picture is mixed. In Haringey, the campaign against the £2 billion Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) regeneration plan has ensured nearly all of the incumbent Progress-dominated council Cabinet have been ousted by Corbyn supporters. In Lewisham East, the right retained control of the party. In Watford a Momentum-backed trade unionist would not have got onto the shortlist for the MP candidate without an intervention by the National Executive.
The two organised right wing groups within Labour – Progress and Labour First – are not identical, though they work closely with each other.
What really bothers Progress, so they say, is the lack of experience of the left candidates as against established right wingers. Akehurst and Labour First are more worried about the kind of politics that these councillors will be putting forward and who they feel they are accountable too. He mourns the passing of cosy dinners and drinks receptions with lobbyists and property developers.
Undoubtedly it is true that many of the new intake in councils in 2018 will be relative newcomers, some involved in politics within the last two years. That only indicates that the pressure on new left councillors to make cuts, to carry out “tough decisions”, will be intense. It highlights the importance of discussing the strategy for councillors in a fight against austerity. It cannot wait till May. It needs to be more than an anguished plea for a Labour Government in 2022. Without such a strategy the left will be caught up in passing on more cuts and participating in running services in a dire state following seven years of Tory austerity.
Having a layer of Labour councillors who are accountable to Labour members and the local labour movement, who want to mobilise it to fight, is long overdue. But can we get this?
Minimally local council candidates should call for the next Labour government to restore all the money that has been cut since 2010. Local labour movements should call meetings to discuss the needs of the area and what strategy is needed to defeat the cuts. Our movement has historical examples that can be learnt from — victories at Poplar and Clay Cross, as well as those that ended in defeat as with the fight of the local government left between 1979 and 1985.
We must be absolutely clear that there is no subversion of democracy, no underhand coup, going on in Labour. Members are simply exercising their democratic right to select the representatives they want. Some right-wingers are moaning about an increasingly factional atmosphere and condemn the fact that Momentum has used its membership to mobilise people in ward and selection meetings.
Roy Hattersley notes that Momentum is not as tightly controlled as Militant, but has a much further reach. He raises the spectre of the “far left pamphleteers” being a dominant and aggressive force once more. But the movement could do with more pamphleteers and more engagement with tough arguments! Healthy labour movement organisation relies on members engaging with political arguments. Factionalism is simply arguing for a point of view and winning people over to it.
Both Labour First and Progress do just this! It is what Hattersley is doing. In this sense, we will need more factionalism, more organisation and more opportunities if members are to exercise their democratic rights. Unfortunately some on the left have chimed in in with the furore. Quoted in the Times, Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said that established MPs and councillors had an “absolute right” to be there and to be listened to.
Rayner seems to have got confused between the divine right of Kings, which many councillors seem to want, and the open political debate in which all sides have the chance to make their case. Typically, as in Haringey, right-wing councillors would rather duck a political fight. There the right have resigned rather than go through an open selection process. They have refused to be held to account, and they have branded local members as bullies and unthinking drones who are mobilised purely to cause trouble for hard-working stalwarts.
Akehurst offers a more active strategy. “We have to build up our capacity to out-recruit Momentum by mobilising the larger latent public support of the centre-left and some centrists who want an electable Labour Party. This will require huge investment in digital and press recruitment advertising, coherent messaging, an attractive candidate for whenever Jeremy retires, and fresh policies, not 1997 answers to 2017 problems (though these are preferable to 1917 or 1977 ones).”
“Sadly, the existence of Momentum requires similar factional rigidity and structure on our side…This is contrary to the historic culture of the Labour Party, which until 2015 was not factional…we are buzzing around them as an incoherent rabble of individualists.” This is utter nonsense.
The Labour Party has had factions for all its history; only, before Corbyn, the left was much weaker and the party was a rump. Akehurst is rewriting history, presenting the Labour Party as a friendly place where everyone used to get along, to try and weaken the grip of the left and to convince people that it is both wrong and irregular for there to be disruption to the normal boring, bureaucratic and cliquey goings on of local parties. In the face of the false nostalgia, we need to assert and fight for a democratic party that debates its policies and political differences in the open.
Above: Gerry Downing of the anti-Semitic ‘Socialist Fight’ on the BBC’s Daily Politics last year, following his expulsion from Labour
Extracted from the current issue of the Weekly Worker:
The meeting included a discussion on the participation within LAW of Socialist Fight. The steering committee had taken the decision to exclude SF from the campaign because of the group’s position on Jews, which can only be described as anti-Semitic (my emphasis – JD).
SF declares that Jewish “overrepresentation” amongst the bourgeoisie is a major factor explaining imperialist backing for Israel. At the meeting itself SF’s Ian Donovan stated that, while this “overrepresentation” “doesn’t determine everything”, it “determines quite a lot”. He also talked about the undue influence of “Jewish communalist politics”, while the SF leaflet handed out at the meeting stated that “Jews” today have become “an oppressor people”.
The SC sought approval from the meeting for its decision to exclude SF from LAW – on the basis that a campaign which places a large emphasis on its opposition to the disgraceful, knowingly false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ wielded by the right against principled anti-racists should not itself tolerate individuals whose public pronouncements are clearly anti-Semitic. To do otherwise opens us up to claims that we cannot be taken seriously when we say the right’s accusations are nothing but smears – after all, it would then appear that we ourselves cannot tell the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Labour Party Marxists put forward a motion, directed against not only Socialist Fight, but also the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty:
LAW does not wish to be associated with those who excuse the ongoing witch-hunt in the Labour Party: ie, support the expulsion of Ken Livingstone. Nor do we wish to associate with those who advocate anti-Semitism: ie, those who explain US and other imperialist countries’ foreign policy on the basis of the number of Jews in the ruling class.
Unfortunately neither this motion nor one from the steering committee, which called for its decision to exclude SF to be endorsed, was successful. Only nine comrades were in favour of endorsing the SC position, with 12 against, plus a number of abstentions; as for the LPM motion, there were 12 votes in favour and 12 against, and so it was not carried either.
One of the arguments that carried a good deal of weight amongst those who voted against was the claim that an organisation set up to oppose exclusions should not itself exclude people. SF’s own motion quoted the official (but largely ignored) Labour Party position that “the mere holding or expression of beliefs and opinions” should not be grounds for exclusion.
This is at best a highly naive position. Should we welcome into LAW out-and-out reactionaries and open racists? (I am not, obviously, including SF in this category, whose comrades seem to sincerely believe that their line is not anti-Semitic!). There is also a difference between a specific campaign like LAW and a party like Labour, which today contains all manner of viewpoints, not least warmongers such as Tony Blair.
At least the SF motion – which not only favoured ‘free expression’ (including for anti-Semites) within LAW, but also called on the campaign to invite George Galloway to “play the role of our honorary president” – was also defeated. It received five votes, while eight comrades opposed it – the clear winners on this occasion were the abstainers.
While, of course, we in LPM accept LAW’s right to make democratic decisions, the participation of Socialist Fight remains in our view a problem that might well have to be revisited.
But let that not detract from the useful role that LAW intends to play – now is the time to really step up the campaign.
A historic day – the end of American mediation in the Middle East
Gush Shalom statement, December 6, 2017
The Trump speech will not change the reality of Jerusalem. West Jerusalem will remain an Israeli city, where Israel’s government is located since 1949. East Jerusalem will remain an occupied Palestinian city, which is not and cannot be a part of Israel. Believers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam will continue clinging to their holy sites in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, this is a historic day. In the person of President Donald Trump, the United States today officially, ceremoniously and with a bang abdicated its role as the mediator between Israel and the Arabs.
This mediating role had endured for more than forty years. Henry Kissinger created it with his “shuttle diplomacy” of the 1970’s. All later Presidents and Secretaries of State strove to maintain it. All later Presidents and Secretaries of State were jealous of the American monopoly over Middle East mediation, even to forcibly grabbing hold of negotiations processes started without them – between Israel and Egypt in 1978, between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993. Until Donald Trump came along and in typical Trumpian style decided to spectacularly smash up this mediation role.
In fact, the US mediation role had always been a curious anomaly. In no commercial dispute would it be conceivable to have as arbiter the business partner of one of the contending parties. But in the world of Middle East diplomacy, it was accepted almost without question that the role of impartial honest broker be given to Israel’s closest ally, the provider of billions in financial aid and state of the art weapons systems and an almost automatic veto in the UN Security Council.
Obama and Kerry did make some belated and half-hearted efforts to appear impartial. But Trump decided to tear off America’s face any mask of impartiality and trample it underfoot.
What now? Well, for some time there will be no mediator in the Middle East, and hence no kind of Peace Process. But sooner or later, the vacuum is going to be filled. Who might fill it? One name which comes to mind is of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who had just shown himself able to play a highly effective and energetic – though quite brutal – role in Syria. Russia has long-standing cordial relations with the Palestinians, in the past decade Putin has built up intensive relations with Netanyahu as well. Taking up the abandoned mediation role between Israel and the Palestinians would fit nicely within Putin’s project of restoring Russia’s global power.
Then, the European Union – even though beset by many crises – might take up a more assertive role in the Middle East. Especially France, which has traditionally tended to take its own independent initiatives. Or even China, which not so long ago appointed its own Middle East representative.
Altogether, there might eventually emerge a mediator or mediators who would be a bit more impartial than we had so far. And if so, there might be an ironical reason to feel grateful to Donald Trump…
Another way Trump will get us Killed: to move US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
The White House says that the US is preparing to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognize that city as Israel’s capital instead of Tel Aviv. It is calling this move a “recognition of reality.” It is not, it is the creation of a deadly and dreary reality that will get Americans blown up. Trump is doing this for his evangelical base and for billionaire campaign backers like Sheldon Adelson. The latter have tunnel blindness and can’t see the world as it is– dangerous for the rest of us because of their hobbies.
In international law, Israel does not have a right to all of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not even awarded to Israel by the UN General Assembly partition plan of 1947 (a plan that itself has little legal grounding since the UN executive is instead the Security Council).
Israel conquered most of Jerusalem and its hinterlands in 1967. It then annexed these regions in a quite illegal move. Occupying powers are not allowed to annex occupied territory, by the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions (which were enacted to discourage people from acting like Nazis). The disposition of Jerusalem in the law should depend on final status negotiations between Israel and the state of Palestine.
The reason that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank has gone on for decades and become so distorted as to be illegal is that the United States wants it this way. Washington power elites treat Israel like a big aircraft carrier in the Middle East, a way to continue to dominate the region after decolonization.
This is what I wrote the last time this issue was broached, a year ago. It is all still relevant:
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative demarche on the Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem in 2000 caused Bin Laden to try to move up the date of the planned attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., as ‘punishment’ for Sharon’s implicit threat.
Bin Laden composed a poem for his son’s wedding in Afghanistan in fall of 2001, “The wound of Jerusalem is making me boil. Its suffering is making me burn from within.” Bin Laden was a mass murderer and not a good Muslim, but his rage over Jerusalem is shared by many in the Muslim world.
It is foreseeable that a unilateral US recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and moving the US embassy there (US embassies are big buildings increasingly built like fortresses, and it will be quite visible) will provoke attacks on the United States by angry Muslims. While the US should not shy away from taking risks on matters of principle, in this case Israel and the US are in the wrong, legally and morally, so that we’re doing something unethical and also risking attacks because of it.
Israelis consider an undivided Jerusalem as their capital, and Trump wants to acquiesce in that view. Unfortunately for the Israelis, their position contradicts international law, and if brought to the International Criminal Court it would certainly result in the conviction of high Israeli officials on charges of genocide.
In the Sykes Picot agreement during WW I, Jerusalem was given to Russia. The Communists under Lenin later pulled out of this deal, and the British got Jerusalem and the Mandate of Palestine. Palestine was a Class A Mandate and the British expected it to become the independent state of Palestine around 1949. When instead massive immigration took place by European Jews fleeing Fascism, civil war broke out in 1947-48. The 500,000 Jewish immigrants expelled 60% percent of the over one million Palestinians from their homes and made these families homeless, stateless refugees ever after. The newly minted Israelis just moved into the Palestinians’ homes and farms, forever confiscating them.
In fall of 1947, the UN General Assembly proposed an extremely unfair division of Palestine, giving massive amounts of territory to the Jews, who owned only 6% of the land. This UNGA plan was only proposal and was never endorsed by the UN Security Council, the only body with authority. The Palestinians and other Arabs rejected the partition as grossly unfair. Although Zionist propagandists say that the Jewish immigrants accepted it, their leadership did no such thing. David Ben Gurion clearly wanted much more land than the UNGA had suggested, and his forces went on to grab extra land. In later years the Israelis would try to annex parts of Egypt and Lebanon, and in 1967 they militarily occupied part of Syria and all of the Palestinian West Bank.
The UN General Assembly did not suggest giving Israel all of Jerusalem, including the Palestinian East of the city, and it didn’t have the authority to make such grants of territory in any case.. Nor did that part of the city become part of Israel in 1948. But the Israelis conquered it along with the rest of the West Bank in 1967. They then annexed all of Jerusalem and part of the West Bank, adding that territory to Israel. Although military occupation of territory during war time is not illegal, annexing territory by military conquest is definitely illegal. It is strictly forbidden in the UN Charter and subsequent treaties and instruments, including the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. Moreover, military occupiers may not radically alter the lifeways of the people they occupy (1907 Hague Agreement, 1949 Geneva Accords). Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians has become illegal because of extensive Apartheid policies.
So, Palestinian East Jerusalem belongs to Israel only in the way that the French city of Nice belonged to Mussolini during WW II (he annexed French territory to Italy by military fiat).
What is curious is that most Americans do not know that Jerusalem was one of three planks in al-Qaeda’s anti-American platform. Even more curious is that the US responded to 9/11 by invading and occupying Iraq, making Muslims even more upset. (Incoming Secretary of Defense Gen. Mike Mattis invaded and destroyed Falluja in 2004; one of the insurgent groups there had modeled itself on Hamas in Palestinian Gaza, and fought US occupation as an analogy to the fight against Israeli occupation). Mattis later frankly admitted that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank is a severe security problem for the United States.
Now Trump is planning to ratchet up tensions even further.
The national security elites in Washington and Tel Aviv have dealt with Muslim anger over the impoverishment of the Palestinians and the Israeli threat to the Muslim holy places of Jerusalem by covering up these actions, denying them, obfuscating them, and then crushing any Muslims who dare complain about them.
They call this counter-terrorism policy. And they’ve made it work for them in grabbing power, both in the world and at home, where they argue to us that the terrorism that they are helping provoke means we have to give up the Bill of Rights.
Superb commentary by the Irish Independent‘s Colette Browne (5 Dec 2017)
Theresa May and Leo Varadkar
The UK government’s arrogant colonial mindset, and its patronising belief that it knows best when it comes to Ireland, is the reason the Brexit negotiations are such an unmitigated omnishambles.
When the UK voted to leave the European Union, there was lots of frenzied waving of Union Jacks, lots of teary-eyed reminiscing about the glory days of empire and lots of fanciful bravado about the economic heights the UK would soar to – now that it wouldn’t have to carry the dead weight of the world’s biggest free market round its neck.
Some of its more zealously frothing-at-the-mouth pro-Brexit newspapers spent months fantasising about being able to change the colour of UK passports and commissioning a new Royal Yacht Britannia to cross the seas and provide a “showcase for everything that is best in Britain”. They’re going to call it Brexit-annia, by the way.
So much time was spent on fripperies and jingoistic fantasies that precisely zero thought was given to the messy mechanics of Brexit. How on earth could 45 years of ever-closer union be unwound in just two years?
Even less consideration was given to the Irish question. There was lots of talk about German cars and French wine – but the fact that an entire country was inconveniently affixed to one of its borders didn’t warrant any consideration from any of the geniuses who promoted Brexit.
In recent weeks it has become apparent why so little thought was given to Ireland by the current Tory government – most of its members couldn’t find it on a map and are embarrassingly ignorant about our people, our politics and our culture.
The Little Englanders who comprise the UK government didn’t think about Ireland because they don’t care about Ireland. They didn’t think that we’d dare to give them any trouble. They thought we’d doff the cap, raise them in salute and let our betters dictate the terms of any deal.
They articulated their vision for Brexit – a brave new world in which all of their fervent nationalistic delusions would become reality – and expect the Paddies to simply roll over and let them get on with it.
The wails of despair you now hear from senior Tories and their supporters, as the reality of securing Brexit proves much more difficult than merely holding a referendum, is the sound of those dreams dying.
For the first time in our long history with the UK, the supplicant has become the master – and the former master doesn’t like it.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, having barely had time to wipe the egg off his face after he suggested last week that the reason the Irish were being so intransigent was because of an upcoming presidential election that no one else knew about, boldly went on the record again yesterday to lambast our government’s obstinacy.
“I don’t see what we have got to sign up to. We have given them all the reassurances they have asked for. If Ireland wants to block us from going on to discussing trade, we will just get on and leave on World Trade organisation terms,” he told the ‘London Evening Standard’.
If you look closely at that statement, the visceral contempt for the Irish daring to protect the interests of its citizens actually drips from the page.
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson was so enraged by the Irish Government’s rigidity that he threatened to veto any Brexit deal involving any reference to ‘regulatory alignment’ in Stormont – appearing to forget that there is no Stormont Assembly at the moment so the DUP can’t veto anything there.
Historians will look back on these botched Brexit negotiations as a case study of what happens when one side abandons all reason, logic and rationality as part of its negotiating strategy.
If anything, after the bedlam on display yesterday a deal enabling the British to move on to phase two of Brexit negotiations is further away than ever.
As soon as details of the proposed agreement with the Irish Government leaked out, that there would be regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the Scots, the mayor of London and the Welsh were all clamouring for similar deals.
In order to gauge the true extent of the dystopian nightmare that this creates for long-suffering British Prime Minister Theresa May, it is necessary to consider that the Welsh, unlike Scotland and the City of London, actually voted to leave the EU – but now apparently want a Brexit deal that entails them remaining, for all intents and purposes, in the single market and the customs union.
Faced with revolt from all corners of the UK, Mrs May did what she has become adept at in recent months – ran for cover, prevaricated and finally reneged on the agreement, with the result that nobody is happy.
Now, the true horror for Mrs May really begins, as she attempts to cobble together a deal that simply doesn’t exist – simultaneously keeping an open Border on this island while Northern Ireland moves, with the rest of the UK, outside the single market and customs union. Even European President Jean-Claude Juncker felt some sympathy for her predicament as he tried to cover her blushes, in a press conference yesterday, praising her as a “tough negotiator”.
There was no such sympathy on show in Dublin, where a blunt Leo Varadkar stated he was “surprised and disappointed” that a deal, which he was led to believe had been signed off, suddenly evaporated.
Embarrassingly for Mrs May, the man who turned up to Government Buildings yesterday morning wearing a crimson singlet and shorts ended the day looking more stately than she could manage.
Over the coming days, as the deadline to the December 14 date when a final decision will be made by the EU on the ability of the UK to proceed to the next phase of the Brexit talks approaches, expect lots of vitriol and venom to be spewed at the Irish from incensed Tory grandees and their Brexiteer chums.
They may not like this new assertive Ireland, but have only their own ignorance, pomposity and pretention to blame for the position they now find themselves in.
Ireland is a sovereign country intent on defending her interests. They better get used to it.