Why I Am Supporting Two British‑Palestinian Candidates Samar Ammar & Tanuksha Mara
In the current election there are some
excellent candidates such as Andrew Feinstein in
Holborn and St. Pancras, who is standing against Starmer and Leanne Mohamad who is going up against Wes Streeting in Ilford North. I want to focus on two
excellent British Palestinian candidates.
Tanuksha
Mara is standing as an Independent Socialist candidate in Hove, which used
to be the posher part of Brighton.
Currently it is represented by ‘Killer Kyle’ the Vice
Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Kyle is a hard-line supporter of Starmer, an
open Zionist and someone almost devoid of charisma or personality.
Picket of Kyle's Offices in Hove
Tanuksha is an award winning theatre
director of Jordanian-Palestinian origin. Her family now lives in Jordan. She
also writes
for Middle East International
Samar Ammar was until recently the Chair
of Bromsgrove Labour Party and a local councillor as well as a member of Unite.
She had been put forward by her local party, with unanimous support, to become
the MP for Bromsgrove.
She had only one disadvantage. She was
of Palestinian origin and in Starmer’s Labour Party having any connection with
the Palestinians automatically rules someone out of the running.
When Starmer parachuted in one of his
clones, Samar resigned.
Being an overt Zionist and racist
however is a distinct advantage which is why genocide supporter and
professional Zionist Luke Akehurst was parachuted into the North Durham seat.
Akehurst supported in 2018 Israel shooting
some 300 unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza fence dead and wounding
thousands. Amongst the dead were over 50
children but according to Akehurst they were all ‘Hamas terrorists’.
However in the eyes of Starmer and his
racist supporters, support for the cold-blooded murder of Palestinians is seen
as an advantage. Which is why Samar didn’t stand a chance of being selected.
She has therefore decided to stand as an Independent candidate. Please contribute to her Crowdfunder
as she is fighting the campaign on a shoe-string.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/sam-ammar-for-bromsgrove
My
Own View on the Likely Outcome of the Most Boring Election on Record
This is a strange election. Not since
1997 has it been clear that one party is going to win overwhelmingly. The Tory
Party is in a state of collapse with some even predicting that Sunak could lose
his seat.
More worrying is the rise of the Reform
Party who are tipped by some polls to get 3‑5 seats. What is difficult to
predict is what is going to happen to the Independent Socialist candidates, not
least Jeremy Corbyn.
I hope very much that Corbyn and George
Galloway win their respective contests but I fear that a depoliticised and
defeated working class may well reject them.
Likewise my fear is that the independent socialist candidates may also
not fare as well as we hope. I suspect we are going to have a mixed bag of
results.
It is a great pity that instead of
Galloway announcing a fait accompli of
500 Workers Party candidates standing (which became 150) that he didn’t call
for a convention of the left to decide these things. This is leaving aside such
his appalling concession to Farage and the racists by calling for the British navy
to be used in the Channel to repel asylum seekers. Instead of calling out the demonisation
and scapegoating of refugees by the Tories/Farage and Starmer Galloway went
along with it.
At a time of increased privatisation of
the NHS, the scandal of water companies pouring sewerage into the sea whilst
paying their shareholders millions in dividends, Galloway chose cheap populist
rhetoric. He could have pointed to the billions of pounds paid to the Tories
through fraudulent COVID contracts or even the fact that refugees come here
because we went to their countries and started wars.
Corbyn once again has demonstrated that
he has the tactical nous of a lemming. If he was going to stand why wait till
the last minute to announce it? Why not
declare early on that he was standing, throw down the gauntlet to Starmer and
call for the formation of an alternative socialist party based around the
manifesto he stood on in 2017?
The Canary has published a useful list
of 17 independent candidates but there are many more.
There are also some on the left who
still have illusions in the Green Party. They should stop their wishful thinking.
In Brighton Kemptown the local candidate
in my constituency, Elaine Hills, has put out a leaflet
that is entirely parochial. It doesn’t even mention Gaza or genocide. There is
no mention of NATO, any conflict internationally or racism. It really sums up
the Greens. Kitchen-table politics.
My own recommendation is to only vote
for the Green Party as a very last resort. Where a socialist candidate is
standing you should vote for them.
The Green Party is a pro-capitalist
party. It seeks to green capitalism. It has adopted
the Zionists’ IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism which was designed with no
other purpose than to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. We see it being
used constantly to defame student encampments and protests against genocide, despite
the fact that those taking part include many Jews.
Recently I learnt from a statement
posted by Jewish Greens, which is on the Green Party website, that the Green
Party leadership has been meeting with ex-Labour MP John Mann,
now Lord Mann, ‘to discuss the important
issue of antisemitism’.
In
fact anti-Semitism is extremely unimportant. If it was a problem does anyone
think that a bigot like Suella Braverman would be concerned
about it?
The
only reference
to Gaza by Jewish Greens is a statement referring to the ‘atrocious attacks on Israel by Hamas’. No mention of the genocidal
attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza for over half a century. Quite what Jo Bird
is doing in such an outfit beggars belief.
Lord
Mann is best remembered for his hectoring and bullying attack
on Ken Livingstone for having dared to mention the pro-Zionist policy of the
Nazi state which resulted in the Ha'avara
trading agreement which broke the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany.
Mann
has a lengthy past record of racism, whether it is supporting
Phil Woolas MP when the High Court removed him from Parliament after having run
a nakedly racist campaign designed to ‘make
the White folks angry’ with Muslims in his constituency of Oldham East
& Saddleworth. In 2007 he produced a handbook
on anti-social behaviour which targeted
Gypsies and Roma as an example of anti-social behaviour.
I have correctly predicted the outcomes of the last
3 elections. I had no doubt that Miliband would
fail in 2015 and Corbyn
in 2019 and almost alone, I predicted
that Corbyn could win in 2017 would do very well if not. But today it is
difficult to hazard a guess, not only because of the volatility of the polls
but because it is next to impossible to forecast how the Independent Socialists
will do.
It
is clear that Starmer’s Labour Party will win. The toxic Tories are in a state
of collapse having presided over rampant corruption, undemocratic legislation,
bribes to their friends in high offices and racist attacks on migrants and
asylum seekers for the past years.
However
there is no enthusiasm for Starmer. I predict a low turnout as people see no
reason for having to choose between two sets of Tories. I imagine that many Tories will turn to the
Lib Dems, who are a thoroughly pro-capitalist party. Whether they get more than
50 seats is anyone’s guess. Likewise it is unlikely that the Tories will get much
more than 120 seats.
The
unknown factor is the far-right Reform Party which has come out of nowhere.
Farage is predicted to win the seat of Clacton. I hope not.
The
SNP is predicted at the moment, after the fall-out from the corruption
surrounding its former leader, Nicola Sturgeon, to do badly against the Labour
Party. Not living in Scotland I have no idea if this will turn out to be true
given that the Labour Party is a unionist party. But if they do badly it will
be a self-inflicted defeat.
I
also predict that overall the socialist independents are not going to fare very
well because of a lack of any unified impact, although there may be exceptions.
Although I support Galloway and the Workers Party where they are not standing
against other socialist candidates, I fear that even Galloway may lose. I hope
not because we need his oratory in Parliament, not least over Gaza.
I
also hope that Chris Williamson, who is a thoroughly decent and principled
socialist, wins in Derby North but I fear that this won’t happen.
What
is clear is that after the dust has settled, after July 4, the Left seriously
needs to get its act together like the Left in France. There is no reason for
different left sects and parties to compete with each other. Unity around a
minimum set of demands should be the order of the day. Otherwise we will let the bigots and racists
around Farage win by default.
I
urge people in Hove and Bromsgrove in particular to support two British
Palestinian candidates – Tanuksha Mara and Samar Ammar.
Tony
Greenstein