You Say You Share My Anger Over Gaza – If That’s True Then You Will Resign as Starmer’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Bag Carrier & Fixer
Chris Ward is the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, which was a Tory seat from 1950 until it went Labour in 1964 when Dennis Hobden won by a margin of 7 votes after 7 recounts.
This was the first time any Sussex seat had been won by Labour and it owed a great deal to the personality of the Labour candidate, Dennis Hobden who was a son of the working class. Hobden was the son of a train driver and worked most of his life in the Post Office.
In 1966 when Harold Wilson won a landslide victory by 98 seats Dennis only held on to Kemptown by 831 votes. In 1970 he was defeated by Andrew Bowden, the self-styled pensioners' champion.
Bowden held the seat till 1997 when he disgraced himself after well founded allegations of having received a £5,000 cash bribe from Mohamed
al-Fayed.
I knew Dennis when I was in the Labour Party in the 80s when he was
considered on the left though it was hard to pigeonhole him. When a row blew up
over a statement of the then councillor Richard Stanton who defended the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel as a legitimate
target, it caused a storm amongst the Labour Right. Hobden was staunch in
Richard’s support when others on the left, including Militant, were found wanting.
Hobden was also a freemason!
In 2010 Simon Kirby won the seat for the Tories by 1,328 votes and in 2015 by 690 votes. In 2017 he was overwhelmed by the Corbyn surge when Lloyd
Russell-Moyle overturned a small majority to win by nearly 10,000. The Labour
Party in Brighton was the largest in the country.
An Israeli soldier in the world's most moral army looking for a baby to
kill
Brighton was at the centre of the Corbyn movement. When the local
District Labour Party held its AGM in July 2016, Momentum held a pre-meeting in
Brighthelm Community Centre. It was the largest meeting I had ever seen at the Centre. People then
moved on to the AGM at City College where the Left won all the officer posts by
a margin of 2-1.
Unfortunately Corbyn had done nothing about Labour’s right-wing civil
service. John Stolliday, the head of the Compliance Unit and Council leader
Warren Morgan immediately moved to have the results cancelled on the basis of fabricated allegations of spitting.
Although Russell-Moyle was elected in 2017 and re-elected by over 8,000 in 2019 he proved a great disappointment, shifting from left to right as the political winds changed direction. As
Bob Dylan noted, you don’t need to be a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows and Moyle was nothing if not a political
weatherman. An opportunist who was ultimately
defeated by his own opportunism.
Gaza's landscape could be that of Nagasaki
Nonetheless the removal of Moyle in 2024 and the imposition of Chris Ward, the ex-Starmer aide and political lobbyist who worked for Hanbury Strategy and his replacement by Chris Ward, who had no discernible support in the local Labour Party, was an example of the dishonesty of the current Labour leadership. Hanbury Strategy specialised in lobbying for the gambling and fossil fuels industry.
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As Andy Winter wrote, ‘can you imagine a less appropriate candidate for a seat in Brighton and Hove?’
Allegations from eight years
ago have been made (against Moyle), from before he was an MP. The timing that
these allegations have surfaced go well beyond suspicion. While ... they may be
serious or they might have no substance whatsoever, it shows control-freakery
of the worst kind by Starmer and his henchmen and women.
Ancient allegations against Moyle were cynically resurrected, having
originally been rejected, thus enabling the leadership to have a pretext for suspending
him. Similar behaviour by Jennie Formby, Corbyn’s General Secretarym in
suspending Chris Williamson in 2019 met with Moyle’s approval. Literally Moyle was
hoist by his own petard.
Chris Ward experenced a 7% swing against him and the Tory had a 14% swing
against her as the Green candidate Elaine Hills came within a whisker of the Tories. As
befits a former crony Ward was appointed Starmer’s PPS.
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I recently signed a petition to MPs including Chris Ward. Some weeks
later I got an email from him telling me ‘how
angry’ he was ‘at the frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza’.
The strange thing about his email is that not once did the word ‘genocide’
cross his lips. So I thought I would send him an email!
Dear Chris Ward,
You wrote (16 May) that
I share your
anger and outrageatthe frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza and much of the
occupied territories’.
I am pleased to hear that we agree on so much
because we didn’t last October when I wrote to you. You say that
Israel's decision to block aid into Gaza - and to effectively starve a civilian population that is already suffering terribly – is both cruel and completely indefensible.
Aamer Anwar Crushes Sky TV Presenter
I agree. However I note that you avoid using the
word ‘genocide’. Perhaps you can tell me what else is starvation other than an
intention to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, which is
the Geneva Conventiondefinition
of Genocide?
Words are cheap. What counts is what you don't say not what
you do say.
Israel has been imposing a starvation blockade on
Gaza since 2 March. Since 7 October it has waged a war on the Palestinians
in Gaza whilst doing its best to prevent aid whilst lying to the contrary.
Moshe Feiglin, an ex-Likud MK's genocidal comments
At the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza Defence
Minister Yoav Gallant declared that
‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no
electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed’ adding that ‘We are
fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’
It was not as if Israel’s leaders hid what their intentions were. Genocidal statements were made from Netanyahu down. Throughout this whole period you, Lammy and Starmer remained silent.
Law for
Palestine has documented over 500 examples of genocidal statements. Israel's Ministers made explicit their desire to ethnically cleanse and settle Gaza. For example Communications Minister Shlomo
Karhi said, on 28 January 2024 at a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza:
We must establish settlements. We need security forces. We need to settle this land because it’s our land.
This despite the decision of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Gaza was illegal. Gaza belongs to the Palestinians not Israel. When Russia made far more convincing claims to parts of Ukraine, with the agreement of the people of Crimea and the Donbass, Britain and Europe immediately slapped sanctions on Russia. Why the double standards?
‘Massacre’: Dozens
killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid
Even when aid was allowed in Israel did its best to
stop it being distributed and we had the flour massacres when starving people,
queuing for food, were murdered by Israel in cold blood. Even today, Israel is still blocking aid and the entry of aid lorries.
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'Lies'; Point-By-Point Fact Check Of Israeli PM's U.S. Congress Speech
Nothing Israel’s government says can be trusted.
They are proven liars. They murdered 5 year old Hind Rajab after falsely
assuring Red Crescent paramedics that they would be safe if they rescued her
from her parent’s car where the rest of her family lay dead. When the
paramedics reached Hind a tank opened fire killing them all.
Israel Deliberately Kills Kids - Hind Rajab's Murder Exposed As
DELIBERATE
Sky News investigates slaughter of Palestinian
family fleeing fighting
Israel’s lies about the murder of 15 Red Crescent workers are well known. Israel first claimed that the ambulances had approached ‘suspiciously’ without their lights on. When this was disproved by footage from a mobile phone found on one of the dead aid workers they switched to their usual lie - they were members of Hamas. Yet this government has continued to take the word of Israel’s genocidal leaders and army on trust.
On Tuesday David Lammy criticised the ‘intolerable’ and ‘extremist’ Israeli blockade and offensive. Indeed he employed almost every adjective except the one that was most appropriate. Israel’s starvation blockade of Gaza is genocidal. Are you prepared to call Israel’s policy, which is the same as the policy of the Nazis in the Polish Jewish ghettos, a Genocide?
New video contradicts Israeli account of Gaza aid convoy attack
I am not interested in how angry you are. I am more interested in what you intend to do. Lammy’s measures were pathetically inadequate – suspension of trade talks not trade. Nothing about halting arms supplies to continue the genocide. Token sanctions on settlers in the West Bank. All mouth and no trousers. Are you prepared to speak out and demonstrate that your anger is more than a form of words?
I want to ask you a few questions, bearing in mind you are in a unique position to make a difference being the PPS to Starmer.
i.
Will you call for the immediate halt of all
RAF flights overflying Gaza which provide intelligence to Israel’s killers?
Will you call for the end of any military co-operation with the IDF?
ii.
Will you support and call for the prosecution
of any British citizen who is found to have fought in Israel’s genocidal army?
iii.
Will you call for a complete end to the
arms trade withIsrael?
iv.
Will you make it a criminal offence to trade
with the settlements? You say that ‘There also needs to be an end to
Israeli settlement building.’ Good. Let’s impose sanctions on
trade with them.
v. Will you demand that the UK enforce the arrest warrants of the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and Gallant
Israeli school children's sing songs about how they hate and want to kill Arabs
vi.
Will you call for an end to the attacks on the
Palestine solidarity movement and the libel that opposition to Zionism equals anti-Semitism?
vii. Will
you call for the Government to jettison the IHRA which equates
opposition to genocide with anti-Semitism?
viii. Will
you call for sanctions on Israel as and until it becomes a state of its own
citizens rather than an apartheid, Jewish Supremacist state where Arabs are
subjects not citizens?
ix.
Will you also call for the removal of Hamas from
the list of proscribed ‘terrorist’ organisations? It is clear that it is Israel
not Hamas who are the terrorists.
What is happening in Gaza is a continuation of the
Nakba in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinian
refugees were driven from their homes to create a ‘Jewish’ state. Israel
has recently invaded Syria and Lebanon in order to capture more territory without
justification following the fall of Assad.
What is happening in Gaza is not a consequence of
October 7 but a continuation of the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and
genocide that began in 1948. October 7 was no different from the slave rebellions
and anti-colonial resistance of the past. As Omar Bartov, the Israeli holocaust
scholar wrote in Infinite License:
'On January 12,
1904, the Herero people of German Southwest Africa—today’s Namibia—launched a
series of attacks on scattered German farms in the territory... the German
settlers who had begun to arrive in the late nineteenth century increasingly
encroached on their grazing lands.
The rebels
destroyed many of the farms and killed more than a hundred settlers, mostly
sparing women and children. For the settlers the rebellion served as a final
proof of the need to eradicate the Herero, whom they described as “baboons.” ...
the German governor appealed to Berlin,
which sent some 10,000 soldiers. By August they had crushed the Herero
fighters. In October the German commander, Lieutenant General Lothar von
Trotha, issued what has come to be known as his Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination
order) to those who remained:
.... Any Herero
found inside the German frontier,... will be executed. I shall spare neither
women nor children. Most of the Herero were shot or died of thirst and hunger
in the desert to which they had been expelled. Several thousand were taken to
forced labor camps....
Germany’s famous Vergangenheitsbewältigung
(coming to terms with or overcoming the
past) was about the Holocaust, not long-forgotten colonial crimes. Only in 2021
did the German government officially apologize....
That remote
genocide at the dawn of the twentieth century shares some remarkable
similarities with the campaign of ethnic cleansing and annihilation prosecuted
by Israel in Gaza. Israel saw the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, in much the
same way that the Germans saw the Herero attack 119 years earlier: as
confirmation that the militant group was utterly savage and barbaric, that
resistance to Israeli occupation would always incline toward murder, and that
Gaza’s Palestinian population as a whole should be removed from the moral
universe of civilization.'
“GAS CHAMBERS” In Gaza: Prominent Israeli Demands “HOLOCAUST”
Those who define Israel’s genocide, as Lammy did, in terms of fighting terrorism or Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ are justifying what Israel has done. It is futile to ask Israel not to complete the Endlosung (Final Solution) of the Palestinians. Lammy and Starmer, by making October 7, rather than the Nakba, the reference point are justifying Netanyahu’s extermination of the Palestinians in exactly the same way as those who supported the genocide of the Herero.
There is no difference, apart from 120 years, between the German genocide of 1904 and the Zionist genocide of 2024. When Nissim Vaturi, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, says that there are ‘no innocents' and that Gaza should be ‘burned now’ or when MK Galit Distel Atbaryancalls for ‘Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.’ they are following in the footsteps of Von Trotha and Himmler.
When Israeli Channel 14 producer, Elad Barashi, posted on X:
‘Good morning, let there be a
Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.’ and writes ‘I can't understand the people here in
the State of Israel who don't want to fill Gaza with gas showers... or train
cars... and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.’
he is not an outlier. He is reflecting majority opinion among Israeli Jews.
When Israeli Jews were asked whether they supported
or opposed the idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid, food
and medicines, to Gaza residents, 68% of
them said they were opposed to allowing in aid, even if Hamas and UNWRA were
excluded from its distribution.
The exterminationist mentality of Israel’s Jewish citizens
is crystal clear. Israel is now echoing Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Israel
is a settler colonial state with the facade of democracy. It is an ethnocracy
and far from supporting its ‘right to exist’ we should be calling for its
dismantlement in order that the Palestinians can live.
If your anger is genuine Chris Ward, given that Starmer is a ‘Zionist without qualification’you have no choice but to resign as his PPS. It may be the one good thing you have done in your political life.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Greenstein