Backing a rogue state (The Morning Star)
WE have been treated to intensive media reports of the elections in Palestine and Israel over recent weeks. The Palestinian elections were held under occupation without freedom of movement for candidates and with campaigning banned. Nevertheless, a new national assembly was elected. Since Hamas, the winning party, does not recognise the state of Israel, it was denounced immediately. The US and others threatened to cut off aid and refuse recognition for the new government.
Yet last week’s Israeli elections were treated as “normal” by the Western media. The fact that one party leader had called for the assassination of peace group Gush Shalom’s co-founder Uri Avnery was hardly reported. The fact that openly fascist groups calling for the expulsion of all Arabs were contesting the poll went un-noticed by the West. The fact that Israel is constructing an illegal wall inside Palestinian territory was not deemed worthy of a mention.
Post-election analyses have shown that the same curious sense of “even-handedness” manoeuvres in Israel are seen as normal politics, while the democratic process which brought Hamas to power in Palestine is presented as exactly the opposite. The real context of the whole debate and reporting should start from a few basic facts:
€ Israel has been in breach of numerous UN resolutions on the occupation of Palestine ever since the 1967 six-day war.
€ The construction of the wall - sorry, “security fence” - has been declared illegal by the International Court and grabs yet more Palestinian land.
€ In Gaza, where the Israeli forces have, theoretically, withdrawn, the poorest and most overcrowded population on Earth lives subject to routine bombardment by Israeli forces, which undertake assassination strikes against selective targets.
€ Despite all the hype surrounding the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the building of settlements in the West Bank continues unabated and the endless security points there make travel for ordinary Palestinians very difficult and the effective administration of public services impossible.
€ Jerusalem, the centre of so much learning and faith, has been cut off from the West Bank as Israel attempts to annex it illegally by creating “facts on the ground.” There was only muted condemnation when Israeli forces stormed Jericho prison recently after the withdrawal of US and British monitors. But this was an invasion of one country by another.
Among all the column inches devoted to condemning Iran for developing civil nuclear power, the media routinely ignore the obvious fact that Israel not only has an active nuclear reactor but also has a large number of nuclear warheads.
There is nothing normal about the state of Israel and its behaviour in the Middle East.
A long time ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation made a historic compromise by accepting the existence of the state of Israel. In return, it was meant to be granted peace and recognition.
Since that time, the reward for the Palestinian people has instead been poverty and land theft, execution and bombardment. The myriad of extreme positions presented to the Israeli electorate hardly provided a promising platform for long-term peace. But the supine way in which the US underwrites the Israeli economy and continues to provide arms and supplies is the real heart of the matter. Any other country which so flagrantly broke international law would be subject to sanctions.
Apparently, in the warped world of Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice, only Palestine has to prove its democratic credentials and fitness for negotiations. <ENDS>
We need to be policy-obsessed first:
THE idea that the sum total of politics is a personal rift between Gordon Brown and his neighbour Tony Blair is way off the mark.
It’s true that, by announcing that he was going to leave before the next election, Blair became the first British Prime Minister to declare his own departure ahead of time. Unfortunately, like moths to a lamp, most political commentators have become entranced by this issue and seem incapable of assessing the real political decisions facing the government and the Labour Party.
Instead of debate on personality, there should be a serious debate in the labour movement about policy objectives. No-one is disputing the fact that there has been a huge increase in spending on education and health - and the military. But huge problems surround the real cost of spending in health and education.
The government has used the private finance initiative to build new facilities. PFI has brought with it exorbitant charges or even the handover of operations to the private sector. It has also contributed to the deficits and job losses that we are now seeing in many hospitals.
PFI is massively unpopular and wasteful and any new leader ought to be committed to funding public spending in the traditional way, which is through direct government borrowing. This is both cheaper and more secure and keeps public services in public hands.
The Labour Representation Committee’s Public Services Not Private Profit campaign, which is backed by 13 public-sector unions, shows that this issue will not go away.
Its core demand of a halt to privatisation has a huge public resonance.
Another area of public concern is the education system. A decent education system for everyone has always been a core labour movement aim. People who have spent their political lives defending the principle of comprehensive secondary education are understandably aggrieved when they are told that the formation of trust schools, the sidelining of local education authorities and the threat to national pay bargaining are progressive policies.
The pensions debate also goes to the heart of labour movement principles. The whole point of the universal state pension is to recognise the part that people play in society during their working life and to give them a decent guaranteed level of retirement income in return. Former CBI director general Adair Turner, the man handed the responsibility of investigating pensions, graphically illustrated the problems with pensions provision in the UK.
But the solution is not to force workers into dubious savings schemes or to work longer, but to ensure that the state pension is set at a living rate and that public-sector pension schemes, which are guaranteed by the government, are honoured.
We need to have this debate before considering personalities. Labour was elected to replace the discredited Tory government. We were not elected to copy their policies or privatise public services.
The Sunday discussion programmes would do better to take a vow of silence on the squabbling neighbours in Downing Street and discuss the things that actually affect ordinary people.
€ Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
