Brutal double standards
JEREMY CORBYN on how the British state is helping the oppression of Palestine
ON Monday night, Arab-language channel Al Hiwar committed two hours of its London studio broadcasting time to host an appeal for the life of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent who has been seized in Gaza.
A remarkable range of supporters of the Palestinian people, including London Mayor Ken Livingstone, National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear and Ismail Patel of Friends of Al-Aqsa, pleaded for Johnson's life.
The BBC correspondent is not the first journalist to be abducted in Gaza, but, usually, the captives have been released very quickly.
In January, I joined a protest vigil in Ramallah to mourn the death of a Palestinian journalist killed by an Israeli incursion into the West Bank city. The event also demanded the release of a Peruvian photojournalist who was then being held in Gaza. He was set free a few days later.
Johnston's imprisonment does no good whatsoever to the Palestinian cause. He was the only non-Palestinian journalist who has remained in Gaza since the election of Hamas last year.
His reports graphically illustrate the plight of Gaza's population, who are effectively living in a sprawling, overcrowded open prison.
The backdrop to Monday's broadcast showed images of Israeli tanks destroying a newly planted forest to remove "cover" for potential assailants, while, on another screen, there was footage of a solitary figure digging in the sand planting new trees. It was a powerful image that portrayed the ongoing existence of hope in the fact of the reality of a brutal occupation.
Johnston's voice reached the world and was able to credibly tell a wider audience that the Palestinian people were suffering in way that is usually ignored. Those people who are holding him are only damaging the Palestinian cause.
Rapid recognition of the new unity government in Ramallah would certainly help to both establish the authority of the Palestinian elected representatives and bring a sense of hope instead of despair to Gaza.
The new Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti, an independent from the Palestinian National Initiative, explained the problem well in a press conference on Sunday.
He accused the international community of pursuing a policy of "double standards" towards Israel, whose war crimes continue as the region is dragged into an ever-deepening vortex of violence.
Since the formation of the new government in mid-March, 23 Palestinians and 18 Israelis have been killed. These tragedies include the shooting in the head of 17-year-old woman Bushra Barghish during an "arrest." Dr Barghouti concluded from this that the invading forces were operating a "shoot-to-kill" policy.
The original plan put forward jointly by Palestinian and Arab governments set out a four-point strategy which included the formation of a government, a comprehensive peace initiative, a complete ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners and recognition of the Palestinian Authority.
The refusal of the international community to recognise the results of the Palestinian parliamentary elections is at the root of the latest crisis. By starving Palestine of aid or diverting it into non-governmental organisations and selected programmes, it has created a pauper state.
The message coming from the West is quite simple - Palestinians are not trusted to adminster themselves.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign general secretary Betty Hunter has written to MPs to urge the British government to resume direct aid to Palestine, to ensure that all public-sector salary arrears are met, that Israel releases all the Palestinian tax revenues that it is holding illegally and that the US should remove its banking sanctions.
The government seems strangely reluctant to make progress on this issue. Following a meeting with International Development Secretary Hilary Benn, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was told that Britain was continuing to give £30 million funding per year, all delivered through NGOs, and that the EU overall had increased its aid to £442 million.
Benn conceded that the formation of a new government was a step forward, but he said that it had to recognise the "quartet principles."
Israel is in breach of 60 UN resolutions and yet receives no international sanction of any kind. Maybe Israel should be asked to say what its borders actually are, to withdraw from its illegal settlements, to release Palestinian prisoners and to end its illegal occupation.
The anti-fascist fight must start again IN APRIL 1977, the National Front, which was then on the rise in terms of activity and membership, attempted to march from Wood Green in north London to a rally in New Southgate around five miles away. It was not stopped, but a mass demonstration severly impeded its members' progress.
Last Saturday, Haringey Trades Council marked the 30th anniversary of this event with a short ceremony on the very spot where the "battle of Wood Green" took place.
The NF march became common knowledge a few weeks before and a group of us from the Labour Party, trades council and left groups organised a counter-demonstration, despite having been told that we were in danger of giving the oxygen of publicity to the fascist organistion.
Five thousand people turned up for the counter-protest and heard stirring speeches from the late Bernie Grant, Ted Knight and Tariq Ali as we attempted to stop the fearsome fascists from spreading hate through multiracial north London.
Local paper the Hornsey Journal produced a memorable front page to mark the occasion, with a swastika showing photos of NF members and the gas chambers of the nazis alongside the headline "Forty years on..."
Following the relative success of the Wood Green counter-protest, the NF was stopped by even larger numbers in Lewisham later that summer. The Anti-Nazi League was founded and local anti-racist groups such as the Haringey Labour Movement Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist Campaign made life impossible for the NF.
Tragically, we now have to do it all over again. Next month, the British National Party will be fielding 750 candidates in the local elections, spreading its poisonous message that housing, health, education and employment problems are caused by multiethnic Britain.
Just like the nazis in the 1920s and '30s, its aim is to divide communities and spread hate.
Only the unity and strength of working-class movements can defeat these latter-day nazis and address the issues of inequality which have grown out of the worship of market forces. New Labour should take note that fascism rises from despair.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
