British prime minister Keir Starmer and the governing Labour party have shown themselves to be utterly complicit in the Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza, doing nothing except make largely meaningless statements. But their latest actions are jaw-dropping. After members of a group called Palestine Action were accused of vandalizing tanks, the government took the extraordinary step of not only banning the group but going to the extreme of also making it a crime to publicly support the organization. This blatant attack on the right to political speech has infuriated people and brought them out in defiance, challenging the government to arrest them. Here is one report from August 9th.
Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the United Kingdom over the past month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression.
More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” That was enough for police to step in.
But as the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers sparred over the number of arrests as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable.
“The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing ‘terrorism’ offenses, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home,” Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said in a statement. “This is a major embarrassment to (the government), further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government’s own crimes.”
…On Friday, police said the demonstration was unusual in that the protesters wanted to be arrested in large numbers so as to place a strain on police and the broader criminal justice system.
Then last weekend another major protest was organized in opposition to the Israeli terror and genocide in Gaza and in support of the group Palestine Action. A large number of elderly people carried signs saying that they opposed Israeli genocide and supported Palestine Action, the latter designed to be an explicit violation of the law. Nearly nine hundred people were arrested. Watch as police, while being taunted with cries of “Shame!” from the onlookers, drag or carry away elderly men and women who had come out to demonstrate.
Starmer and Labour should be ashamed of themselves for being such enablers of Israel’s war crimes. It also is a sign of how Starmer grovels before Trump, hoping that by backing Israel, he will be able to curry favor with him , ignoring the fact that going down that road will likely lead to further humiliation, as Simon Tisdall writes. Tisdall points to the experience of India’s Narendra Modi, Frances Emmanuel Macron, the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum who also tried to grovel and got little in return. He then goes on:
Leaders from Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and South Africa have all attempted to ingratiate themselves, to varying degrees. They still haven’t fared well.
All this should set red lights flashing for Britain’s Keir Starmer ahead of Trump’s state visit in 10 days’ time. The prime minister’s unedifying Trump-whisperer act has produced little benefit to date, at high reputational cost. Starmer apparently believes his handling of the US relationship is a highlight of his first year in office. Yet Trump ignores his Gaza ceasefire pleas and opposes UK recognition of a Palestinian state. He hugely boosted Putin, Britain’s nemesis, with his half-baked Alaska summit. US security guarantees for postwar Ukraine are more mirage than reality. His steel tariffs and protectionist policies continue to hurt UK workers.
His second state visit is an appalling prospect. The honour is utterly undeserved. It’s obvious what Trump will gain: a royal endorsement, a chance to play at being King Donald, a privileged platform from which to deliver his corrosive, divisive populist-nationalist diatribes at a moment of considerable social fragility in the US and UK. Polls suggest many Britons strongly oppose the visit; and most don’t trust the US. So what Starmer thinks he will gain is a mystery. The fleeting goodwill of a would-be dictator who is dismantling US democracy and wrecking the global laws-based order championed by the UK is a poor return.
British prime ministers of either party seem to be under the sad delusion that the so-called ‘special relationship’ that the US and the UK supposedly have gives them some privileges, when all it results in is them fawning over US presidents while getting humiliated in return. And yet they keep coming back for more, with Starmer following the same dreary pattern. ‘Shameless’ does not even begin to describe their behavior.
The “special relationship” was always a fiction, certainly once Thatcher and Reagan were gone. I can’t explain or excuse Starmer’s actions. The law is widely ridiculed. They’ve arrested a man for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt (publicising the well-known claymation character Morph), arrested a man for holding up a (legal) cartoon he (legally) photocopied from Private Eye magazine, arrested a blind man after carefully establishing that he did in fact know what was written on the sign he was holding, and arrested hordes of clearly harmless pensioners. If they’re trying to look shifty and ridiculous, they’re doing a good job. If they’re trying to stir up anti-semitic hate, they’re probably doing a pretty good job of that, too.
All they appear to be achieving is provoking thousands of people who wouldn’t normally stir themselves to protest to actually get out onto the streets and make a fuss.
I look forward to a time when, little by little, it becomes less and less acceptable to appease Israel. It’ll never happen in the US, of course -- Yanks will always be supplicant lapdogs to Israel, they simply can’t afford not to be -- but gradually, sentiment in the civilised world seems to be shifting, very slowly, to an attitude less tolerant of Israel’s bullshit. Perhaps within my lifetime we’ll see real movement -- boycotts, sanctions, divestment. It worked with South Africa. It could work with Israel, especially as the economic axis of the world shifts away from the US and toward China, whose government isn’t infested with Zionist lobbyists. I don’t honestly think I’ll live to see justice for the Palestinians, but I do think if it comes, it will come -- indirectly -- from China. The US and its support won’t be an irrelevance for decades yet… but its dominance won’t last forever. And when it’s over, there’s a queue of people who’d like a word with Israel. I wouldn’t want to be there when that time comes. Fortunately I’ll be long gone, most likely.
It is a given that Israel punches way above its weight when it comes to getting other, much larger countries, to kowtow to it. Can anyone recommend a good book, or article, that dives into the whys and the hows of this phenomenon?
It seems to me, perhaps naively, that the best outcome would be for everyone in the area to be able to live a secure and reasonably comfortable life. The path we are on and have been on for decades does not and cannot lead to that outcome. So what’s the deal? Why must we all be complicit in genocide and, in general, a totally dysfunctional approach to making life better for the actual human beings in the Middle East?
joelgrant @ # 2: Can anyone recommend a good book, or article, that dives into the whys and the hows of this phenomenon?
I haven’t read it myself, but the primary reference seems to be John Mearshimer & Stephen M. Walt’s The Israel Lobby (2007), which drew accolades when published but has had relatively little follow-up. Both authors have serious academic & policy credentials.
The book grew from a long 2006 article in the London Review of Books, still online.
I disagree that the book The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt had little effect. It broke through the wall of silence that prevented people from discussing the pernicious actions of the Israel Lobby for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. Because two highly respected academics from prestigious institutions were the authors of the book, it opened the door for others to openly criticize what had merely been whispered about before. I would claim that the book had a significant effect in bringing out into the open the workings of the Israel lobby in the US.
Back in 2007 I had a three part series of posts where I discussed the Mearsheimer-Walt book. You can read part 1, part 2, and part 3.
re: Pierce and Mano
Thanks, I will start by reading Mano’s articles.
OK, I read Mano’s articles. Very interesting. One comment I would make, looking back from the perspective of 2025 is that the book under discussion may have brought the Israel lobby more into the open but I do not see where there has been a jot or tittle of positive change in US policy (and apparently, UK policy as well). We are not openly supporting genocide and even outright ethnic cleansing, as the latest threat is to eliminate Gaza and replace it with Jared Kushner’s condos.
the US is fascist and is supporting genocide. Let’s all cheer for the US of A.
The “special relationship” the UK has with the USA is the sort of relationship where the USA has to keep reminding the UK not to tell its mother about it.
I wish I had time to read our esteemed host’s three posts right now, but the world calls.
I meant by “relatively little follow-up” that the book The Israel Lobby did not result in more exposés and analyses (at least that I saw). The NRA scandals, for instance, did -- for a too-brief while -- generate some “in the pocket of the gun lobby” discussion of various politicians.
Today, Israel struck Doha, the capital of Qatar, with missiles, supposedly in a “precision strike” against Hamas leadership there. Netanyahu obviously feels secure in expanding his war because Uncle Donald will protect him against retaliation. [Insert rage & vomit emojis here.]
Finally got around to reading those three posts. Good, clear analysis.
What struck me most was a quotation from the book:
That line has now been crossed by both the Trump maladministration and the Anti-Defamation League, among others. In many ways, the Zionists are their own worst enemies -- no wonder they overlap so much with today’s Republicans.
On the news this morning: “US issues rare criticism of Israel Airstrike in Qatar”. Still no word about the 80 years of atrocities Israel has committed against Gaza.
Yeah, it’s really been very, very noticeable that the vast majority of people being arrested (under the Terrorism Act, let’s not forget) for these protests have been perfectly harmless, mild mannered, middle class pensioners -- many of them visibly frail, whilst being manhandled by multiple strapping big beefy police officers. It really is a case study in how to do non-violent protest, and my hat is off to every single one of them -- they are god-damn heroes, at a time when we are sorely in need, and when they would surely have thought themselves long past having to put themselves on the line for the good of the country.
It’s also very, very noticeable how much of a contrast there is with the mobs of rough-looking leery young men -- many with extensive prior convictions for assault, affray, criminal damage, and domestic violence -- engaged in the rash of anti-refugee “protests” around the country, and how differently they are being policed.
On the one hand, you’ve got an 80-year old retired vicar in a wheelchair holding up a polite sign, while on the other, there’s a pissed up football hooligan and convicted wife beater assaulting police officers in the course of attempting to commit arson and mass murder -- guess which one gets hauled off and charged with offences carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years prison under the Terrorism Act?
I didn’t exactly have high hopes for the Starmer government to start with, but I’m really astonished at how absolutely fucking terrible they’ve been. It’s not like this is an isolated example either -- they’ve been amazingly awful on everything. I mean, obviously the Tories have set some remarkable records on that score, and those still stand, but it’s almost like Starmer is trying to be as bad as possible.