The genocide in Palestine is fuelling a major attack on democratic rights and civil liberties in the Western countries, including Britain. Here, the Starmer government is involved in up to its neck, sending weapons all the way through the 16 months of slaughter in Gaza, and sharing ‘intelligence’ with the genocidal Israeli forces that have undoubtedly killed hundreds of thousands of Gaza people, mainly women and children. Trump himself gave it away when he talked, during his tirade calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza so that it can be turned into a ‘Riviera’, of 1.8 million people supposedly having to leave Gaza. Gaza’s population before the current genocide was 2.3 million. That means that the new US administration considers that Israel has already killed half a million Palestinians over the period since 7th October 2023. That is the biggest genocidal slaughter since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. And it clearly has not finished yet.
Starmer endorsed that slaughter from the beginning. He defended the speech of Yoav Gallant, then Israeli defence minister, who said on 8th October 2023 that Israel was fighting ‘human animals” in Gaza, would “act accordingly” and allow them “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas”. Some pointed out that the Nazis, in their death camps, did not generally seek to deprive victims of water since it led to such a rapid death by dehydration. Gallant, along with Netanyahu has as is well known, has been issued with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity because of these very actions. But as is also well known, when Starmer the genocidaire (a.k.a. “Der Stűrmer”) was interviewed shortly after Gallant’s speech by Nick Ferrari on LBC, he defended Israel’s “right” to carry out these genocidal measures against the Palestinian people. So Starmer, and his cohorts, are deeply complicit in the crimes against humanity that Netanyahu and Gallant have already been indicted for.
Of course, we as Marxists have no confidence in hypocritical bourgeois institutions like the International Criminal Court, and the UN’s judicial arm, the International Court of Justice. We know full well that they are usually used to indict those who the imperialists want to dispose of in the Global South, or the leaders of workers states etc. The latest victim being former president Dutuerte of the Philippines, whose crimes are a small fraction of those of the Zionists – his real crime is not being a Western puppet. But with the genocide in Gaza, the first live-streamed genocide in history, the mass popular reaction worldwide was of such magnitude that it could not be ignored. The indictments of Netanyahu and Gallant were the product of such enormous worldwide mass pressure and all those involved are terrified of the mass movement. That is the overriding reason for the attacks on democratic rights here – the pro-Zionist political class here, reflecting the politics of the ruling class, is terrified of this mass movement and looking for ways to limit it and defeat it.
On top of the usual divide and rule tactics of the ruling class, over whose rights are being promoted over those of others in their hierarchy of bigotry, we get the constant erosion of civil liberties, a great danger to the left, the working-class movement and all victims of capitalism.
“Freedom of speech” is supposed to be an important indicator of any democratic system of government, but laws against “hate speech”, originally sold as protecting the oppressed and victims of racism, are turned into the opposite. Suppressing freedom of expression by modifying ‘permissible’ language and vocabulary – like the BBC hacks who object to ‘genocide’ being used because it is ‘emotive’. The regime of Zionist supporters and lackeys we live under is systematically cracking down, with fraudulent charges, against those who denounce the genocide they are participants in. So, in the name of supposedly defending the rights of Jews to freedom of worship, demonstrations outside the state broadcaster, which actively promotes propaganda that excuses and hides the genocide, are being banned by the state. Thus, we had the arrest of Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal, leading activists of the Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in an obvious piece of police malfeasance, lying and duplicity on 18th January in Trafalgar Square. This after the National Palestine Solidarity march had been banned from assembling in Portland Place, near the BBC Headquarters, on the transparent pretext that in a backstreet half-a-kilometre away there is a synagogue that none of the marchers have the slightest interest in and most were unaware of even. Its perfectly obvious that the order for this act of police fraud so blatant that, if it is repeated in court, would amount to flagrant perjury, came from the pro-genocide racist gangsters at the top of the government, Starmer, and his Home Secretary Cooper.
Cowardly Zionists and their Racist Fantasies.
These far-right fraudsters are typical of cowardly Zionists. They don’t dare to openly admit the racist hatred of Palestinians that drives them. They pretend that they are ‘concerned’ because Jewish people are supposedly worried and threatened by large groups of supporters of Palestinian rights assembling in London. But they are simply lying. Jewish left-wingers are being arrested and abused by cops acting on the orders of genocidal criminal politicians, alongside non-Jewish socialists and anti-racists. All kind of activists are being picked up. The Zionist zealots in the government and the police force are equal opportunity thugs and terrorists – they abuse people of any background who oppose their genocide. The list of Palestine supporters who have been abused and arrested on the orders of these racist scum is long and illustrious, and worth spelling out.
Absurdly also, the proscription of the political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whose radicalism is rooted in different trends within Islam, Sunni and Shia, have resulted in many unlikely people being accused of being supportive of these movements. Of course, you don’t need to be sympathetic to such religious views to understand the issue. You just need to share the understanding of Karl Marx, that in such terrible situations, religion becomes “the sigh of the oppressed creature” and “the heart of a heartless world”, to understand why so many of the world’s most oppressed people, targeted by genocide for three quarters of a century, embrace religious radicalism.
The phoney smears of anti-Semitism are becoming a laughing-stock. How can they not be when an 80-year-old survivor of the Nazi holocaust, Stephen Kapos, is interviewed by the police for a supposed breach of a directive under the Public Order Act that claims to have been motivated by some desire to protect Jewish people at synagogues from non-existent anti-Semitic harassment? The allegations of Islamist ‘terrorism’ are equally surreal. There are the ridiculous allegations that a Jewish leftist, with decades of political activity like Tony Greenstein is supposedly a supporter of Hamas, which he is to face trial for in January 2026. This is about as likely as the Pope converting to Zen Buddhism, or Charles III announcing that he is seeking a sex-change.
It is right to mock the morons responsible for such rubbish, but the attacks on democratic rights that flow from these scams are deadly serious. There is a long list. Aside from those already mentioned, a wide range of leading activists have been preposterously accused of giving support to ‘terrorism’ by these racist degenerates. Or supposedly being a danger to ‘public order’ and a threat to Jews. The former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and his one-time Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, were questioned by the police under caution after the Met Police’s perjurious stunt in Trafalgar Square, which was captured on film several times – the cops waved through marchers who wanted to lay wreaths to murdered Gazan children in Trafalgar Square, only to arrest leaders like Chris Nineham of those who did so.
As well as Tony Greenstein, a whole range of people have been arrested, in some cases charged, had their phones and electronic devices confiscated on the basis of mendacious smears of either anti-Semitism, support for terrorism, or similar outlandish nonsense. These include Asa Winstanley of The Electronic Intifada, whose electronics were stolen by the police last October in a ridiculous 5am fishing expedition that seems to have resulted in no charges. This is transparently because he writes about Palestine and Zionist crimes and hence has the enmity of Zionist gangsters.
The same thing happened to prolific pro-Palestinian writer Sarah Wilkinson a few weeks earlier, when 12 anti-terrorism cops raided her home, stole her electronics, her passport and even her mother’s ashes. They seized her and took her on a frightening journey when at one point she even suspected she had been kidnapped by criminals posing as police – deliberate, sadistic terror tactics. She was bailed to be supposedly ‘investigated’ later, but it’s clear that whatever the cops have in mind, it is thought and opinion that is being persecuted and has nothing to do with any terrorism.
A Lengthening List of the Framed and Abused by Der Stűrmer
The list of those either detained under so-called ‘anti-terrorism’ laws for activities that have nothing to do with terrorism is getting longer and longer. Other victims include well-known activists such anti-Zionist academic David Miller, detained as he returned from covering Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon as a journalist. As months earlier was journalist Richard Medhurst, initially detained at a British airport, and later accused by Austrian police of being a Hamas member, which ought to give rise to suspicion of drug use by the cops, so ridiculous is the supposition. Natalie Strecker, an activist in Jersey, was likewise arrested in Jersey, where the local press gave her sympathetic coverage – almost unknown elsewhere in the UK.
Richard Barnard, a leading figure in the direct-action group Palestine Action, also faces three fanciful charges of supporting Hamas. At least Palestine Action, whose tactics of mobilising direct action against companies, some Israeli, involved in producing weapons for Israel have resulted in defeats for the Zionist killer machine in Britain. The Filton 18 are political prisoners in that cause today. But those politicians responsible are hard put to equate destroying weaponry used to kill children with ‘terrorism’. Juries have on a number of occasions acquitted those accused of such direct actions, which is what has led corrupt politicians on both sides of the Tory-Labour divide to interfere with jury trials, trying to nobble juries with restrictions on what those accused are allowed to say in their defence.
The current obsession, using online AI and metadata tools to pursue vendettas against individuals, groups, professions and even whole nationalities using the weaponisation of spurious ‘hate speech’, resulted in the expulsion of many thousands from the Labour Party, during the Corbyn period and afterwards. But Starmer as PM is seeking to enforce the same scam on society as a whole.
We see independent journalists arrested at airports (thereby losing their individual rights as journalists to refuse to answer questions as well as to protect their sources) to identify their contacts on all their electronic devices. High profile people are targeted by the authorities, and their freedom to associate with causes they freely support threatened to browbeat the masses into complying with the state’s determination to outlaw solidarity itself. The criminalisation of effective protest movements, from climate change to antiwar movements is more and more exposing that the state is there to defend profit.
The increasing use of police powers to hold without charge, to impose onerous bail conditions to amount to a sentence before trial – the right to a speedy trial being denied. Delaying tactics in bringing people to trial, and the substitution of magistrate courts instead of trial by jury by the shutting of courts. Ever-expanding delays of trial dates have meant that people who are summoned for interviews, allowed to go without charge only to be later arrested for crimes which bear little or no resemblance to the circumstances and events that happened, have results in severe health and financial outcomes, even when the victims have been completely exonerated. Like the lawfare carried out against Jeremy Corbyn, only to drop the case at the last minute knowing that it would result in unequal financial costs to the defendant relative to the litigant.
The Zionisation of the police is turning the clock back to the 1970s and 1980s in terms of open police racism. One recalls the days when the cops rampaged through Broadwater Farm beating truncheons on their riot shields chanting “come on n****rs” (though they came up one short). Zionist thuggery is bringing those days back. The recent charges against Waseem Yusuf in Tower Hamlets on charges of ‘assault’ is a case in point. The cops were filmed repeatedly last year repeatedly punching him in the face for carrying a Palestinian flag. Independent film evidence showed this was clearly unprovoked police brutality, and there was a major public scandal. MP’s demanded explanations; the IOPC was called in. But now the story has fallen out of the media, the victim of assault is turned into an alleged assailant of the police by lying, racist prosecutors and corrupt cops. These are increasingly common actions of the police, the judicial system and the ruling class, a serious attack on basic democratic norms, replacing them with unlawful imprisonment and attempts to nobble the jury system by far-right bigots in high office. Democratic rights are under concerted attack, and Zionism and Zionists should be considered a dangerous threat to our democratic rights. And not just in the United States – Starmer’s government shares all the anti-democratic, racist politics of Donald Trump in its hatred of Palestinian people and anyone who champions them against the monsters who are trying to wipe them out.
