From Annexation To Liberation

One's view of the Palestinian struggle is the litmus test of one's attitude towards people of colour in general. Including, as notably among upper-caste Hindu nationalists, whether or not one recognises oneself as being a person of colour, politically black.

Yesterday morning, it was uncontroversial to say that Israeli state agents toured the world, and welcomed the world, in order to teach the tactics that they had developed to perfection for the killing people of colour, especially young men, with maximum enjoyment and with absolute impunity.

One such tactic was the particular application of the knee to the throat, the documentation of which was vast. And all of these tactics were also capable of deployment against dissidents in general, which made them particularly useful to the policing of the internal colonies of the right wing of the British Labour Party. Or, as it must simply be called today, the Labour Party, to which there is now nothing else.

Most people had never heard of any of this. But no one who had done so would ever have denied that it was the case. The split was between those who approved of it, and those who did not. As of yesterday afternoon, however, it is forbidden as "anti-Semitic" to say that these things are happening at all, and it is required to pretend that it is all made up by, well, who, exactly? Here we go again with the shadowy and world-dominating Elders of Anti-Zion.

The ground has been laid for the preemptive silencing of any dissent from the impending Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley. That is not a new idea. 20 or so years ago, Hilary Armstrong practically screamed at me that I was "a colonialist" and "an imperialist" for presuming to criticise an annexation scheme that was then current, a criticism that she was adamant that the presumably anti-imperialist Blair Government would never advance. She was right. It never did.

The Israeli Government's position is that those territories had in any case been "liberated" in 1967. That argument asserts, at least implicitly, that Israel is the only legitimate state in the whole of the former British Mandate of Palestine, and that, while at a push other people might be permitted to live there in the service of Jewish interests, only Jews have any right to do so.

Once the annexation has been announced, then I defy any member of the Labour Party to do as the Conservative Government is hinting that it might very well do, and deny that argument. Expulsion from the Labour Party would follow forthwith. Unlike the Conservative Party, the Labour Party is bound by the IHRA Definition. It is forbidden to question that ideology, just as it is to point out the well-known reality of Israel's global police brutality industry.

If you have a Labour MP, or a Labour-led council, or both, then you are now under Israeli Occupation. At the Jordan Valley's moment of annexation, you, too, will be annexed. You should behave accordingly, especially towards the occupying power that is the Labour Party.

For example, the removal of the Leader of Durham County Council from his seat next year is now central to the Palestinian struggle. As the Israeli State's teaching of neck-kneeling to the murderers of George Floyd illustrates, the Palestinian struggle is central to the anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle throughout the world.

And the anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle is central to the struggle for economic equality and for international peace. Therefore, it is now central to the struggle for economic equality and for international peace that the Leader of Durham County Council be removed from his seat next year. Some of us know just the man to do it.