An Amendment and Some Further Thoughts

When we are wrong we like to say so. We have even apologised in the past!

We carried the title “Pro Hamas? Join the Greens”.  That has been amended to “Pro Hamas?”

This (Pro Hamas?), we feel is a legitimate question aimed at Cllr Higgins who “couldn’t agree more” with a fellow Green councillor, (not from Newham), who advocated protesting “in solidarity” with and “ending the occupation of” Palestine.

The second part of our title could suggest that we believe that the Green Party or a majority of its members are supportive of Hamas.  Frankly, we think that that implication is unlikely, at least we hope it is. So, we’ve taken it down. We shouldn’t have suggested that the Green Party was supportive of Hamas as an organisation.

We have left the question, “Pro Hamas?”, because it is a fair question given the support Cllr Higgins offered to the demand to end “the occupation of Palestine”.

We would like to delve a little deeper into what it means to call for an end to the “occupation” of Palestine.

Jacob Rees Mogg and Michael Walker of Novara Media had a rather heated exchange of views on this very issue on GB News (16/10/23). In the exchange Walker asserts that freedom/ending the occupation does not necessarily mean ridding Israel (Palestine) of the Jews. Although it is not explicit, he does seem to argue for a single Palestinian state, and that has been the position of the far-left for some decades. It is repeated by a spokesman for the PSC on the BBC (here.)

This is one of those statements, dare we say it, a little like that of Cllr Catt, where there appears to be some ambiguity. To what extent that ambiguity is deliberate must be judged by the reader.

Walker asserts that ending the occupation does not mean getting rid of the Jews. (This is not the position of Hamas.) He prays in aid of several organisations with an international reputation, (e.g. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). The gist of his argument is that Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel are living under an Israeli apartheid system. Essentially, if you end Israeli apartheid, Palestinians will be free.

Yeah… How do you get rid of “Israeli apartheid” without getting rid of Israel?

As a slogan, therefore, it might make more sense if it demanded “Freedom for Palestinians”. But it doesn’t. Our suspicions are that this is simply sophistry. 

We have struggled to think of what “freedom for Palestine” might look like. The examples of Israel’s neighbours (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt) do not give us a great deal of comfort. The best that can be said of the Fatah controlled PA is that it is corrupt and monstrously inefficient. Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for a decade and a half, is brutal in the extreme and has Jew hatred at its heart, (see paras 7 and 32). It has no desire for a “Palestine” that is either inclusive of Jews or democratic.

From Art 7 of the Hamas Charter: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews)”. It is echoed in their speeches, “We must attack every Jew, everywhere, we must slaughter and kill them with Allah’s help”. When Ismail Haniyeh chants, “from the river to the sea…” he is not calling for a democratic secular state. He is quite clear; he is under a religious duty to eradicate every Jew from the face of the earth. Perhaps it is not surprising that some observers are not convinced by the mollifying reasonableness of Walker and the PSC.

As to what replaces Israel, Hamas’ main backers, Iran and Qatar do not strike us as models either of free and democratic states or states seeking good relations with Jews. Minorities do not do well in Arab lands. Yezidis, Mandeans, Zoroastrians, Kurds, Turkomans, Druze, Arab Copts, Catholics and Orthodox all continue to suffer and flee from neighbouring states. We would have added Jews to the list, but now there are hardly any Jews left in Arab countries so it’s a bit superfluous. Given that life was clearly so good for them in Arab lands, we are not sure why this is.

This is when proponents of the ‘single, democratic Palestinian state’ argue for this as a model in “Palestine”, we are not surprised that Israelis look around them and tend to say, “no thanks”. 

Back to Walker. Freedom for Palestinians, he seems to suggest, is the same as asserting freedom for Palestine. 

Those who demand “freedom” only ever want freedom from Israel; the execution of gays and political opponents in Gaza does not seem to register on the monitors of the pro-Palestinian left. Personal, sexual and political freedom does not exist in Gaza, (and arguably on the West Bank) in any way that we would recognise in the west. And Gaza bears an uncanny resemblance to a mafia state (run by terror in which the bosses get rich).

This gives rise to the role of the useful idiot. The “Freedom for Palestine”/ “single democratic state” narrative is attractive and can be quite deceptive. The favoured newspaper of the left in the US, The Washington Post fell into this trap and offered a correction.

But we earn from Cllr Higgins that he favours a two-state solution. Good for him. So do we, though the prospect seems to be further away now.

We also learn that we are a “right-wing hate group”. We’re mortified. 

We do have a further question for him. 

Just why would someone who purports to support the existence of Israel encourage his readers to participate in a movement that explicitly does not?

The slogans on the protests included “Free Palestine”, “End Israeli Apartheid”, “Exist, Resist, Return”, “From the River to the Sea”. We suggest that these are all dog whistles for those seeking an end to the Jewish state. Why would anyone who supports a two-state solution also support those who call for Israel’s destruction? 

As always, our pages are free to Cllr Higgins if he would like to reply. We won’t edit his reply, but we will respond.

NB: The council members on October 16th discussed a motion tabled by Cllr Rohit Dasgupta and Cllr Mumtaz Khan. (It is appended below this article)