My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (3.9.24), seeking to expose the media bias amidst the horror of the genocide in Palestine. I didn’t choose the heading nor the edit, but the published version did it’s job. With insight, the march on the following Saturday, defying and beating police restrictions intended to undermine the organisation and provoke violence, saw 120,000 once again parade through London’s thoroughfares to the Israeli Embassy. The heat, the anger and outrage, is not dying down, particularly whilst over 400 more Gaza’s have been murdered this week.

The unexpurgated version below:

The general strike in Israel yesterday showed the power of organised workers. The Histradut, Israel’s trade union organisation, perhaps similar in form to Britain’s Trades Union Congress, called a mass strike to put pressure on the government to change its course. Production stopped, and with it, the economy.

It’s a lesson in where our potential power lies. If workers stop working, the power of government and rulers may be undermined.

But not all trade unions are the same. In some countries, including Israel, unions are directly allied with and controlled by their State. In other words, they are not independent of the employer class nor democratically controlled by their members. In the most perverse of circumstances, combative sections of the ruling class can call upon workers to strike in order for themselves to seize power from their opponents.

Currently, the warmonger Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is pursuing a strategy of genocide against the Palestinians, in part to protect his own skin from charges of corruption once he steps down from office. He is relying upon the support of far-Right politicians, some self-professed fascists, in order to remain in power.

Opposition politicians, and many sections of Israeli corporate businesses increasingly concerned with international boycotts and economic instability, would prefer a negotiated pause in fighting to regain some international credibility.

In this context, the general strike in Israel is not a call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza or any opposition to the illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestine. It is only a call for negotiated let-up in hostilities while the remaining hostages are released alive. Most of those on strike have no care for or affinity with the people of Gaza or the West Bank, and support the country’s current constitution that represents the separate and privileged development of Israeli citizens over all other peoples.

Conversely, in the United Kingdom, the trade union movement recognises Palestine and the Palestinian people. We demand not only an immediate end to the bombardment of Gaza but reparations for Israel’s illegal occupation, a demand that condemns the illegitimate military occupation of Palestinian territory since 1947, the blockade of Gaza and the militarisation with pass laws over the people of the West Bank.

So we must protest too, but independent of the campaign of the Histradut. We do not support settler-colonialism. The right to self-determination of the Palestinian people will not be conferred on them by the Israeli State.

The plight of Palestinians is a blight upon all humanity. Aid agencies have identified the bodies of more than 43,000 civilians, including 23,000 children, in the last 11 months of Israeli invasion. The extreme horror of enforced starvation and famine of more than three-quarters of a million human beings in Gaza is an international outrage, only deepened by the propaganda horror of a polio vaccination programme while the military bombing continues.

Polio is spread by faeces, the entire sewage networks of Gaza having been destroyed. The vaccinations represent not so much any humanitarian intervention but are clearly aimed at preventing the return of polio to neighbouring states should the Palestinians escape their open air prison.

Air strikes have left more than 42 million tonnes of debris in Gaza, toxic chemical and human remains spread under the rubble. This has been the most intense bombing campaign in history, the Israeli air force dropping more than 20 times more bombs per kilometre than the US did during the Vietnam War, and far greater amount of explosive power than during the entire Second World War.

For every direct death in the bombing, another 3 people have died indirectly due to disease or starvation. The credible Lancet medical journal in London estimates the deaths of some 186,000 Gazans since last October. Eighty percent of the population have been displaced with no shelter, fresh water or food, or anywhere to go.

Yet our Labour government continues to unconditionally support and arm Israel in these atrocities. The pathetic cancellation of a few of the more than 300 export licences granted for arms to Israel proves our government acceptance of genocide including starvation as a tool of war and subjugation.

Our media name and mourn the Israeli hostages taken on 7th October and killed in the fighting since, yet the Palestinian dead remain anonymous in their tens of thousands.

This scale of injustice should put fear into us all for the current state of human relations and the inhuman politics of war. Mass collective action on the streets and in the workplaces can force politicians to act. We will be on the streets of London in an another national demonstration this Saturday, marching to the Israeli embassy with trade union banners demanding Freedom for Palestine, now!