Jewish Labour Movement introduces shadow chancellor John McDonnell to a delegation from the Youth Wing of Israel’s Labour party
The British Labour Party has been a Zionist party since its 1944 conference called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. From 1948, the Labour left wing complemented its virulent anti-Sovietism with vehement support for the Israeli state and the Zionist project. Labour Friends of Israel has always been a powerful lobby. Nothing has changed today. Tony Blair made his position clear when he appointed the prominent Zionist Lord Levy as his special envoy to the Middle East. His recent interview with Jeremy Paxman demonstrates his Zionist credentials clearly. Pressed on whether he agreed with Bush’s estimation of Sharon as ‘a man of peace’, Blair replied: ‘I don’t intend to use phrases other people use, but, do I believe that he wants to see peace in the Middle East, yes, I do.’ He went on to say that he believed Arafat had ‘let down the Palestinian people’, continuing: ‘Yes, I do believe that. I think there was a deal on offer from Prime Minister Barak some time ago that should have been accepted and I don’t think the Palestinians have done all they could to bear down on a scourge of terrorism.’
The myth of Barak’s ‘offer’ is a convenience for many others. Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside gave vent to a Zionist diatribe during a debate on Palestine in the House of Commons in early April. ‘We are witnessing the tragedy of the conflicting rights of self-determination of two peoples and the consequences of the derailment of the peace process that should have led to the creation of a new, independent and viable Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel’, she said. ‘That derailment happened when Yasser Arafat decided to walk out of negotiations 17 months ago and resort to terrorism…it was the suicide bombers who brought down Barak’s government as he fought so hard to achieve a genuine peace.’ On 6 May, a Zionist demonstration in London listened enthusiastically to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a week before he led his ultra right wing Likud Party to reject the concept of a Palestinian state altogether. Comparing Arafat to Hitler, he said: ‘His regime has got to be dismantled. He has to go if there is to be any change or peace…The path to peace does not go through Arafat, it does not go around Arafat, it must go over Arafat.’ Sharing the platform was Labour’s ubiquitous Peter Mandelson, who declared: ‘The Holocaust is not the excuse for defending Israel’s right to exist…It’s the very reason…why Jewish people needed a national homeland to go to and live in safety and security.’ That this required the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians is clearly a matter of no concern to him, nor their current state of wretchedness. He has clearly learned from Israel’s founder and first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, who cautioned that ‘whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist’.
FRFI 167 June / July 2002
