The following article by Dianne Kirby was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham's NAZA won a special jury prize and received a record-breaking 24.5-minute ovation at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. The documentary, based on anonymous testimony from Israeli intelligence officers, evidenced Israel's deliberate, systemic, mass killing derived from policies based on the total dehumanization of Palestinians. The two are now threatened with citizenship removal for treason. Dissent at home unleashed the same unhinged hysteria accorded Britain's recent sanctioning of illegal Israeli settlements, despite its being amongst Israel's closest impunity enabling allies. Israeli wrath and reprisals, supplemented by vicious personal attacks on Ed Miliband, suggest British measures are perhaps mistakenly dismissed as meaningless?
Britain's nefarious historical role in Palestine, its dark colonial-imperial past and shameful subservience to Israel's chief funder, means mistrust permeates many analyses. They perceive only a charade devised to promote partisan political advantage while protecting Israel, largely from itself. British moves, as Le Monde Diplomatique declared, are most certainly woefully inadequate and well overdue. Nonetheless, it is discomfortingly discombobulating when pro-Palestine voices regurgitate far right and Zionist assertions that the sanctions are driven by domestic concerns accompanied by assurances to America of empty symbolism intended to have no material impact on the UK's wider relationship with Israel. Such analyses ignore how notions of British influence on America were dispelled a decade ago by the Chilcott Inquiry, even after committing 46,000 military personnel to the Iraq debacle. Moreover, Trump's desperate offer of $5000 dollars to American voters to retain a domestic mandate suggests even the British recognise declining US leadership in a changed world order.
Palestinians, long seeking the application of international law as a critical step toward a just peace, know the sanctions' limitations are profound. Know the offerings are far too little, far too late for the lives, land, and livelihoods lost. Yet the gap between Palestinian aspirations and the present meagre offerings does not prevent Miliband's language of 'ethnic cleansing' and 'settler terrorists' being welcomed. Omar Haramy, Director of the Jerusalem based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, sees a step, small as it is, in the right direction. Hopefully it will encourage 'further meaningful action from the international community.' For Rohan Talbot, Director of Advocacy and Campaigns for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), 'The UK has crossed a political Rubicon. It should not turn back.'
Francesca Albanese, one of the most outspoken and courageous voices on behalf of Palestine, told Al Jazeera's Inside Story that for the first time there is a chance Israel will be forced to stop their criminal activities. Calling the change, at least of language, 'incredible', Albanese cheered 'the recognition of the primacy of international law'. She applauded Britain's shift as 'potentially seismic'. Daniel Levy, fervent Israeli critic and president of the US-Middle East Project, considers that the sanctions could have huge ramifications.
With the rule of law and traditional international alliances rendered defunct by the global hegemon privileging the US-Israel alliance regardless of wider consequences, Albanese applauds British leadership for building a united 12 nation-coalition, including France and Canada, committed to sanctions. A feat beyond the capacity of a cautious European Union that, even under Irish presidency, is constrained by a handful of nations in the Netanyahu camp. US membership means an inert G7.
Much depends on implementation, making Britain's selective ban on weapons worrying. Similarly, Britain's commitment to maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel and its failure to name Gaza a genocide. Perfidious Albion warrants watching. As does the Labour Party, to which Jewish Voice for Liberation, formerly known as Jewish Voice for Labour, can testify. However, acknowledging all the inadequacies, JVL sees an opportunity to grow the Palestine movement, to secure more gains, and soon: 'an avalanche can begin with a single stone….' A crack lets in the light. Netanyahu faces bombshell revelations over his failure to act when the UAE and Egypt warned him of a major attack over a week before 7 October. Presently, it matters not whether Labour's new leadership intended to compromise Israel and promote Palestine.
They have set in motion a chain reaction, a momentum that progressive forces must commandeer, however suspect its origins.