25th March 2023
“Democracy for All” – demand protesters in Israel
The protests which have been swelling the streets of Israeli cities against the machinations of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing coalition government, spilled onto the streets of London yesterday as the Israeli anti-democrat was welcomed by the Tories. While Netanyahu shook hands with British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, on the steps of Downing Street, nearby protesters held up Israeli flags and shouted “Netanyahu go to jail, you can’t speak for Israel”.
Mass protests have been a feature of Israeli life for weeks as Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition proposed changes to the judiciary that would give the government more power to choose judges and limit the Supreme Court’s power to challenge laws.
Without a trace of irony Downing St has stated that in his meeting with Netanyahu the British Prime Minister, “stressed the importance of upholding the democratic values that underpin our relationship, including the proposed judicial reforms in Israel.” Although the pair shook hands on the steps of 10, Downing St, a planned photo opportunity was cancelled due to the vehemence of protests.
The proposals by the right wing coalition appear to have sparked the conscience of the liberal intelligentsia in Israel, who fear the erosion of their democratic rights. Those on the Left in Israel, who have been actively supporting democratic rights, including those of the Palestinians, long before the proposed reforms, fear that things could go further. They see a danger that the elements in Netanyahu’s government, who are religious fundamentalists even further to the right than him, will see this as just the first step towards institutionalising much of the apartheid practice for which Israel has become notorious.
Amnesty International, in a report compiled over more than four years and published in 2022, analysed decades of legislation and policy which it said proved Palestinians were treated as an inferior racial group, stating,
“Israel has established and maintained an institutionalised regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis — a system of apartheid — wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948.”
The Netanyahu visit comes hard on the heels of a policy paper signed by the Foreign Secretaries of Britain and Israel setting out a Roadmap for future relations between the two states. The paper does nothing to address the failure of successive British Governments to address Israel’s systematic violations of international law. There is not a single reference in the paper to Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and planned formal annexation of the West Bank.
Reference to Palestinians in the policy paper is limited to one sentence in which Britain promises to cooperate with Israel “in improving Palestinian livelihoods and Palestinian economic development”. There is no mention of addressing Israel’s ongoing denial of Palestinians right of self-determination and right of return. As agreed through the United Nations, under international law.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has expressed alarm at the actions of the British government, especially when the government of Israel is widely seen as the most ultra nationalist, racist, misogynistic and homophobic in Israel’s history. The PSC has also expressed concerns regarding the strengthening of cyber security relations outlined in the paper. As PSC note,
“The cybersecurity sector in Israel is interwoven with the military – with Israel being central to the development and export of military grade spyware. This poses a danger to human rights across the world.”
Netanyahu’s government presides over a situation where it has been killing Palestinians at the rate of more than one a day since the beginning of 2023, at the same time accelerating plans for settlement expansion, and confirming plans to move forward with the annexation of the West Bank.
Right wing Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, last month openly called for a Palestinian village to be wiped out. He recently made a speech in France denying the existence of the Palestinian people, from a podium depicting a map of Israel covering not just the illegally occupied West Bank but the state of Jordan.
PSC have also expressed concern that the new paper “gives credence to the Israeli Government’s narrative that to accurately describe this system of oppression and call for action to address it, is a form of antisemitism”.
The policy paper can only serve to further undermine any credibility Britain may have left, as a state committed to upholding rights and international law. For the British ruling class and their representatives in the Tory Party, this is of little consequence, as long as their political and economic interests are served.
However, there is no doubt that both Netanyahu’s visit and the policy paper will be rightly condemned by all of those who realise there is no way to bring peace to the Middle East that does not address the root cause of conflict, the ongoing denial of rights to the Palestinian people.
Avanti Populo 