The following is reproduced from this months Labour Affairs
Israel is a colonising democracy.
Gaza and The West Bank are its two main colonies. On October 7th the Gaza colony dared to revolt by invading the lands of the colonising power. A shocked Israel decided to obliterate this colony which dared to revolt. The US, UK and Europe have opted to support the right of the colonising democracy of Israel to do what colonisers must do.
When the Labour Leader expressed support for Israel’s decision to deprive Gaza of water, food, fuel and medicine, and a number of Labour Councillors resigned in protest, the party member who appeared on BBC’s Newsnight (Oct 25) to support the Leader was John McTernan.
McTernan was political adviser to Tony Blair. His main point in support of the present Leader’s support for a Blockade, that is widely considered to be genocidal, is that it doesn’t matter what the Labour Party says or does on this matter because it is not in power and its proper business is to get into power.
But he went further, and said it doesn’t matter what the Government says or does either, because Britain is a small, weak country which counts for nothing in world affairs.
And anyway, he said, we should support Israel “because we’ve always supported Israel”.
One of the Councillors who resigned, Shaista Aziz (Oxford), appeared in the same programme. She said the crisis was a legacy from British colonialism, and that Government and Opposition should issue a joint call for a Ceasefire.
McTernan said nothing whatever about Britain’s colonial responsibility. He said the crisis was started by Hamas, and that for Israel to call off its siege would be surrender if Hamas did not lay down its arms.
The entire crisis exists only because of British action, and the actions of a British Labour Government in particular.
Britain, in conquering the Middle East in 1917, opened up Palestine to Jewish colonisation, with a view to imposing a Jewish State. Without large-scale Jewish colonisation in subsequent years, protected by British Power, there could have been no Jewish State in Palestine.
Britain guaranteed the Arab people that it would protect it against hostile Jewish action. But, when the Jewish colony that Britain had built up declared itself independent, and waged a terrorist war against Britain, the British Labour Government surrendered to it. It washed its hands of its responsibilities. That was when the Jewish nationalist war against the Arab population began. It has continued from 1948 down to the present.
John McTernan says it is “intolerable for a democracy like Israel” to be subjected to terrorist threats.
Israel, in its internal Jewish affairs is a democracy. It is a colony that became a State. But its colonising activity did not end when it became a recognised state. The state fosters colonising activity beyond its borders in order to lay foundations for the extension of the state.
It is a colonising democracy.