Lammy's lame Israel policy

Foreign Secretary David Lammy still can’t bring himself to condemn Israel for its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. His decision to suspend 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel won’t dent the steady flow of lethal weapons, most coming from the US, that it uses to slaughter Palestinians.

Lammy reitereated the UK’s continued support for Israel’s right to self-defense, a right it doesn’t have over a land and people it has illegally occupied, oppressed and murdered for 57 years.

Ironically, stronger criticism comes from inside Israel. On August 23rd, retired IDF general Yitzhak Brick wrote:

“Netanyahu has decided to die with the philistines; Netanyahu has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values.”

He warned that if Israel’s war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse in a year.

The same day, Ronan Barr, head of Israel’s internal security bureau, Shin Bet, said Netanyahu’s government was engaged in Jewish terrorism in the occupied West Bank which is endangering Israel’s existence. Settler pogroms have intensified against Palestinian villages and the IDF has launched an offensive in the northern West Bank, bombing refugee camps and hospitals, detaining medical teams and preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) said that “Settler violence is inseparable from Israel’s broader policy to establish full sovereignty over the West Bank and continuing its plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.” Another motivation for stealing land in the West Bank is that it has essential water reserves, most of which Israel takes for itself.

The Israeli government is planning to construct Jewish only settlements on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Battir, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In March Jewish settlers crossed into northern Gaza to establish an outpost and many have expressed a desire to build homes on Gaza beachfront.

Israel’s goal has always been to dehumanise and kill as many Palestinians as possible and to make life intolerable for those who have the temerity to remain on their ancestral land.

In 1949, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote to his son:

”We must expel Arabs and take their place.”

In the early 70s, Moshe Dayan said,  

“You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave.”

In 1983, Israeli government minister Rafael Eitan said:

“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about is will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

In 2006, Dov Weisglass, advisor to PM Ariel Sharon, said:

“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger."

On October 9, 2023, Yoav Gallant said Israel was

“fighting human animals.”  

Since October 7, 2023, Law for Palestine has compiled over 500 statements and instances of Israeli incitement to genocide by decision makers, army personnel, legislators, journalists and former government officials.

Israel has consistently chosen aggression, ethnic supremacy and now genocide over diplomacy and peaceful coexistence. That’s why it’s friendless and must rely on money and military support from the US, UK and EU for its survival. Without it, the genocide would end and the apartheid Zionist state would likely collapse.

So why does the West continue to prop up the Israeli regime? Perhaps it’s because it mirrors all too well its own sordid settler colonial history and Israel is a convenient Middle East outpost for maintaining its hegemonic control. Settler colonialism is a hard habit to break.

The Scots, like the Irish, know a thing or two about settler colonialism. Ireland’s criticism of the Zionist state has made it an outlier in the EU. And Scotland, although significantly weakened after 300 years in this ‘union’ and saddled with a colonial administration, has tried, to a lesser extent, to follow Ireland’s lead.

But it should be clear by now that Scotland can’t have a fully independent voice until it is once again an independent nation.