First It Was Corbyn. Now the Whole British Public Is Being Smeared Over Gaza, by Jonathan Cook

Soon, anyone with even an ounce of sympathy or support for the Palestinians’ cause will be labeled antisemitic. From Jonathan Cook at unz.com:

Under cover of fear for MPs’ safety, Labour leader Keir Starmer has helped the ruling Tories paint as villains anyone opposed to Israel’s slaughter of children

For the best part of a decade now, the British establishment has been weaponising antisemitism against critics of Israel, claiming as its biggest scalp the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He lost the 2019 general election – and stepped down as leader – amid a barrage of smears that he had indulged, if not stoked, antisemitism in the party’s wider ranks.

Corbyn is the only major British party leader to have prioritised the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s oppression of them. He was finally drummed out of the parliamentary party by his successor, Keir Starmer, in 2020 for pointing out that antisemitism in Labour had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

Last week, that same establishment campaign plumbed new depths. Now it is not just the left wing of the Labour Party – traditionally critical of Israel for its decades of oppressing Palestinians – facing demonisation. Large parts of the British public are finding themselves being smeared too – and for the same reason.

The inciting cause is a parliamentary crisis precipitated last week by Starmer’s refusal to identify Israel’s slaughter and starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as “collective punishment” – a war crime.

The House of Commons speaker, who is supposed to be strictly neutral, defied convention to allow Starmer to water down a ceasefire motion on Gaza promoted by the Scottish Nationalists, all so he could avert a rebellion in his party’s ranks.

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