Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Hamas/Israel conflict have spawned two solidarity networks: one healthy and one that is definitely not. Visible and practical support for Ukraine is vital and should be maintained as the war grinds on.
Ultra-leftist organisations active on Palestine oppose our government, as well as Israel, and offer nothing to a fragile and long-term peace process in the Middle East. Labour activists need to better understand the stakes in two distinct conflicts and how they can help.
On the first, I am not going to chant “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming” in an echo of comic Cold War paranoia but German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rightly says that Europe “is not at war … but no longer at peace” with Russia.
Russian hackers probably organised the cyberattack on JLR, an iconic British-based brand, as they previously disrupted blood services in London. There have been other incidents of reckless sabotage across Europe.
Russia may not further occupy parts of Europe but will use hybrid war tactics to intrude, interrupt, and intimidate if it can get away with it and especially as it is under pressure in Ukraine. The recent waves of drone and plane buzzing over several countries aim to probe our collective nerve and divide Nato.
The Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslav Sikorski’s muscular response was to announce at the UN that any further deliberate or accidental incursion would mean shooting down Russian jets. We could dub this deterrence the Warsaw block.
Estonian perspectives and those of others in the near-Russian space Putin yearns to humble and dominate should be respected given their bleak historical experience of Russian and Soviet imperialism. Russia will not change direction any time soon.
Polls indicate that older people recognise the Russian threat, but young people are sceptical. Appeasement in the 1930s is now reviled but was initially virtuous given the raw memories of mass slaughter in the First World War trenches.
But opinion changed as the Nazi threat was properly understood, and Labour’s Clement Attlee caught on in 1937. Our rearmament was just in time. A similar view is needed now through a sober assessment of the nature and capacities of the Russian regime, as the government is doing.
America has also seen through Putin, for now at least, and its intelligence is reportedly helping Ukraine destroy Russian energy infrastructure.
We should critique unhinged voices from the odd oasis of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, who recently asserted that Nato is “an imperialist war machine.”
She then addressed the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s 32nd march through London. Some young people receive their political education from this group. Many are understandably horrified by the suffering of ordinary Palestinians. Most are not antisemites, but tolerate dangerously dodgy and odious slogans. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” refuses any agency for Israel.
Woe betide anyone brave enough to fly the combined Israeli and Palestinian flags or advocate a two state solution at these rallies.
What Keir Starmer accepts is an antisemitic slogan, “Globalise the Intifada,” took on even darker tones in the week when Jews were murdered for being Jews, some say for the first time since 1650.
Over the pond, a sympathetic interviewer told two senior activists that the [university] “encampments’ rhetoric was often kind of inflammatory (and prone to misinterpretation).” The ambiguous answer was that “Most Americans are horrified by Israel’s actions, but don’t yet understand Gaza or Palestine primarily through the lens of Zionism,” whatever that means.
It is easy to read this as the desire to erase Israel. That would mean more not less war – widespread death for Jews or their expulsion from the land where most were born. Ignoramuses argue that Israelis should go back to where they came from – America or Poland according to a witless speaker at a recent student rally.
You’ve probably seen the idiot student who workshopped a new slogan, “Gaza, Gaza, make us proud, put the Zios in the ground,” just before Israelis were released from their underground dungeons or graves. These are sickening indictments of degenerate politics that boost Hamas.
These belligerently one-sided gatherings may fade as attention moves to difficult issues in disarming Hamas and isolating the settler movement in the occupied territories – a Hamas-free Gaza, a reformed Palestinian Authority, and a new Israeli Prime Minister or at least one shorn of extreme right-wingers would all help.
Anti-Zionists scorn efforts to build co-operation and reconciliation between ordinary Palestinians and Israelis just as pro-IRA activists scoffed at unions and peace groups that helped end conflict in Northern Ireland. The National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell’s experience of putting paramilitary arms beyond use gives our government a valuable role.
Tom Kelly, who worked with Tony Blair on Northern Ireland, rightly says that it took 9 years to implement the Belfast Agreement, and required willingness to persist through the inevitable ups and downs as I also saw in helping advise the First Minister.
Understanding Nato options and the complexities of the peace process in the Middle East would benefit from Labour activists visiting Nato in Brussels for briefings, a practice that should be revived, and joining delegations to Israel and the West Bank. More should visit Ukraine. But that’s only possible for some.
Activists can support the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a network of over 170 civil society organizations in the region.
An informed party base can help our government end and prevent war and build peace. Ukraine needs more of the same from the British government and public. Palestine and Israel deserve much better solidarity.
