The Workers Party of Britain is the only significant British political party to have pointed out the position of the Palestinians as victims of ethnic cleansing and brutal treatment from the very start of the recent conflict (and long before). It is a reflection of our humanity. Thousands of children have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced.
There can be no justification for the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Gaza. The complicity and lack of moral compass of the Labour Party has shocked many naïve activists who have been in denial about what their Party has become.
The pain will haunt human hearts for generations. Powerful forces, chiefly the US and Britain, have brought about, sustained and nourished the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the denial of Palestinian statehood despite every international plan and UN resolution. The United States is the chief beneficiary of the current chaos engulfing the Middle East, as it was also the chief beneficiary of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The Workers Party believes that the future is now One State: Israël – Palestine or Palestine-Israël or the Holy Land, the details cannot be worked out by us, but the picture is becoming clearer by the day. We also, in this context, support the right of return for all those Palestinians ethnically cleansed over many years and an immediate end to Israeli settlement on the West Bank.
However horrific this storm is, it will not last. It is a part of wider and longer struggle against imperialism and war. The old world is dying, but the new world is not yet ready to be born.
Palestine is a symbol for us of a much deeper problem. That a network of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals has seized control of Western states and, wholly unaccountable to their peoples because they have inherited dynastic modes of thinking, have adopted an aggressive militarism exemplified by NATO and maintained by a sinister arms industry.
Our criticisms in this case are not antisemitic nor supportive of terrorism. Our analysis can be said to be very courageous in the current climate. Our stand against Israel is a stand for the Jewish people. We welcome Jews into our Party and we will remain steadfast opponents of antisemitism. However, we also abhor the weaponisation of antisemitism for dubious political purposes in British politics and consider that the neglect of Islamophobia in society and its weaponisation by the populist Right receives inadequate attention. We are one nation and should think and behave with respect as one nation to every element within it.
Julie Lowe 