The corporate media has dodged reporting on a bombshell revelation about Israel from Jeremy Corbyn.
In an interview with Declassified co-founder Matt Kennard, former Labour leader Corbyn revealed that potential UK prime ministers are expected to unconditionally support Israeli military action.
Corbyn: “I will give no such undertaking” over Israel
Corbyn said:
During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?
And I said no, I will give no such undertaking… because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created such incredible stress.
Jeremy Corbyn says during a meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee he was confronted and asked to give assurances that as Labour leader – and potentially prime minister – he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes👇 pic.twitter.com/RIN13HkHpF
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) June 20, 2024
Current Israeli military action amounts to a ‘plausible’ genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Since 7 October, Israel has killed 37,980 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children.
Corbyn’s revelation suggests Keir Starmer, should he become prime minister, would be even less likely to take steps to end the genocide. Starmer’s Labour has already refused to ban arms sales to Israel or advocate sanctions on the state.
The Labour leader has also repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether he would enforce International Criminal Court arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
“It’s a war crime”
In the interview, Kennard asked Corbyn whether he was “surprised” that Starmer said Israel has the right to withdraw water and electricity from Gaza. Corbyn said:
I was totally shocked by that reply. It’s absolutely clear in every aspect of law, never mind morality, that you don’t bomb schools, you don’t destroy water supplies, you don’t cut off electricity. And he said that’s legitimate self defence. It’s not. It’s a war crime.
But he also said he wasn’t surprised at Labour’s general support for Israel. He said that’s because the “pressure” from the Israeli government on Labour is “huge”. He continued:
Many countries do a great deal of lobbying… Israel has been an ever present lobby for Israel’s military needs as they put them. And attempts always to justify Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank
Corbyn also pointed out the lack of power of the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli occupied West Bank. He said he asked the founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, what he’d do if he became president of the Authority:
He said ‘well I wouldn’t be able to do anything – I don’t control the borders, I don’t control security, I don’t have an army, I only have money that comes in by the largesse of Israel. I’m not sure I’d have any authority to do anything. We are not an independent functioning state, we are a place under occupation’.
The former Labour leader later summed it up when he said “there’s a very colonial mentality that still pervades parliament”.
After Starmer purged him, Corbyn is running as an independent in Islington North. It’s imperative we return him as an MP.
Watch the full interview:
Featured image via A/POLITICAL – YouTube
