“The human rights violations taking place in Gaza have long been at catastrophic levels. Despite knowing this, the UK still hasn’t suspended all transfers of arms to Israel. Stopping some arms isn’t enough, there should be no loopholes and no UK arms to Israel

“The International Court of Justice has warned of a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Continuing to allow some arms transfers is not in line with international legal standards and demonstrates a dire need for accountability in arms transfers.”

Our newly-elected MP John Cooper, a Conservative, replied with the sort of pro-Israel froth we’ve heard many times before from his party. Here are some of his remarks, which presumably represent the ‘party line’, and my own responses….

JC began by saying: “Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas, and Palestinian civilians continue to face a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. My thoughts are with the families of those still held hostage.”

Stuart Littlewood: What Israel suffered on October 7 last year was nothing compared with the terror, illegal occupation and dispossession inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel’s brutal occupation forces for the last 76 years. In the 23 years leading up to October 7, Israelis were slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women; Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem).

You seem worried only for Israeli hostages held by Hamas rather than the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, languishing in Israeli jails on the day before the attack. Over 1,200 were imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’.

Add the fact that Gaza had been under cruel military blockade for 17 years with Israel regularly “mowing the grass” (you surely know what that means), and October 7 was clearly a retaliation. Or do you think the Palestinians should have taken all that lying down?

JC: “I want to see the Gaza conflict brought to a sustainable end as quickly as possible…. Pauses can also help to create the conditions necessary to bring about a permanent and sustainable end to hostilities.”

SL: How would pauses bring about a permanent end to hostilities? Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources. Wouldn’t that be a more sensible way forward?

JC: “In the longer term, I continue to support a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”

SL: The Israeli regime has said repeatedly that it will not permit or accept a Palestinian state.

The only credible pathway was mapped by international law decades ago but never followed because it doesn’t suit Western powers’ ambitions in the region. They prefer lopsided negotiations through dishonest brokers like the US (and unfortunately the UK). This ensures the problem drags on indefinitely while Israel continues annexing Palestinian land and creating irreversible ‘facts on the ground’.

There can be no peace without law and justice. Failure to understand that simple truth has brought us all to the present horrific crisis.

JC: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law. Indeed, it is important that international humanitarian law be respected and civilians protected….”

SL: Indeed it is. But Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat from the territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and many other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). As China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

It does no good to keep saying that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has advertised its evil intent very clearly for a very long time. As is well documented, it was a criminal enterprise from the start.

JC: “The UK’s position, which I support, is clear and longstanding. There should be a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a fair and realistic settlement for refugees. The UK has consistently called – bilaterally and via the UN – for an immediate end to all actions that undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”

Longstanding is the word. So longstanding that you might ask why it hasn’t happened yet. It’s because Britain has played a leading part in blocking the two-state idea. We promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 in return for Arab help in defeating the Turks but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continue to sidestep the issue. The UK position is anything but clear.

What would this “negotiated” two-state solution look like? Our Government can’t or won’t describe it. Why must Israel be “safe and secure” and Palestine only “viable”? One’s security is no more important than the other’s. The UK still stands in the way of Palestinian statehood while 140+ other nations have recognised it. At the same time the UK has done nothing to prevent Israel overstepping its 1947 UN Partition boundaries and seizing swathes of Palestinian land and key resources at gunpoint. And the UKGov (of both flavours) has been shamefully supportive of Israel’s year-long genocide and war of extermination which has sickened all decent-minded people.

In any case, why should Palestinians have to negotiate their freedom in their own homeland? Notice how keywords like law and justice are always missing in the UK’s position statements.

JC: “The Government’s decision to announce an arms embargo on the day that Israel was burying murdered hostages, and within weeks of British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian attack, was difficult to swallow…. We must be clear that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

SL: Yes indeed, there is no moral equivalence. Hamas were democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers at the last election permitted in Palestine (2006). Israel is no Western-style democracy with Western values — it is an unpleasant ethnocracy which recently enacted discriminatory nation state laws to prove it.

‘Think Hamas, think terror’ is what UKGov and mainstream media teach us. Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas (and now Hezbollah).

But the inescapable fact is, the Israelis wrote the manual on terrorism long before Hamas (and Hezbollah) came into being. Read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency. Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. They have pursued it relentlessly ever since.

You mention British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian counter-attack. Why weren’t they defending Palestinian women and children from Israeli genocide?

JC: “For many years, the UK has been very clear that Settlements are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution. Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

SL: Agreed. But it’s pointless merely “raising” these issues with the Israeli Government. Settlements have been key to Israel’s expansionist ambitions since 1967. Pointless also sanctioning settler organisations. Many of the settlers are racist thugs on a terror mission. You need to sanction the criminals who send them into Palestinian territory, pay them and arm them – and that’s the Israeli Government itself.

Respected legal opinion (Ralph Wilde) puts it this way:

“There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

“Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force.…”

JC also mentioned: “the planned new Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.

SL: This is now is being championed by Jonathan Reynolds, the new Business Secretary. For him and the Starmer Government it’s business as usual with the apartheid regime while it conducts its non-stop genocide against the women and children of the Holy Land. No surprise there when you realise that Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel which, it seems to me, puts him in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which (see ‘Integrity’) state: “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” Like all the other Israel stooges embedded in Westminster he doesn’t.

Question 1 – Why is the UK so head-over-heels in love with a depraved, criminal regime like Israel?

It is certainly not because we the British people share the Israelis’ moral values (although some in leadership positions at Westminster apparently do). The answer is probably to be found in America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. It is central to US Middle East policy and guaranteed to keep the region at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

The UK seems to have superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for security reasons and in the hope of profiting from the misery and unrest, though it would never admit this. But the world, and especially the Middle East, is changing. Our track record out there is abysmal and we’re increasingly disliked.

Question 2 – Why prolong the UK’s century of betrayal by still not recognising Palestinian statehood?

Freedom and self-determination are a basic right which doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as the US-UK-Israel axis, agreeing to it. The UK thinks otherwise when we should be among the vast majority of nations that have already recognised Palestinian statehood. When 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, it had the legal effect of establishing statehood. But the UK and other Western influencers who are dragging their feet need to finally accept it before statehood become effective on the world stage.

UKGov recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 after Zionist gangs carried out countless atrocities including massacres at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere, trashed 500 Palestinian towns and villages, drove 700,000 civilians out of their national homeland, and made clear Israel’s ambition to dominate the entire Holy Land “from the river to the sea”.

It’s time our political leaders understood that the British public don’t want to be tainted by defending and protecting a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wanton destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and has been contemptuous of human rights and norms of decency for as long as most of us can remember.

Kind regards, etc.

Stuart Littlewood

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

A user named Sarvesh Kumar made the same claim while tweeting the video.

Another user name Gautam Bhatt and a few others also tweeted the video with the same claim.

This video is also being shared on Facebook with the same claim.

Fact Check

We performed a keyword search using terms related to the incident. This led us to a Dainik Bhaskar article dated June 19. According to this report, a youth named Sushil Yadav stabbed a girl with a knife on her neck and hand near LIB Chowk in the Kotwali police station area of Madhya Pradesh’s Seoni. The girl was seriously injured. Bystanders present on the spot caught hold of the youth and thrashed him fiercely after which he was left bleeding. Talking to the media, Kotwali police station in-charge Mahadev Nagotia said that the accused Sushil Yadav had been taken into custody and the investigation was on. Outlets like Amar Ujala and Nai Duniya also covered the incident.

Alt News reached out to Kotwali police station in-charge Mahadev Nagotia regarding the matter. He informed us that the FIR number registered in this incident is 568/23 and clarified there was no ‘Love Jihad’ angle in the case. The accused, Sushil Yadav, and his father, Shiv Kumar Yadav, are Hindus. The victim’s name is Shajroon Hussain, daughter of Shakir Hussain, and she is a Muslim. 

To sum it up, social media users amplified an unrelated incident of a Hindu youth attacking a Muslim girl with a false ‘love-jihad’ angle.

The post Hindu man stabs Muslim woman in MP; incident called ‘Love Jihad’ on social media appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Kate Osamor.

Myanmar's military has further cracked down on National League for Democracy (NLD) members, sentencing former Pehkone township NLD MP Petel Aung and NLD members Lai Kyu and Maung Tat to life in prison at the Loi-Lin District Court in the country's southern Shan state last month.

Taung Lay Lone prison’s court also sentenced Phekone residents Maung Kown, Maung Nyein and Joseph to death, the Progressive Karenni People Force (PKPF) told RFA on Thursday.

Shan state shares a border with Kayah state where the Karenni Army fought for independence until a ceasefire in 2012 and a further ceasefire three years later that only lasted three months.

Fighting between the military and Karenni forces, helped by local People's Defense Forces, has spilled over into Shan state and the PKPF has been monitoring junta activity there, including the arrests of NLD politicians.

PKPF officials said the military council has not issued an official statement regarding the sentences.

“There were two groups arrested. Petel Aung was in one group and Maung Kown was in another. Petel Aung was arrested as a People’s Defense Force leader. Another group member was arrested last year on charges of killing an army officer and two soldiers in Phekone Township. The order was handed down last month, but we just found out,” said a PKPF official.

He added that MP Petel Aung, Lai Kyu and Maung Tat were arrested in Nam San, in Shan state on July 30, 2021. Maung Saung, Maung Nyein and Joseph were arrested in March last year.

The arrested have been charged by the military council with illegal association, murder and possessing illegal firearms.

“Maung Kown, Maung Nyein and Joseph were sentenced to death. They were convicted under Section 302 (1) (b) of the Penal Code for murder,” said a source close to the court who did not want to be named for safety reasons.

As of July 9, 117 people were facing trial and 140 had been sentenced to prison by the military council in Shan state and Kayah State, according to the PKPF.

There are 70 people facing trial at Taung Lay Lone prison, and 20 have been sentenced.

A total of 47 people are being held in Loikaw prison in Kayah state and 115 others are serving their sentences, the statement said. Five of the convicts have been transferred to Mandalay Obo Prison.

Calls to the military council spokesman by RFA went unanswered on Thursday. Opponents of the military junta who were arrested in prison across the country have been sentenced to long prison terms following the military coup on Feb. 1 last year.

According to military council data 114 people were sentenced to death by various military tribunals in Yangon between February 1, 2021 and May 19, 2022. A total of 78 people were sentenced to between seven years and life in prison.

Legal experts have pointed out that the coup council is threatening the public with death sentences and long prison sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.