At the 139th Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday 12 July, Ambassador Dr Husam Zomlot, Head of the Palestine Mission to the UK, will join the platform speakers, and we will use the occasion to voice our solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of genocide.
We do not use the word “genocide” lightly. Genocide is defined in international law as killing, causing harm, deliberately inflicting life-threatening conditions and other crimes “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
Israel’s monstrous aggression in Gaza fits this definition. More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 15,000 children. Hospitals, schools, mosques and public buildings have been destroyed. Health and aidworkers have been targeted and civilians shot down in cold blood. Civilians have been subject to forcible transfer from one part of Gaza to another, in many cases ten times over.
The World Health Organisation said in May that the entire population of Gaza, of 2.1 million, is “subject to prolonged food shortages”, and that one in four Gazans face starvation – while the Israeli authorities have deliberately blocked aid convoys for months on end, intentionally deprived Palestinian civilians of adequate access to water, and renderedmost water and sanitation infrastructure useless by cutting off electricity. Israeli government ministers and politicians have repeatedly, publicly advocated genocidal acts.
Senior United Nations officials, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and most Holocaust scholars have defined Israel’s actions as genocide. The International Court of Justice is hearing a case that Israel is committing genocide, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
The Durham Miners’ Association rejects the Israeli government’s claim that it is acting in self defence. The atrocities committed by Hamas and others, in their attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, can not justify or excuse Israel’s multiple war crimes, or the UK and other governments that have facilitated them.
The origins of the horror we are witnessing today goes back far, far beyond 7 October 2023. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in the months leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, during which half the Palestinian population was forced from their homes. Israel’s war on Jordan and Egypt in 1967 brought the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which continues to this day, and the expulsion of a further estimated 300,000 Palestinians.
Illegal Israeli settlements, evictions, land confiscations and home demolitions have continued in the West Bank to this day – and have intensified during the Gaza genocide – and Palestinians continue to be displaced.
The Durham Miners’ Association, alongside our friends in the labour movement, demands that the UK government stops arming Israel, recognises the Palestinian state and defends international law.
The Labour government is aiding and abetting the genocide: it refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza for the first ninemonths of Israel’s onslaught; it approved more weapons to Israel in three months than the Tories did in four years; and it has cancelled some arms export licences, but continues to supply parts for the F-35 bombers that are killing innocent Palestinian children.
The governments of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair imposed arms embargos on Israel due to its illegal behaviour, but Keir Starmer has so far failed to do so.
We do not accept that opposing the Israeli state’s illegal, inhuman actions is antisemitic. We do not accept that by opposing the starving and carpet-bombing of civilians we are denying Israel’s right to defend itself from attack. And in opposing Israel’s war on Gaza, we stand together with hundreds of thousands of Jews the world over – from students to elderly survivors of the Nazi Holocaust – who oppose the genocide. And, along with ambassador Zomlot and Palestinian representatives, we will be welcoming many Jewish friends and comrades to the gala as we do each year.
We do not accept that by opposing the genocide we are somehow siding with Hamas. This accusation is not only thrown at everyone who calls for a ceasefire. It was also thrown at the UK, French and Canadian governments when they called for the bombing to stop and humanitarian aid to be restored. Netanyahu claimed they also were siding with Hamas.
The Palestinian national tragedy is made up of thousands, millions of personal tragedies. We welcome AmbassadorZomlot knowing that, last year, eight members of his family, including his wife’s seven-year-old cousin Sidra Hassouna, were killed in an Israeli air strike, and that the Israeli armed forces have completely destroyed his home town of Rafah in Gaza.
To him, his family and his people we say: the Durham Miners’ Association will always stand by you.
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