Yasmin’s Eye on …. Gaza The Unspoken Issue

Electioneering is full on. Campaigns, mess-ups, sharpened messages, and increasingly combative speeches, TV debates, emotive vox pops, leaflets and unending polls. Too much already, you think. But as the main parties flood our minds with words, two  issues are purposefully avoided- Brexit and Gaza. Pro-Europeans have raised the former in the media and other public spaces, but the latter seems to have been expurgated by the political class.

Gaza is unmentionable, ‘dangerous’, off-limits. Candidates from the main parties must feel the throbbing urgency, sense voter frustrations and growing fury about such undemocratic and underhand suppression in a free election. Yet they do not engage.

I’ve been talking to my contacts in London, the Midlands, Bristol and Bradford- only a third of them Muslims- about this absence. The youngest is 26, the oldest 68; they go from left to right and come from various class, race and ethnic backgrounds.  Some see it as a  ‘conspiracy of silence’ while many others were losing faith in democracy. As JD, a teacher in an inner city school put it: ‘Our elections are not clean, not open, not fair. Born and bred English, I always believed in the system. Not any more’. Eight out of the thirty four individuals said they would spoil their ballot papers; three are going to vote for Labour but with heavy heart, all the rest said their votes would go to the Green party which has been most vocal about Israel’s civilian victims and violent settlers.

We should all be concerned. This ‘censorship’ not only imperils the UKs democratic credibility, it makes our nation complicit in Israel’s relentless violence against and displacement of Palestinian civilians. Yes, Hamas provoked the war on October 7^th by ruthlessly killing Israeli civilians and taking hostages, many of them still captive. They are utterly ruthless. But remember this: Israel had been imprisoning, intimidating, using daily violence and humiliating and dispossessing  Palestinians for decades before this carnage. It acted like a terrorist state whilst accusing those it persecuted of being terrorists. Our parliamentary reps joined Friends of Israel while this was going on.

A UN expert describes what Israel is going as ‘genocide’. By May,  35,173 people had been killed by Israel in Gaza, 52% of them children and women.  https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fatalities-un-intl-latam/index.html. 100,000 people are missing, many thought to be under bombed buildings. As of June 25, 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists at least 108 journalists and media workers have been killed, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

This week, the EU foreign policy chief, Joep Borrell stated at a meeting in Luxemburg that Israel seems to have a ‘clear will’ to annex the West bank ‘little by little’, that the humanitarian situation is disastrous and that  ‘Unfortunately, it is a war that will test the survival of Palestinians in Gaza’. The words were timorous and inadequate;  the EU, like the UK carries on backing and arming Israel but at least he spoke out. As did Macron recently. Unlike Sunak and Starmer and their packs currently out and about. In a long, intimate interview with Charlotte Edwardes in the Guardian Magazine last Saturday, Starmer spoke emotively about his wife’s Jewish relatives, some in Israel, ‘who’ve been  affected by the war.’ But expressed no concern about Palestinian fears and casualties.

Voters are not dumb. They can see the naked double standards and smell putrefying ethics.  

By the time you read this more Palestinians will have been gunned down, bombed and made homeless. Rigid Zionists will not care, but the rest of us must and do. To think and say that is not antisemitism. To march for a ceasefire is not antisemitism- though many with power and influence insist it is. Those who use the accusation to impede all criticism of Israel and any support for Palestinians are devaluing the currency just as  Antisemitism, which vilely dehumanizes and threatens Jewish people, is getting worse.

That point was vividly made by the Egyptian-American comedian Bassem Youssef on Channel 4 News: ‘I am a Semite. They call other Jewish people antisemite. It’s tired, exhausted, void of meaning’.

Politicians are out of step with  many Jewish voters too. My dear friend Rachel Shabi, born in Israel to Iraqi Jewish parents, has penned a profound article in Prospect Magazine on the war and British Jewry. The fractures and fears are explored, so too new solidarities and challenges : ‘Standing with Palestinians has left many young people estranged from the mainstream Jewish community. But it has enabled a reconnection to Jewish values that resonate with their progressivism, antiracism and moral compass’.

One of my interviewees, Avi ( not his real name) is one of those. He won’t vote because:  ‘ None of the parties want to stop the genocide. Many of us are revolted by that. We understand ethnic cleansing. If these guys think they are doing Jews a big favour, they need to wake up. Sure, the Board of Deputies and them are for Israel always, but times and we are changing’. There’s still time. If they don’t speak up now they should never be forgiven.

A Conversation

Last Saturday we were invited to Homerton College’s Charter Dinner, an illustrious black tie event. One of the most diverse University of  Cambridge colleges, Homerton elected the first ever black head of an Oxbridge College, Sir/Lord Simon Wooley, an activist I have known over two decades. Just as we were getting to Cambridge, Simon rang and asked if I could deliver a short after dinner speech. Their chosen speaker was ill. Sure, I, said, brightly, thinking a few warm words would come easy. He gave me a few pointers. I got up and found myself delivering a passionate sermon on connectivity, equality, diversity and the futility of identity politics. Simon told me the audience of over 200 was ‘dazzled’. Afterwards, several attendees wanted to know how I spoke without notes. Something mysterious happened I replied. It was God wot did it.

Moving Forward

I have many invisible, vindictive enemies out there, folk who hate who I am or what I say. Most people in public life have these adversaries and it can bring you down. I have avoided the noxious debates about trans people and women’s rights because I didn’t want yet more abuse. That is no longer tenable. The horrible, vituperative denunciations of David Tennant and others who feel empathy for trans people is becoming intolerable.  Not all feminists agree with J.K Rowlings and other high profile women who argue that trans rights threaten female rights. Many of us feel we should be kinder and more understanding. Oh here they come, the hate YAB posse…

Handel and Hendricks

Our son and daughter were tied up on Father’s day, so I said I would do something nice. We lunched at the exquisite Chinese restaurant Hakkasan in Mayfair – they had a special deal, and then went to the atmospheric Handel Hendricks House nearby. The legendary musicians lived next door to each other, at different times, obviously.  Hendrik’s vinyl collection on display included The Messiah. Music filled the rooms. Dad, who loved both, was elated. Job done.