By Kathryn Johnson
Sanctions Now! Is the focus of both the Labour & Palestine online meeting on Tuesday 7th July and the next national Palestine march on Saturday 18th July. Be at both if you can.
Sanctions on the Israeli state, that is. Current UK measures target individuals financing and enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and a couple of individuals who have perpetrated the genocide in Gaza – not the Israeli state. It is the Israeli state that is occupying Palestine, killing its people, stealing land, destroying buildings, destroying the conditions necessary for life and marshalling its army to carry out these crimes. It is the Israeli state that must be sanctioned.
The Labour & Palestine meeting will examine how to achieve change in UK policy to end complicity. It will compare the situation with the successful international sanctions that finally helped end apartheid in South Africa and recognise differences that need to be taken into account.
Consumer boycotts are working. Israeli imports have fallen about 17% since 2023. Consumer boycotts can do more but not all that is necessary. Assets must be frozen, travel banned, arms trade stopped – all trade embargoed. So, UK Government: sanctions now!
Both events recognise the current political moment. Andy Burnham knows bolder policies are needed to make the changes the British public want and has seized the time to become leader. Now we must make sure he knows from polling that UK attitude to Israel and Palestine played a significant role in Labour voters’ desertion, and that he recognises the need for change in foreign policy and on the clampdown on protests associated with it as well.
The US has just lost another war, its airbases make us a target just as they have in the Gulf states and they even insist on using their own military justice system here, as we have seen in the Sarah Steele case. There is no ‘special relationship’. It’s time to do what is right instead. Terror is what the Israeli state does, not what those protesting against it do.
So join the online meeting, hone your arguments, carry on those conversations and local protests, write to your MP (again) and organise locally for the national demo. Sanctions now!
Online, Tuesday 7th July, 18.30 – Register here // RT here // Share this surging FB post here. As well as the advertised speakers, Zainah El-Haroun, Al-Haq (Palestinian human rights organisation) and Giorgia Gusciglio, Europe Co-Coordinator for BDS Campaigns, Palestine BDS National Committee, will also speak.
National March for Palestine – Saturday 18th July, 12 noon Central London.
Kathryn Johnson is Chair of York Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Labour Hub 