Petition to restore Diane Abbott’s Labour whip surpasses 12,000
Over 12,000 people have now signed a petition calling on Keir Starmer to restore the whip to Diane Abbott, as this Tuesday marks one year since her whip was suspended.
Trade unions, campaigners and MPs have joined the call to reinstate her Labour whip using the anniversary of her suspension as a call for action from the Labour leader.
Diane Abbott lost the whip following an article she wrote which suggested Irish, Jewish and Traveller people are not subject to racism “all their lives”, distinguishing between anti-black racism. She went on to withdraw her remarks and issued an apology.
She has subsequently sat as an independent MP while an internal investigation continues. With over a year passed, campaigners have questioned why the investigation has taken so long, with the grassroots socialist Labour movement Momentum labelled Starmer’s investigation “a sham”.
Despite the findings of the Supreme Court, the government is compelling judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country.
The passage of the Rwanda Bill late last night, after a parliamentary showdown ended between the Commons and the Lords, has been met with condemnation and outrage by a number of human rights groups.
Some have described it as a ‘national disgrace’ while others slammed it as cruel and inhumane.
Sunak had made stopping small boat crossings across the channel a major priority, with his Rwanda Bill a key part of his plans in doing so. The Prime Minister says that the first flights removing asylum seekers who arrive illegally to the UK to the east African country are due to take off in 10-12 weeks time.
So why are human rights groups condemning the legislation and why are they concerned?
Rwanda is not a safe country, Supreme Court rules
…
Disregarding domestic and international law
…
‘Genuine refugees would be at risk of being returned to their home countries, where they could face harm’
We need to build a firewall between politicians and the oil and gas firms driving the climate crisis.
Richard Burgon is the Labour MP for Leeds East
The same oil and gas giants behind the record energy bills that have forced so many into poverty have also brought us to the cliff edge of climate catastrophe.
If we are to have a fighting chance of preventing the worst of the climate crisis, then we need to rapidly cut fossil fuel use. Key to that is breaking the vast power that oil and gas companies have over our politics.
That’s why this week I will present a Bill in the House of Commons to ban MPs from receiving funding or any other benefit from oil and gas companies.
My Private Members Bill would stop MPs from taking any second jobs with, or receiving any donations, gifts, hospitality or benefits-in-kind from, any company that makes more than 50% of its annual revenue from oil or gas.
It would also force the Government to end investments by the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund in any oil and gas companies.
The aim of my Bill is simple: to build a firewall between our political decision-makers and the oil and gas corporations that have knowingly caused the climate crisis.
For decades, oil and gas giants used their vast financial power to confuse and undermine the science about the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change. More recently, their focus has moved on throwing huge sums at delaying, blocking and weakening global climate action.
Fossil fuel money also pollutes British politics. The Tory Party received £3.5m from donors with fossil fuel, polluter and climate denial links in 2022 according to an analysis of Electoral Commission records by DeSmog, an investigative website focused on global warming misinformation campaigns.
dizzy: Despite this article having been written by a Lbour MP it should not be assumed that the UK Labour Party will be any different from the Conservatives on the climate crisis or fossil fuel industry.
Relatives of Palestinians killed by an Israeli airstrike are pictured at El-Najar Hospital in Rafah, Gaza on April 21, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Hours after the U.S. House approved legislation that would send billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, the country’s forces killed nearly two dozen people in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than half of the enclave’s population is sheltering.
Gaza health officials said Sunday that the weekend strikes on Rafah—a former “safe zone” that Israel has been threatening to invade for weeks—killed 22 people, including 18 children. The Associated Press reported that the first of the Israeli strikes “killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies.”
“The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said,” AP added. “The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 14,000 children in Gaza since October, but the Biden administration and American lawmakers have refused to back growing international calls to cut off the supply of weaponry and other military equipment even as U.S. voters express support for an arms embargo.
The measure the House approved on Saturday includes $26 billion in funding for Israel, much of which is military assistance.
“Just a day after the House voted to send $14 billion in unconditional military funding to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s campaign of death and destruction, he bombed the safe zone of Rafah AGAIN, killing 22 Palestinians, of which 18 were CHILDREN!” U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), one of the 58 House lawmakers who voted against the legislation, wrote on social media late Sunday.
“History books will write about today and the past seven months, and how our nation’s leaders lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to a tyrant,” she added. “Shameful.”
The military aid package for Israel now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is set to consider the bill early this week. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has continued to greenlight arms sales to Israel amid clear evidence of war crimes, is expected to sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
“Rather than sending more weapons to Israel, Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel.”
U.S. law prohibits “arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law,” according to a White House memo issued in February. The U.S. State Department has said repeatedly that it has not found Israel to be in violation of international law, a position that runs directly counter to the findings of leading humanitarian organizations and United Nations experts.
The investigative outlet ProPublicareported last week that a “special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses” prior to the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
“But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials,” ProPublica noted.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement Sunday that senators “should reject sending additional weapons to Israel not only because our laws prohibit military aid to abusive regimes, but because it’s extremely damaging to our national interests.”
DAWN’s advocacy director, Raed Jarrar, added that “at a time when Israel is bracing for International Criminal Court arrest warrants against its leaders, members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“Rather than sending more weapons to Israel,” said Jarrar, “Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel.”
People walk past the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which provides assistance to millions of Palestinians, in Gaza City, Gaza on February 21, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The U.S. House on Saturday passed a bill including a prohibition on funding the agency, due to Israel’s unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA employees have terrorism links.
Countries that have continued to suspend their funding of the United Nations’ top relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territories were left with “no room” to justify their decision, said critics on Monday as an independent investigation into Israel’s allegations against the organization revealed Israeli officials have ignored requests to provide evidence to support their claims.
Catherine Colonna, the former foreign minister of France, released her findings in a probe regarding Israel’s claims that a significant number of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were members of terrorist groups.
Nearly three months after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres commissioned the report, Colonna said Israel “has yet to provide supporting evidence” of its allegation that “a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations.”
Colonna’s findings were bolstered by an investigation led by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which separately sought evidence from Israel.
“Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from UNRWA in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation,” said the Nordic groups.
The reports come nearly three months after Israel made its initial allegation that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, a claim that prompted the United States—the largest international funder of the agency, which subsists mainly on donations—to swiftly halt its funding. Israel also claimed that as many as 12% of UNRWA’s employees were members of terrorist organizations.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, Israel’s announcement came hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a preliminary ruling that found Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza by relentlessly striking the enclave and blocking almost all humanitarian aid to its 2.3 million people.
The Biden administration has dismissed the ICJ’s finding.
The United States’ suspension of UNRWA funding set off a domino effect, leading at least 15 countries to freeze their contributions, even though the U.N. had reported a month earlier that Israel’s air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza was pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into starvation.
Countries including Sweden, Japan, France, and Australia have reinstated their funding of the agency in recent weeks, citing concerns about the intensifying humanitarian crisis in Gaza—where more than two dozen children have died of starvation so far—and Israel’s lack of evidence.
Lawmakers in the U.S., which provides nearly $344 million to UNRWA annually, included a prohibition on funding for the agency in its foreign aid bill that passed in the House of Representatives on Saturday, while the United Kingdom has said it would make a decision about resuming funding after the Colonna report was released.
“The report leaves no room for Britain to justify the continued suspension of funds,” said the independent news group Declassified U.K.
The UK government has consistently said that it would await Catherine Colonna's final report before deciding on whether to restore funding to UNRWA.
The report leaves no room for Britain to justify the continued suspension of funds. pic.twitter.com/FQrisoFkF4
Colonna’s report, which was accepted by Guterres Monday, noted that UNRWA is more rigorous than other U.N. agencies in its internal oversight of its staff and their neutrality.
“The review revealed that UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar U.N. or NGO entities,” reads the report.
Guterres called on donor countries to “fully cooperate in the implementation of the recommendations” of the report.
“Moving forward, the secretary-general appeals to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region,” said the U.N. chief’s office in a statement.
Despite the U.K.’s claim that it would review Colonna’s report to determine whether to resume funding, The Guardianreported the government was “unlikely” to make a prompt decision based on the findings, as Conservative lawmakers have urged Foreign Secretary David Cameron against doing so.
The continued suspension of donations, said U.K.-based researcher and activist Gary Spedding, “is unjustifiable and at total odds with the rest of our allies (except the USA) who resumed funding.”
…these efforts are part of a wider push to destroy the Palestine refugees as a group of people, deny them their fundamental and guaranteed rights, and pressure them to abandon the right of return.
The UK is complicit in efforts to destroy Palestinian refugees as a group.
“Our government has so much to answer for regarding the decision to pause funding without any evidence whatsoever, then sustain that decision even while other allies resumed and Palestinians in Gaza starved and died from sickness and disease, and even now we still haven’t resumed,” said Spedding. “We must have accountability and answers. Why did the government pause funding to begin with despite no evidence being presented by Israel? Why have we joined in on damaging UNRWA as part of Israel’s plan to dismantle it? Why are Palestinian lives and rights worth so little?”
Colonna’s report, said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, is “not only damning for Israel.”
“It is also damning for all the Western countries,” he said, “that cut funding for UNRWA on mere (now debunked) accusations by Israel.”
