The media’s frenetic attempts to construct a smear out of Jeremy Corbyn’s visit to a Tunis cemetery continue grow increasingly desperate, with supposedly respected journalists shaming themselves by publishing naked fake news such as the claim that he laid wreaths or was near the Tunisian graves of those who carried out the Munich attack, when those terrorists are buried in a different country altogether.
Corbyn was at the Hamman Chott graveyard to pay respects to the almost fifty people killed – many of them civilians – when the Israeli airforce attacked the Tunisian HQ of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), as well as PLO officials thought to have been killed because of their readiness to work for peace.
Margaret Thatcher, who was the UK’s Prime Minister at the time of the airstrike, is known to have condemned it – and indeed then confirmed her condemnation in Parliament:
But Thatcher wasn’t the only one to decry the attack. The United Nations Security Council passed the following resolution on 4 October 1985:
Resolution 573 (1985)
Adopted by the Security Council
at its 2615th meeting on 4 October 1985The Security Council,
Having considered the letter dated 1 October 1985 (S/17509) in which Tunisia made a complaint against Israel following the act of aggression which the latter committed against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tunisia,
Having heard the statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Tunisia,
Having noted with concern that the Israeli attack has caused heavy loss of human life and extensive material damage,
Considering that, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations, all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations,
Gravely concerned at the threat to peace and security in the Mediterranean region posed by the air raid perpetrated on 1 October 1985 by Israel in the area of Hamman-Plage, situated in the southern suburb of Tunis,
Drawing attention to the serious effect which the aggression carried out by Israel and all acts contrary to the Charter cannot but have on any initiative designed to establish an overall, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,
Considering that the Israeli Government claimed responsibility for the attack as soon as it had been carried out,
1. Condemns vigorously the act of armed aggression perpetrated by Israel against Tunisian territory in flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and norms of conduct;
2. Demands that Israel refrain from perpetrating such acts of aggression or from the threat to do so;
3. Urgently requests the States Members of the United Nations to take measures to dissuade Israel from resorting to such acts against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States;
4. Considers that Tunisia has the right to appropriate reparations as a result of the loss of human life and material damage which it has suffered and for which Israel has claimed responsibility;
Can anyone honest and reasonable genuinely say that Corbyn should not have been there for the commemoration of those deaths by delegates from the peace conference that he was attending?
The attack was condemned by a Tory PM and by the Security Council of the world’s assembled nations. How quickly some forget – or ignore inconvenient facts – when it suits them.
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As long as the US guarantees to protect them from sanctions the Israeli state will continue to stick two fingers up at the UN
Ah, for a pen, a sharp wit and a sound memory: human beings are doomed as dopes it seems with their eternal sufferance of delinquent leaders and their dimwitted sycophants.
A government and MSM so blatantly conspiring to defraud the democratic process must not be allowed to escape justice.
From now on democracy must be aggressively defended against such enormous and universal corruption with forfeiture of criminal gains and long jail sentences.
Where the crime is so great, so embedded in society and so damaging to society – backdated law is entirely justified.
Society 2.0 will inevitably follow AI/robotics – for it to serve ten billion instead of a hundred people we need to control the hundred or they’ll control us through their Tory proxies.
Good find.
Ah Thatcher. You’ve reminded me of the Thatcher Reagan love in with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Didn’t she claim they were freedom fighters wanting to bring democracy, peace and modernity to Afghanistan (I paraphrase) and we must support them… with arms, training, intel and cash?
Well, her proteges have really evolved over the decades and spawned a miriad of freedom fighter and ‘moderate rebel’ factions championed by successive UK governments to bring democracy, civilization and modernity to their and other countries and over throw their ‘monster regimes’.
How is democracy in Afghanistan in 2018 and the other countries where the western democratic led alliance has supported these so called progressive factions and ‘saved’ with ‘humanitarian’ bombs? I wonder if Thatcher would be proud of her vision of democracy in 2018 Afghanistan and Iraq (she apparently considered Blair and new Labour her greatest achievement after all), Libya and Syria to name just three. Don’t mention Yemen!
We have paid and will have to pay billions and billions and billions for bringing ‘democracy’ to these countries but the big winners appear have been arms manufacturers, security services, private shareholders, banks and the local elite classes along with associated trafficking, smuggling, aid misappropriation rackets and other criminal operators.
Thatcher “the milk snatcher”. There’s always funding for bombs and war but not for the majority of the British public and society… her neoliberal/neocon restructuring legacy lives on on steroids and look where we and the millions of people subjected to IMF debt restructuring programmes, humanitarian assistance bombs and bringing our form of democracy to foreign countries are now?.
Major General Smedley Butler famously stated in 1935 “war is a racket”… the whole Capitalist imperial system is a racket!
The United States supported this organisation BEFORE the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The aim was to bring about the invasion in the first place:
“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter.
Utterly cynical!
“The United States supported this organisation BEFORE the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.”
So did UK. Britain has long supported and groomed extreme Islamist factions for use in foreign policy aims.
Yes you are correct to point that out. I write long enough comments as it is…