Video: Eagle’s speech to Israel lobby is betrayal of Liverpool – and admission of collusion in genocide

Maria Eagle spoke at sick celebration of 77 years of settler-colonial apartheid to Israel lobby that demonised city to bring down Corbyn and supports war crimes in Gaza

Liverpool Garston MP and Defence Minister Maria Eagle spoke on Tuesday at the official – and profoundly sick – celebration of the 77th anniversary of the founding of Israel, which involved the violent expulsion of around 800,000 Palestinian civilians from their land and homes. The event was, shamefully, hosted by the British Museum and featured a ‘who’s who’ of the UK Israel lobby, including extremist Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

The main content of Eagle’s sycophantic speech, which did not even mention Israel’s slaughter of over 200,000 Palestinians, was the admission – a confirmation of what the Starmer government has long fudged – that the UK’s Royal Air Force has operated around 600 spy flights over Gaza on behalf of Israel.

This collaboration is a despicable abrogation of the UK’s obligations under international law to do all in its power to prevent genocide, not to enable and support it, as the Starmer regime has done since the genocide began 18 months ago – and an appalling betrayal of the millions of innocent Palestinians in Gaza by trampling on values compatible with humanity and civilisation:

But the mere fact that the speech to the gathered Israel lobby took place at all was also a disgraceful betrayal of the people of Liverpool, whom Eagle is supposed to serve first and foremost.

The audience to which Eagle fawned consisted of many of the same lobby groups and individuals who relentlessly smeared, slandered and attacked Liverpool during the Labour party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, aimed entirely at his removal. That Israel lobby ceaselessly and falsely accused Liverpool Labour members, the most supportive of Corbyn, of antisemitism, including:

• falsely claiming right-wing Jewish MP Luciana Berger needed police protection during Labour’s conference in Liverpool
• falsely accusing Berger’s then-constituency party in Wavertree – before she defected to the racist and disastrous ‘Change UK’ and then to the LibDems before being handed a peerage by ‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer – of antisemitic abuse toward her
• Witch-hunting Wavertree members who had done nothing wrong toward Berger – including a blind, Jewish then-member
• Smearing members of the Liverpool Walton Labour party
• Using false accusations of antisemitism and abuse to seize anti-democratic control of the Liverpool Riverside party
• Smearing Riverside members with false claims of antisemitism against their right-wing, genocide apologist MP and former Labour Friends of Israel chair Louise Ellman
• Smearing Jewish members of Riverside Labour with proven-false claims of antisemitism
• Smearing a Liverpool pensioner in Riverside Labour with claims of antisemitic abuse and bullying – a ‘litany of lies’ that ultimately led to a ‘substantial’ libel payout
• an endless stream of libels against Liverpool and party members in the city as antisemitic for their support for Corbyn and later their steadfast opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza

‘Labour’ party leader Keir Starmer has consistently courted the same press outlet that libelled the Hillsborough disaster victims, survivors and families, frequently writing on behalf of the Murdoch rag known on Merseyside as ‘the Scum’. He welcomed the Tories’ imposition of commissioners on Liverpool to force through cuts that have hammered the poorest and most vulnerable and, as Labour leader, launched a war on the democracy of Liverpool Labour members. For Eagle even to be serving on Starmer’s front bench and remaining in his party is a betrayal of the city she is supposed to serve.

For her to grovel to the Israel lobby that has relentlessly attacked and smeared Liverpool and its people for their desire for a better UK and their opposition to the slaughter of women and children makes her unfit to enter the city, let alone be one of its MPs.

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