Monthly Archives: September 2021

The US Congress just passed a bill to give Israel another whopping hand-out for military spending. And – as would be expected – it passed with a huge majority of both Republicans and Democrats. We shouldn’t be surprised. As The Canary has pointed out on numerous occasions, in the US there is essentially a bipartisan consensus for unconditional support for Israel.

Around the same time, the Labour Party in the UK showed that it still has some claim to be a supporter of Palestinian rights. In spite of its current (increasingly beleaguered) Blairite leadership, the party appears to still have a largely left-leaning membership as well as an active, albeit small, left faction amongst its MPs. And that shows just how isolated the US is on this issue when compared to one of its main European allies.

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As The Canary extensively reported, throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, the corporate-owned press, Tories, and the Labour right alike targeted him with a vicious and protracted smear campaign. This campaign employed bogus accusations of antisemitism to try to derail his radical political project. This was one of the factors that led to Labour’s defeat in the 2019 UK general election, which in turn led to Corbyn’s resignation as party leader. But even now that he’s stepped down, the antisemitism smear campaign shows no signs of abating. Indeed, it has now morphed into a wider movement to attack the left more broadly. This includes, in particular, critics of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

The latest instalment in this sorry saga is a column in a right-wing US newspaper penned by a British comedian. It both represents a new low and highlights how the left will be the continual target of false accusations of antisemitism for the foreseeable future. We must continue to stand up to these pathetic and spurious attacks if we have any chance of rebuilding a movement for radical change.

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US president Joe Biden recently announced that he will sign an executive order to facilitate the release of classified documents about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The move is the result of a long-running campaign by victims’ families to determine whether the government of Saudi Arabia played a hand in the atrocities.

Throughout the 20 years since the attacks, it appears that successive US administrations and the US intelligence community alike have gone out of their way to suppress evidence that might implicate one of Washington’s staunchest allies. This refusal to release the documents speaks volumes about the US’s fawning treatment of one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies. It also raises big questions about the US’s flagrant double standards in the Middle East during its so-called ‘War on Terror’.

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