BrianLeishman

It's important that we call this what it is. It's genocide. And it's also important to realise that the UK is complicit

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AS a Labour member, I know that internationalism is at the heart of our movement, as is the passion for calling out and confronting injustices we see today and historical injustices of the past.

The current humanitarian situation in Palestine needs to be analysed through a historical lens because the truth is that the intense suffering being felt by Palestinians started decades ago.

This treatment did not start in October 2023. For Palestinians, the Nakba - translated from Arabic as “the catastrophe” - is felt by Palestinians all over the globe as a collective trauma.

From the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1947-48 up to the present day, ethnic cleansing has been a constant.

The seizing of land and homes; the forced displacement; the destruction of civic, educational, cultural and religious infrastructure, which are all protected by international conventions and treaties to which our country is a committed signatory, are all examples of settler colonialism and Israeli-authorised apartheid that has normalised the removal of the local population through ethnic cleansing.

For decades, the international community has looked away and ignored the suffering of Palestinians.

The sheer scale of suffering is hard to comprehend.

In 1948, approximately 750,000 people - half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population - were expelled from their homes and had to flee their communities.