That

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party, which may soon govern the UK, says it will recognize a Palestinian state as soon as it takes office, shows there are British politicians who are not afraid of talking about Palestine and Palestinian rights.

In his keynote speech at Labor’s annual party conference, Corbyn lambasted Israel, saying that “the continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage”. He also called Israel’s recently approved Nation-State Law “discriminatory” and had strong words for Palestinian casualties at the Gaza border.

Following Corbyn’s speech, the conference adopted a motion by an overwhelming majority to call for an arms embargo against Israel due to Israel’s response to border protests. The motion comes amid ongoing protests along Gaza’s border with Israel dubbed the Great Return Marches and comes none too soon. Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead six Palestinians on Friday, including a 14-year-old boy, who were among thousands of people who thronged to the Gaza Strip border as part of weekly protests launched half a year ago to demand their return to the homes their families were forced from in 1948 during the war surrounding the creation of Israel. Despite the largely peaceful nature of the protests, Israeli snipers have killed more than 170 Palestinians since they began on March 30, with more than 17,500 injured. Given Israel’s continuing use of live fire to kill unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, it is no surprise that the Labor Party would call for an immediate freeze of arms sales to Israel.

Corbyn and Labor have been battered by numerous allegations and revelations of anti-Semitism. But Corbyn has been a long-time vocal critic of the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians and has previously called on the UK government to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war. He has long campaigned against Islamophobia and his staunch opposition to the Iraq war of 2003 is well documented. He has spoken passionately against the “martial law” Israel imposes on Palestinians, and against the system of unequal Israeli laws for Palestinians and Israeli settlers who live in the same territory. And he has attacked Western “silence” over Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border. This is, of course, not anti-Semitism at all but opposition to Israel and about the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.

It is fascinating that this slamming of Israel comes from a Britain whose perfidy, by way of the British Mandate for Palestine, played such a key role for over a century in the Israel-Palestine question. Support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel has grown massively in recent decades in Britain and throughout the Western world. Year by year, as Israeli governments have become ever more right wing and as the plight of the Palestinians has grown dimmer, criticism of the Israeli government has increased.

But the UK and in fact all the EU should move beyond the ritual criticism that they always make of the Israeli authorities. European governments must do more than simply condemn Israel’s relentless colonization of Palestinian land. Israel has illegally demolished Palestinian infrastructure built with the help of British and EU money. Labor and their constituents are simply paying for the upkeep of the occupation. They are in essence funding the occupation.

British Labor seems prepared to go beyond merely condemning Israeli settlement and oppression. The evidence: The party’s leader says he will take steps towards a “genuine” two-state solution “very early on” if Labor wins a general election.

The issue of Palestine is no longer perceived as a fringe left-wing issue. It certainly appears that support of Palestinian rights and views critical of Israeli policy are going mainstream in the UK.