BRITAIN’s biggest teaching union said the country’s withdrawal of funding for the UN’s relief agency in Gaza makes it complicit with genocide, and left MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe have vowed to challenge the decision in Parliament on Monday.
National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede warned that Israel and its Western backers were risking nuclear war in the Middle East in a speech at today’s Stop the War meeting in east London.
Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch defended Britain’s decision to join states cutting funds to the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) following claims that several of its workers were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
UNRWA has 13,000 workers in Gaza, almost all of them Palestinians, ranging from teachers in schools that the agency runs to doctors, medical staff and aid workers.
The relief agency, which confirmed it has sacked a number of staff since the allegations emerged, has played a key role in providing aid for the enclave’s population amid the humanitarian disaster caused by Israel’s offensive in the wake of the October 7 attack.
Speakers at today’s event blasted the timing of the response by Britain, the United States and other Western nations, following the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) interim ruling on Friday for Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza — but stopping short of ordering a ceasefire.
Mr Kebede said: “These are very dangerous times. Along with its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is also attacking Lebanon, we have seen attacks on Syria, Iraq and Iran. We cannot afford an all-out war in the Middle East with armed nuclear powers involved: the stakes are far too high.
“Every MP who failed to vote for a ceasefire washed their hands of the conflict and sided with the powerful.
“Every leader who fails to champion the ruling of the ICJ is washing their hands of the conflict and siding with the powerful.
“And now the political class of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland who have withdrawn their funding to UNRWA have deepened the genocide. They are not only washing their hands and siding with the powerful, they are complicit in what is happening.”
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was deeply poignant to watch South Africa present its genocide case against Israel at the Hague.
“The response now to the allegations against 12 members of UNRWA — of withdrawing funding by Britain, by the US, by a number of other countries — is beyond disgusting,” he continued.
“UNRWA has already had over 100 members of its staff killed.
“I know the dedication of their teams and their staff: they fed and educated Palestinian people for nearly four decades. So we have to demand the British government to restore its funding.
“Claudia and I will be doing that in Parliament tomorrow — but we also have to demand governments around the world now step up to the plate and provide the resources that UNRWA desperately needs in order to help people out of this crisis.”
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe said: “Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure and the forceful transfer of 1.9 million to the south [of Gaza] amounts to ethnic cleansing.
“The massacre and slaughter of civilians is on an industrial scale.”
On Saturday UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the decision by countries to suspend funding was shocking and immensely irresponsible. He said that UNRWA had ordered an investigation after Israel provided information alleging several employees played a role in Hamas’s assault.
Activist group Health Workers for Palestine said it would protest against the“disgusting decision by our British government and other Western governments” to cut funding to UNRWA outside Downing Street as the Morning Star went to press today.
