Barrage of resignations in West over brutal Israeli actions

ISLAMABAD: A barrage of resignations from lawmakers, journalists, academia and people holding positions in the West, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have been reported by the American media like New York Times and CNN to register their protest against the policies supporting Israel.

According to reports carried out by different media houses, New York Times writer Jazmine Hughes resigned after signing a letter protesting the Israel-Gaza war.

Hughes, who has won awards for her work, has signed another letter of protest this year. The award-winning New York Times Magazine staff writer resigned from the publication two days back after she violated the newsroom’s policies by signing a letter that voiced support for Palestinians and protested Israel’s siege of Gaza.

The petition Ms. Hughes signed about the Israel-Hamas war was published online last week by a group called Writers Against the War on Gaza. The group, which describes itself as “an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people,” denounced what it described as Israel’s “eliminationist assault” on Palestinians as well as the deaths of journalists reporting on the war. It was signed by hundreds of people, including other well-known journalists and authors.

“We stand firmly by Gaza’s people,” the letter said.

Yet in another development, the director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as the genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, the UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying, “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York. He said that the UN had failed to prevent previous genocides against the Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, Yazidis in Iraqi Kurdistan and Rohingyas in Myanmar and wrote, “High Commissioner we are failing again. The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs… leaves no room for doubt.”

Mokhiber added, “This is textbook case of genocide” and said the US, UK and much of Europe were not only “refusing to meet their treaty obligations” under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.

On October 23, British-Palestinian academic Kamel Hawwash resigned from the UK’s main opposition party over its stance on Israel.

Calling for the Labour Party’s Keir Starmer to “stand on the right side of history,” Hawwash, who is a civil engineering professor at the University of Birmingham, shared an open letter to the party leader on X.

The academic said, “I have followed the party’s position on Palestine and Israel with dismay. You yourself have aligned yourself with blind support for Israel whatever it does and literally thrown the Palestinians under the bus or as in Gaza now, the bombs.”

According to Hawwash, the Labour Party has been suspending and expelling members, “especially Jewish members, essentially for voicing support for Palestinians.”

The US State Department Director, Josh Paul, citing his objection to the US military policy regarding continued assistance to Israel resigned from the bureau in charge of arms transfers to foreign nations.

Paul, who has been the director of congressional and public affairs at the bureau for 11 years, was protesting the Biden administration’s call to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel, and aiding in its bombardment of Gaza.

In a two-page letter posted on LinkedIn, he said, “I knew it was not without its moral complexity and moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do.”

Several editors at Artforum are following the firing of Editor-in-chief David Velasco. After six years as the editor-in-chief of Artforum, an international monthly magazine that specialises in contemporary art, David Velasco was fired for an open letter published in the magazine in support of Palestine.

MP Dutch politician and Member of Parliament Kauthar Bouchallikht has pulled out as a candidate for the upcoming general election in the country in protest of her party’s stance on Israel and the increasing violence in Gaza.

At least seven academics have reportedly now resigned from a funding body in a row over free speech regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

It began last week after Michelle Donelan, British Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, accused two members of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) committee of holding “extreme views” after they had posted about the conflict on social media.

Ms Donelan gave the body one day to respond with an “update” on its plans, which she said she hoped “will include discontinuing this group”.

The UKRI responded by suspending the advisory group. Blackburn councillor Saj Ali spoke about his decision to leave the Labour Party while speaking to Socialist Worker. That’s because he’s seething about the party’s position on Palestine — and it’s not just Keir Starmer (Leader) he blames.

“I finally made up my mind to go after deputy leader Angela Rayner held a Zoom call for councillors,” he said. “We requested — we didn’t demand — that Labour back a ceasefire in Gaza. It’s such a small thing, such a limited move. But Rayner went on about the difficulties in calling for a ceasefire and said no more than that she would take it back to Keir. Well. That wasn’t good enough for me.

“I resigned straight away afterwards with another councillor, and five other Blackburn councillors have resigned now too.”

A third Nottinghamshire councillor has resigned from Labour. Councillor Des Gibbons, who sits on Gedling Borough Council, said he will now stand as an independent. He brings the total number of councillors who have left Labour over Gaza to at least 36.

Top officials from the UK Labour Party have held a meeting with councillors following several abrupt resignations from the party due to its leader Keir Starmer’s stance on the ongoing attacks of Israel on Gaza. Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, and David Lammy, shadow foreign secretary, met with council leaders due to concerns over pending resignations, ITV News reported late on Monday.

Cllr Altaf ‘Tiger’ Patel, who was the only Muslim Conservative councillor in the area, said he has become ‘appalled’ at the words used by the government officials, and said he could no longer back the Conservative Party. Blackburn Conservative Association said Cllr Patel chose to resign after being notified he was being suspended by the party because his “views were not compatible” with the party.

An Israeli billionaire who is the 80th richest man in the world has quit Harvard’s executive board in protest. Idan Ofer and his wife Batia told CNN on Friday that their “faith in the University’s leadership has been broken” and that they “cannot in good faith continue to support Harvard and its committees.”

The couple had sat on the executive board of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s the latest development at the Ivy League university, where many have criticized its response to a student statement from a pro-Palestine group that held Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

The letter, published by a number of pro-Palestine student groups called the Palestine Solidarity Committee, read: “Today, the Palestinian ordeal enters into an uncharted territory. The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action and to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”

The statement initially included the names of approximately 30 student organizations, which were later removed to protect the safety of the students involved, the group said.

A University of Sydney union secretary has quit, claiming members have become alienated due to an increasingly politicised leadership, criticising branch leaders with known Palestinian sympathies for their refusal to “publicly condemn war crimes”.

An Ontario doctor has been suspended from his job, threatened and had his address shared online after he posted pro-Palestinian views on social media.

Dr. Ben Thomson, a nephrologist at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, has posted opinions on social media about the war between Israel and Hamas.

Dr. Ben Thomson, a nephrologist at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, north of Toronto, has been sharing information and opinions on his X social media account.

Earlier this month, he was handed a one-month suspension, but the health authority said that ‘it is false to suggest Dr. Thomson was suspended for his views.’Tunisian journalist Bassam Bounenni’s resignation from BBC is just the latest blow in what has been a barrage of complaints over the broadcaster’s reporting on Gaza.

Bounenni, who is based in Tunis and has covered the Middle East and North African affairs for 15 years, previously with Sky News Arabia and Al Jazeera, said the decision to quit his role was over the corporation’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

It comes after the killing of around 500 Palestinians at a hospital which Palestinians have blamed on an Israeli airstrike. Yet another media report suggests that the BBC has received a barrage of complaints for its reporting on the Israel-Hamas war.

The publically owned corporation, which was established in 1922 and aims to be “impartial”, is principally funded by TV licence fees paid by UK households.

On Monday, just a day before the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in which hundreds of civilians died, the BBC aired a discussion on whether there are Hamas tunnels under hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip.