What has global warming got to do with the war against Hamas?
By Steven Tucker, Mercator.
How on earth can you have “No climate justice” for humanity so long as Israel continues to rule the roost in the Holy Land? What has global warming – or indeed the ever-pressing issue of one’s sacred pronouns – got to do with a never-ending round of ethno-religious warfare in Gaza? – Nothing.
In early April, an offshoot of the Just Stop Oil eco-activist group calling themselves Youth Demand descended upon the London HQ of the UK Labour Party and sprayed it all over with red paint. Its occupants had “blood on their hands”, they said. Apparently, the Labour Party, who are highly likely to form the next British Government come the General Election due later this year, were “threatening to continue [committing] genocide” once they were in office.
I didn’t realise they were committing it already.
What on earth was the Labour Party doing? For one thing, said Youth Demand, by failing to demand an immediate end to fossil fuel drilling across the nation, Labour was allegedly helping “kill hundreds of millions” thanks to climate change. But, equally, by failing to promise to call time on UK arms sales to Israel, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet was likewise facilitating the “mass murder” of innocent civilians (and equally innocent Hamas terrorists, no doubt) over in Gaza.
This conflation of environmentalism with the Israel-Gaza war does seem a rather strange campaigning tactic as the two issues have precisely nothing to do with one another. To link the two in only raises the danger of putting off people from supporting one of your causes by virtue of them not supporting the other one. It’s like a march upon Whitehall to demand the Government not only legalise cannabis immediately, and at the same time bring back hanging.
Some people may support Net Zero but also support Israel. Some people may support Hamas, but regard global warming as a hoax (I think in particular of Piers Corbyn, the crankish brother of former Far-Left Labour Party leader Jeremy). To risk splitting public support like this makes little political sense. Why not separate the two issues of Gaza and climate, as they should be?
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