Kernow Damo

Right, so Zionism Is Racism passed at Green Party conference, we know that much already by now I’m sure, just as much as we are aware of the media and political retaliation that has been utterly unhinged.

Police complaints. Calls for arrests. Threats of an EHRC investigation.

That much we’ve heard a lot of. You’d think a crime had committed wouldn’t you? Either legally or ethically, but is there any weight to these attacks, or does it just expose a who’s who of Zionists utterly wedded to Israel instead? People so devoted to it, that everything that we have borne witness to, everything that has appalled and horrified us, doesn’t budge them an inch and what actually does budge them, is any kind of threat to that, even something like a political party passing a motion in line with our eyes and our ears and is a first step – first step only – towards seeking to right a terrible historic wrong.

Well, the threats don’t have much to stand on and I thought it’d be worth drilling down into them.

What they do of course, is turn a familiar trick: turn criticism of Zionism into an attack on Jews, turn Palestinians into suspects, and hope nobody looks too closely at what the motion actually says.

When the debate came up as to whether Zionism should be called racist or not. More than a thousand members thought so, while 813, voted against, either because they were pearl clutchers, or they had genuine concerns about the motion, which I hope they will have read and not just taken the media’s cues about such things.

Right, so welcome to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, the northernmost province of Ethiopia, and if you are at all familiar with the Tigray War of 2020-2022, you’ll know that the sight of Ethiopian government troops there once again now cannot possibly be a good thing.

But just five days before the bullets began to fly once again between government and Tigray forces, the Trump administration decided to take off the sanctions on Ethiopia’s neighbour and Tigray War ally Eritrea. These sanctions were imposed on Eritrea’s military, ruling party and officials over their role fighting alongside Ethiopian forces in the last Tigray war, amid accusations of massacres, looting, sexual violence and blocking aid.

So with the region heading back towards conflict, it seems that Little Donnie’s latest bright idea was to remove all the economic pressure from one of its most notorious participants.

And while all this was going on, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, came out on the radio to say that access to the Red Sea was essential for the future of his country, that it was as indispensable as air, very much begging the question that with Ethiopia on a war footing and also wanting Red Sea access, all while the Red Sea is not exactly peaceful already, with war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis of Yemen, is another war about to spill out onto the Red Sea from the East African side and has that just been made more likely due to the machinations of somebody’s very tiny, very orange hands?

Right, so Green Party members voted to call Zionism a racist ideology and, within seconds, and as all of us who backed it predicted, the nation's most delicate defenders of Israel were clutching their pearls with such ferocity you'd think they were auditioning for a Victorian fainting contest.

We Greens have now been called Nazis, terrorist sympathisers, and antisemitic entryists-because, as we all know, if you don't back the status quo, you're clearly plotting Kristallnacht 2: Electric Boogaloo. One Reform MP wanted Green MPs booted out of Parliament, Labour MPs have sprinted to the police with letters in hand, and the EHRC has been dangled over the party like the Sword of Damocles, only with more forms to fill out. Ben Kentish of LBC has even lumped the Greens in with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC, presumably they’re all on his latest outrage bingo card and he’s eying up the first prize.

The media and political response to this vote passing has been anything but thoughtful debate over the wording of a motion. It is a full-blown attempt to make the political cost of even whispering the word 'Zionism' so astronomically high that the next person to try it will need a GoFundMe for legal fees and a witness protection scheme.

There's just one tiny snag for all these pious outrage bursters, because if you put all this manufactured outrage next to what the Greens actually passed, what the law actually says, and what Palestinians have actually endured, then the whole melodrama starts to look more like a pantomime where the villain's wig has fallen off, Widow Twankie’s fake bust bursts and the entire backdrop collapses mid-scream.

So, let's do something truly radical and start with the actual argument, not the shrieking and pearl-clutching, though we’ll get onto shredding all of that shortly.

Right, so the Israeli military has paused its regularly scheduled bombing program of Gaza to moonlight as a film studio, churning out a propaganda reel with Piers Morgan as their surprise villain, amongst others it has to be said.

Eylon Levy, ex-Israeli government mouthpiece sacked for getting too big for his britches, but still laying it on thick anyway, decided to take to X and in a sign that he might not have learned very much from his sacking, that Morgan and three other Western journalists were now officially in the IDF's 'crosshairs.'

When Morgan replied that foreign journalists should be allowed into Gaza to establish the facts independently, Levy said he would be quite happy to let Piers in.

letting him back out, though? He wasn’t so keen to promise that. All in all, it’s very threatening stuff, especially with Israel’s track record against journalists in Gaza already very well documented, so has Israel formally announced that it intends to kill Piers Morgan? Probably not. He has been so helpful to them in other ways and it is far more likely this is just Eylon Levy punching beyond his capacity and yet this threat hasn’t just come from him and threats against journalists from Israel must be taken seriously too. Palestinian reporters have been branded militants or Hamas-linked, then killed, with the evidence produced afterwards by the same army accused of killing them. Hossam Shabat is one such grim example: publicly accused in 2024, killed in a targeted strike months later, with Reporters Without Borders saying the supposed proof of a military role severely lacked substance. Never stops Israel, never stops their defenders leaping to their defence.

So no, this is not proof that Piers Morgan is about to be harmed. But it does mean "crosshairs" is harmless banter from people with no record behind them either.

Right, so Camden Labour has built 650 council homes between 2010 and 2025. And in that same timeframe it demolished 500.

Net result: 150 additional council homes in fifteen years of Labour rule there. Just ten a year then.

Perhaps you think this is the norm for the overly built up London perhaps? Well for comparison, Southwark boasts over 3,000 council houses completed or under construction. In Hackney, 543 council houses for social rent have been built since 2011, and a further 972 council homes are in delivery. Now these figures might not be directly equivalent for one reason or another, but even so, it is still a pathetically small gain isn’t it?

This is the housing situation at present. Yet that is the record on which former housing portfolio holder, now leader of Camden Council, Sagal Abdi-Wali is counting on to put her into Parliament. Is that a winning record worthy of advancement to you? Well, she’s not quite selling it that way of course.

Her campaign has a rather grander version of events.

A gigantic investment figure, thrown next to some new, shiny flats.

Now, investing in council housing is obviously important and necessary, we all appreciate the housing crisis we are in. Existing homes also need repairs and maintenance, rewiring, new kitchens, better insulation, and so on and so forth.

But improving existing homes isn't the same as increasing the number of council homes.

You can’t simply slap a new front door on, wave your bills about and claim that you’ve given birth to another house. That’s not building.

Right, so Donald Trump, in his usual reality-optional style, claims Iran is breaking.

The war between America and Iran is still ongoing, a war which Trump claims is about to reach its climax, and Washington has thrown Tehran's latest ceasefire proposal straight in the bin because they hold all the cards. Little Donnie’s business cards, not the ones that actually matter here, but again, reality optional. At the same time though, Tehran now holding pretty much the full deck, is not ready to accept a ceasefire without real guarantees, and commercial ships are still being attacked in the Strait of Hormuz.

But the truly unmistakable sign that Iran is going to surrender and they really will this time, is the news that the great orange one is now sending a third aircraft carrier, along with 9,00 Americans air-mailed in for dramatic effect on top, plus the promise of more bombs and the explosion of a supertanker the likes of which even Michael Bay might consider over the top and well, you might be forgiven for thinking that actually the Donald is getting an awful lot more desperate.

If this is surrender, I can hardly wait to taste victory. I expect the fourth carrier and a couple of burning oil rigs in party bags will seal it for certain.

Most surrenders don't come with a full naval parade from San Diego, or frantic hunting for the last can of diesel all over Europe. But maybe it is the platinum grade surrender, collect all three carrier groups for a free airstrike.

Trump wants this to be seen as a glorious triumph. To literally everyone else on the planet who’s brains are not sloshing around behind those squinty eyes, this is a war on steroids. So what is the non-Donnie delusional truth then Damo? Well…

Right, so finally the Greens have gone and done it. Sound the alarm, hide the children, and brace yourself for the tabloid conniption fits, because we all know they’re coming, but so bit it. Bring it on.

Zionism is Racism has been passed at Green party Autumn Conference with a majority of 209 votes; 1,022 to 813. Ten votes spoilt. Three amendments that would have weakened the resolution or wrapped it in cotton wool were rejected; the only amendment accepted was the one needed to remove the party's former, incompatible stance on the two-state solution.

So this is the way things stand now. The Greens are now officially anti-Zionist. The first major Western political party to be explicitly anti-Zionist. Zionism very much has its own special place in the world of racisms. Now the Green party has taken a lead on this, so that now their right of entry is withdrawn at the door.

Now as a Green Party member, I sat through this morning's debate and this afternoons and took part in the votes throughout; it was very emotional, sometimes thoughtful, at times frustratingly bureaucratic.

Amongst the debate there were real fears that demanded a real answer and then, of course, there were the usual warnings: lawyers, newspapers, elections, and when that did utterly fail, the old "If you go to a synagogue, better start packing" routine.

Members heard the lot.

They passed it anyway and decisively.

So lets pick the days events apart, because no doubt fearmongering is currently taking over in the usual circles of the Spectator, the Torygraph and those reaching for the tissues around Jonathan Freedland’s desk at the Guardian.

Right, so while Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to make settler violence disappear as fast as possible because the consequences of it are clear to see, an inconvenient truth for him as that is in the eyes of the world, and notably here as the latest attacks see a Palestinian family in Salfit burying Mashhour Shaher Yassin, who was 51 and whom Palestinian officials say settlers shot dead in Yasuf.

And as the olive harvest begins, farmers across the West Bank are reporting attacks, stolen crops and being shut out of land their families have worked for generations.

That is why Netanyahu’s settler claims right now have disintegrated as hard as they have.

It is a family burying a man. It is farmers losing the one harvest they rely on. It is the same pressure and oppression and racism showing up across different villages, all with the same effect: Palestinian life on the land becomes harder, poorer and more dangerous.

Olives are food, income and inheritance. Drive a farmer away at harvest time and you don’t just steal a crop. You tell that family their future on that land can be stolen too.

Netanyahu is heading towards an election while Israel’s image is being battered by evidence he can’t make disappear nor dismiss out of hand, and his answer to all of it is about to make the whole thing so much worse for him and for Israel, because his answer is not that this isn’t happening.

His answer is that it doesn’t mean anything.

That it is not settlers. Not a system. Not a political problem he owns.

Just a few bad boys.

The West Bank's hottest new youth club: BYOG-bring your own gun, leave your conscience at home. That’s who is to blame apparently.

Right, so flying into Tel Aviv, a Flydubai plane went into an unscheduled dive over Saudi Arabia. This was because the co-pilot had decided to attack his captain while in the air.

The plane reached Tabuk, the pilots looking like they had been through a tumble dryer; but somehow everyone walked away.

That much at least is what we know with certainty.

Nobody yet knows why the co-pilot decided to take part in a wrestling match at 30,000 feet. Was it some grudge? A nervous breakdown? Was he trying to hijack the plane, crash it? I could be far more flippant on this point, others have been, but I won’t be. All theories, nothing confirmed thusfar though

Of course, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t need to bother themselves with the details of the hows and whys and wherefores. They had elections to win and a war to flog and the timing of this incident for their fortunes, well, it’s nothing short of miraculous isn’t it?

So, is this a false flag operation then? Well again, we have no evidence one way or the other. There is no evidence it was a planned, contrived, staged operation, or something far more spontaneous.

The advantages of a false flag operation though are very much all present and correct. Everything is there for you to take a real case of danger, blame Iran without a shred of evidence, and use that fear for political profit. Then you can reap all the advantages of a false flag, without it ever being declared one.

And a certain diaper-wearing orange man-baby certainly didn’t hesitate.

Right, so Saudi Arabia is reportedly bombing Yemen’s schools again in a headline reminiscent of the Minab School strike in Iran, though this time the media appear to have completely ignored it. Al-Rawdh School in Taiz has reportedly been hit for the third time. Then, the following day, another school, Al-Shaheed, was reportedly struck.

But while While Saudi jets are again smashing Yemeni classrooms, Saudi schools are being moved online for fear that the Houthis stoop to their apparently depraved level and do the same back to them.

The country that can hit a school in Yemen three times now can’t guarantee its own children a normal school day because of it’s own actions. Saudi panic. And so, while we have families living in Yemen having to cope with scenes like these, the drama in Riyadh has taken quite a different turn.

Schoolchildren are sent home. They'll probably be hiding behind a Vision 2030 brochure, hoping that the future will arrive before the shrapnel does.

Clearly, Saudi Arabia is not ignorant of the importance of removing children from a war zone - that is, when the children are its own.

Unless the students in question have a certain passport.

That scene from Yemen just now is a separate attack on a marketplace in Taiz, and not the school strike, but the point still stands.