A Kuffiya for Tony Benn – The British Warrior Who 'Matured with Age'
20 March 2014
By Ramzy Baroud
Long before the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment
campaign inched slowly from the fringes of global
solidarity with Palestinians to take center stage,
Tony Benn had been advocating a boycott of Israel with
unrestricted conviction, for years.
"Britain should offer its support for this strategy by
stopping all arms sales to Israel, introducing trade
sanctions and a ban on all investment there together
with a boycott of Israeli goods here and make it a
condition for the lifting of these measures that
Israel complies with these demands at once," Benn
wrote in his blog on April 19, 2002, under the title
"A STATE OF PALESTINE NOW". The ‘strategy' of which
Ben spoke was for Arafat to declare a state, and for
‘friendly nations' to recognize it.
Yes, the title was all in caps. It was as if Benn, a
principled British left wing politician, had wanted to
loudly accentuate his insistence that the Palestinian
people deserved their rights, freedom and sovereignty.
He was as bold and courageous as any man or woman of
true values and principles should always be. He
remained uncompromising in matters of human rights and
justice. This international warrior left a challenging
space to fill when he passed away at the age of 88, on
Thursday, March 13.
Following the news of his death, British media was
awash of reports about Benn and his long legacy of
being a stubborn politician and uncompromising
advocate for human rights. Frankly, there was less
emphasis on the latter and much more on the former,
despite the fact that Benn understood politics was a
platform to quarrel with moral dilemmas. The
parliament was a platform to serve the people, not to
conspire with other politicians for the sake of one's
party. For some politicians, it is all about winning
elections, not using office to carry out a
morally-grounded mandate to serve the people. Benn was
different, thus there was the love-hate relationship
Britain had with him.
True to form, British media immediately conjured up a
few buzzwords by which it attempted to define Benn's
legacy. He had ‘immatured with age," was one of them.
It was a remark made by Benn's fiercest rival in the
Labor Party, Harold Wilson (still alive at 96) in
reference to Benn's becoming more of a radical
left-winger as he grew older. Some in the media simply
love axioms and catch phrases, for it spares
journalists the pain of exhaustive research. Wilson
and his camp invested heavily in assigning Benn the
responsibility of the successive defeats experienced
by the Labor Party at the hands of the Conservatives.
Indeed, Margaret Thatcher and then John Major had won
four elections in a row, and between them changed the
face of British economy and quashed major labor
unions. But blaming Benn for splitting the party is
unfair to say the least.
Compare Tony Benn's legacy with that of Tony Blair.
The first was principled to the core, boldly
challenged US hegemony in the world, and fought hard
for Britain's poor, working class and against
unhindered globalization that made states vulnerable
to the inherent disparity of the global economic
system.
Blair stood for the exact opposite: a self-serving
politician, devoid of any morality, and was rightly
dubbed Bush's poodle for heeding to the US military
adventurism, mainly in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Benn, even from the point of view of those who
disagreed with him, was always seen, and shall always
be remembered as a man of high values. Blair had been
discredited by his own peers even before he was forced
to concede office. One can imagine that Israeli media
is the one likely to remember Blair with much
fondness.
Although Benn seemed guided by the same high moral
values that accompanied him throughout the over 50
years in which he served as an MP in the British
parliament, when he retired in 2001, he seemed ready
to take on even bigger challenges. His task morphed
from that of a fierce politician at home, fighting for
the very definition of the Labor Party, to an
internationalist, taking on the most difficult of
subjects, and never bowing down.
Following the US-British so-called ‘war on terror' –
designed around economic and strategic interests –
Benn rose to greater prominence, not as another TV
celebrity ‘expert', but as a fierce opponent to the US
and his own government's wholesale slaughter of
hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Since then,
the man never stayed away from the streets. He spoke
with passion and mesmerized audiences in his
beautiful, immaculate English. Most important about
the timing of Benn's courageous stances was the fact
that back then, all public discourses related to the
wars were saturated with fear. But, whenever Benn
spoke, he pushed the narrative up to higher degrees of
audacity.
I listened to him once speak at Trafalgar Square in
London. He wore a Kuffiya, the traditional Palestinian
headscarf. He spoke of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, as
if their peoples were his own. Thousands of us
applauded with so much enthusiasm. It was as if his
words alone were the salvation that would free Arab
nations from the bondage of military occupation and
war. But at times, words live in a sphere of their own
where they multiply, and when repeated often enough,
can change the world.
"The main responsibility for the appalling crimes
being perpetrated against the Palestinians must be
equally shared between Jerusalem and Washington for
successive American governments have funded Israel,
armed Israel and used their veto at the Security
Council to protect Israel from being forced to comply
with what world opinion wanted," he said in 2003, in
an interview with Egypt-based Al Ahram.
True, Benn was not the only British politician who
spoke with such candor about the shared responsibility
of crimes committed against Palestinians, but few went
as far as he did.
The next time there is a rally for Palestine, there
ought to be an empty chair with a Palestinian Kuffiya,
and the name of Tony Benn. It is a Palestinian
tradition to honor its heroes, even those with a
splendidly beautiful British accent.
- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated
columnist, a media consultant and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto
Press, London).
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EsinIslam.Com
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