As we go to press, over 4,600 Palestinians, including 1,800 children, have been killed in Gaza by indiscriminate Israeli strikes on residential neighbourhoods that Israel claims have been infiltrated by Hamas.
Western governments, including our own, have repeatedly defended Israel’s utter disregard for international law by invoking the Zionist mantra that Israel is a democracy acting solely in self-defence and imputing all civilian deaths on Hamas, a narrative that deliberately overlooks scores of Palestinians killed by Israel in the PLA-controlled West Bank.
Newsweek best described the West’s dehumanisation of the Palestinian struggle: “The facts that the [Hamas] attacks occurred in the context of the deep structural violence of a suffocating 16-year-old blockade and 56 years of Israeli military occupation, and all the indignities and deprivations they entail, are dismissed as irrelevant at best or moral equivocation at worst.”
And it’s that Western reticence to empathise with Palestinians, renounce Israel in any way, or even contextualise the conflict that has for decades gifted successive Hawkish governments carte blanche to continue slaughtering Palestinians with impunity.
“Humanity, law, decency, respect for human life—that is what sets us apart from the mindless violence of the terrorists [Hamas]”, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Parliament.
When Imran Hussain MP asked if he would press the Israeli Government to end its indiscriminate airstrikes and illegal collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in the form of a complete blockade of water, food, and electricity, the PM replied that “Hamas are the entity responsible for the suffering we are seeing, and Hamas alone,” whitewashing the atrocities committed against Palestinian civilians by Israel.
“We must absolutely support Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure that attacks like this cannot happen again,” was Sunak’s reply to Kim Johnson MP’s question on what the UK is doing to prevent “increasing numbers of deaths of innocent Palestinians” and “forced mass displacement of Gazans.”
Nadia Whittome MP asked the PM to urge Israel to cancel its forced relocation of hospitals, described as “tantamount to a death sentence” by World Health Organization (WHO) and to lift the siege and end “indiscriminate bombing.” As he replied to other MPs, Sunak denied that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, blamed Hamas for it, and justified the forced relocation of patients to “minimise the impact on civilians.”
The first time Sunak showed-cased any compassion for Palestinians was when he expressed sympathy for Layla Moran MP, whose family are from Palestine, related how her extended family in Gaza City were bombed by the Israeli army and had to seek sanctuary in a church.
On every given opportunity this fortnight, the PM has placed the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza squarely on Hamas, absolving the Occupying Power, which major human rights NGOs label an apartheid state, of all war crimes.
In a sad testament to Britain’s current political decency, it was left to the West’s first Muslim leader, Scotland’s First Minister, to humanise Palestinians in the discourse.
Yousaf Humza who told the SNP Annual Conference, “The life of a Palestinian is equal to the life of an Israeli. It is right for the world to condemn the actions of Hamas unequivocally. But any form of collective punishment, as we are seeing in Gaza, can never be justified. 2.2 million innocent people cannot pay the price for the actions of Hamas.”
Yousaf also strongly criticized Foreign Secretary James Cleverly for failing to mention British Palestinians stranded in Gaza during his visit to the Middle East and omitting any reference to the dire situation of British citizens in Gaza. Yousaf said it was “shameful that UK citizens trapped in Gaza don’t even get a mention. [It] might be helpful if you give them at least a passing mention in your discussions,” he said.
Sunak, who rightly showed sympathy for Britain’s Jewish community, gave no thought to British Palestinians who have lost loved ones in Gaza, or the impact of this conflict on his country’s Muslim populations, which according to his own government data, already bear the brunt (39%) of hate crimes.
For our government, Palestinian and Muslim lives do not matter.
Anyone seeking a measured, deescalating or statesman-like response from the Opposition was quickly dismayed when the Labour leader endorsed Israel’s collective punishment of 2.2 million civilians. In an interview on LBC radio, Sir Keir Starmer said Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from battered and beleaguered Gazans.
As a former human rights lawyer, Starmer understands that his unconditional support of Israel undermines international efforts to reign in its openly xenophobic government, whose Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” when announcing Israel’s blockade of the strip.
Our government remains silent on the atrocities perpetrated by Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are besieged by Israeli settlers and the army. As we go to press, 12 Palestinians were killed in Hebron. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Gaza crisis began.
There is no moral outrage by our government when Palestinians, including babies, children, women, and old people, are being killed, their homes demolished and made homeless, and their food production destroyed both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said the PM’s omission of support for “Palestinian civilians killed due to Israeli airstrikes or include any call for the parties to the conflict to uphold international humanitarian law,” is deeply troubling.”
Sir Starmer was also rightly quick to sympathise with Britain’s Jewish community, offering words of comfort during a “distressing and worrying time” and welcoming news of additional Community Security Trust funding. Later he added concern for the Muslim community. “There must be zero tolerance of any increase in antisemitism or Islamophobia.”
One of the worst atrocities Israel committed was the bombing of Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, where around 500 people were killed. In a press conference held by the Patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem, Anglican Archbishop Hosam Nouman confirmed the hospital had received “specific warnings by phone on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to evacuate the hospital prior to Tuesday’s blast.”
Israel has not even spared medics, with the WHO condemning the IDF’s verified and constant orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2,000 inpatients in northern Gaza, which it claims deteriorated the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.
There are reports of deaths of health care workers and destruction of health facilities that deny civilians the basic human right to life-saving health care and is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law.
In the first week alone, Israel dropped an estimated 6,000 bombs on a trapped population, decimating entire neighbourhoods (a quarter of the northern Gaza Strip), destroying approximately 52,000 housing units and rendering 20% of the houses uninhabitable.
It is estimated that Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian child approximately every 15 minutes in the past two weeks. More Palestinian children were killed in the first few days of Israeli attacks on Gaza than Ukrainian children in the 18 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Israel has forcibly displaced Palestinians since its founding on their land in 1948; we are currently witnessing a re-enactment of that Nakba in Gaza, and once again, the West is fully behind it, as shown by our PM’s support for the illegal eviction of 1.1 million Palestinians from the north to the south of Gaza.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, including children and babies, and displaced in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. It is not that Western governments and media are not aware of such brutality by Israeli forces. They want to turn a blind eye to it.
In Gaza, Palestinians have nowhere to hide or shelter from Israel’s indiscriminate bombing.
The killing of civilians, including children, must be condemned unequivocally, by whichever side: by Hamas when they invaded Israel, killing 1,300 and injuring 4,562 Israelis, or by Israel, who has killed over 4,600 and injured over 14,000 Palestinians (and counting).
A ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, and the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers are the only ways to end the conflict. However, that process can only begin with an end to the dehumanisation of Palestinians.
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