A number of events over the past week — principally the terrible floods in Spain, the Budget announcement at Westminster, the US presidential election, and the outcome of the Tory leadership contest — have provided the opportunity for Britain’s mass media to maintain almost a blanket of silence over Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its invasion and bombing of Lebanon.
Of course, it is genuinely human to be shocked at the horrific images from Valencia and to feel compassion for the victims. The loss of life is truly dreadful and should be a reminder that urgent measures are needed to limit further global warming and to mitigate the effects of the warming that has already occurred.
But are not the lives and homes of non-Europeans in Palestine and Lebanon just as valuable — especially as they are suffering from a disaster which has been deliberately caused by Israel’s government and military?
Is there not an element of racism in the media’s approach? Or is it simply an unwillingness to recognise that a genocide is occurring and that our government is complicit in it, through RAF surveillance flights and through military supplies from both Britain and the US, much of it passing through the RAF sovereign bases in Cyprus?
The masses of people who marched for Palestine in London on Saturday under the slogans of “End the genocide in Gaza,” “Hands off Lebanon,” “Don’t attack Iran” and “Stop arming Israel” have performed an essential service in maintaining public pressure on our government.
At the rally, Stop the War Coalition’s Lindsey German posed some questions to Foreign Secretary David Lammy. She recalled that last week, Lammy said there is no genocide in Gaza because not enough people have been killed and that the people who say it is a genocide are “law-breakers and disreputable people.”
MP Richard Burgon told the rally that Israel is committing war crime after war crime, and that sanctions are the only way to get it to stop.
Lammy certainly knows what a genocide is, because in July 2022, he spoke at a memorial meeting on the 27th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys lost their lives.
What is clearly happening in Gaza is an attempt by Israel to remove the indigenous Palestinian population by bombing, starvation and denial of medical attention, and by erasure of its culture. The Israeli Knesset has now declared the UN Relief and Works Agency a terrorist organisation, making it almost impossible for it to provide food for Gaza.
Israel also doesn’t want the truth to come out: in Gaza and Lebanon, it has killed 193 journalists in a year, a blatant violation of Article 79 of the 1977 additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims in armed conflicts.
In fact, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has called for Israel to be suspended from the UN for “serial violations of international law,” although such a course of action seems unlikely as it would have to be done on the basis of a recommendation from the UN security council, where it could be vetoed by Israel’s backers, the US and Britain.
Nonetheless, public pressure can have an effect. Lobbying firm Apco Worldwide has dropped Israeli-owned arms manufacturer Elbit Systems as a client after protests by Palestine Action activists. And now it has been revealed that Barclays Bank has sold its $3.4 million shareholdings in Elbit after a steady increase over the last decade.
The fight for military and economic sanctions on Israel needs to be stepped up urgently. Pressure does work, and the government can be forced to change course.
Source: Morning Star