David Lammy is desecrating genocide by denying it in Gaza
Palestinians sit next to the body of a relative, looking at the rubble of their building after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, 29 October 2024
Sharaiz Chaudhry writes in The New Arab on 5 November 2024:
“These [genocide] are quite properly legal terms that must be determined by international courts… Those terms were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term.”
These were the words of Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Parliament on Monday when asked by a Conservative MP whether he would affirm that there is “not a genocide occurring in the Middle East” and that the use of this terminology is “completely inappropriate”.
In choosing to respond this way, Lammy has once again exposed this Labour government’s hypocrisy. After coming to power on the back of promising change and a foreign policy driven by international law, the government has consistently shown that when it comes to Israel, it is business as usual.
The government has continued to treat Israel like a partner, rather than the rogue entity it has become in the eyes of the majority of the world, and they continue to be complicit in its genocide by providing diplomatic cover and military support. Indeed, according to a recent Al-Jazeera investigation, 47% of all reconnaissance missions over Gaza were conducted by the RAF. These provide Israel with on-the-ground intelligence, while an air-bridge, of which the UK is a fundamental part, guarantees the steady supply of weapons that the Zionist entity needs to sustain the intensity of its war in Gaza (and now also Lebanon).
Through his denial, it is Lammy, not those that rightly label Israel’s actions in Palestine as a genocide, that undermines the seriousness of the term. It is he who, in order to avoid accountability for the UK’s ongoing complicity, seeks to downplay the horrors that this government continues to sponsor.