For the defenders of Israel’s war on Gaza, the game is up


Staunch allies calling themselves friends of Israel are beginning to realise they are also friends of the murderers of western aid workers, friends of genocide and friends of fascism

A protestor holding a poster picturing Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, who was killed by an Israeli air strike

David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye 7 April 2024

Six months on, the entire edifice that allowed Israeli forces to kill more than 33,000 Palestinians and wound another 75,000, displace a population of over 2.3 million and then starve them, demolish the north of Gaza, dismantle the health service and signal that it would do the same in Rafah for the next six months, is tumbling down.

Political leaders who framed this carnage as Israel’s right to defend itself, journalists who peddled fictional horror stories about beheaded babies and mass rape on 7 October, and editors who day in, day out ignored stories about aid convoys being targeted by Israeli forces are rushing for cover.

All the arguments they used to maintain this slaughter are crumbling in their hands – that this is a just war, that Israel must be allowed to finish the job, that the action taken is proportionate, that the legal process in the International Court of Justice hinders peace talks and can be ignored, that the UK and US can simultaneously admonish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and continue to arm him.

The dam has burst. The Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron can no longer play cat and mouse with Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair Alicia Kearns, who revealed a few days ago that government lawyers knew that Israel had breached international humanitarian law.

More than 600 prominent lawyers, academics and former judges, including former Supreme Court president Lady Hale and two other former justices in the court, signed a letter warning the UK government that it was breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

Former Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan asked how could Israel still be considered an ally of the UK, and called for its chief supporters Lord Polak, Lord Pickles and Tom Tugendhat, to be held to account for their support for Israel.

“I think that anything in support of what is becoming a total catastrophe in Gaza is morally unacceptable and what we have to accept is it’s not just what they’re doing now is wrong – it’s what Israel has been doing for years has been wrong because the Israeli Defence Force does not follow international law,” he told LBC.

“It has been backing and supporting illegal settlers in the West Bank who steal Palestinian land and it is that land theft, that annexation of Palestine, which is the origin of the problem, which has given rise to the Hamas atrocity and the battles we’re seeing.”

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