Israel and Palestine

My response to the horrific news that MPs have voted, by 385 votes to 26, to uphold legislation introduced on Monday by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization. Under the legislation, it is now a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for anyone to become a member of, or even to support the direct action of Palestine Action. I wrote most of this article before the vote, and in it I run through the long and noble history of direct action in the UK against arms companies and the government’s involvement in war crimes and genocide, which have generally led to jury acquittals. This latest move, condemned yesterday by UN experts, who insisted, correctly, that “mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism”, not only seeks to equate property damage with mass murder; it also, most chillingly, demonstrates how the Starmer government is working not for the interests of the UK, but for the interests of its masters in Israel.

When an Israeli hospital was struck by a missile yesterday — whether deliberately or not is difficult to ascertain — it nevertheless prompted a wave of hysteria and unparalleled hypocrisy in Israel. Even though no one was killed in the attack, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about how Iran’s aim was “to destroy every one of us”, and defense minister Israel Katz said that Ayatollah Khameini “can no longer be allowed to exist”, and called the hospital attack “war crimes.” Attacking a hospital is indeed a war crime, but nowhere in Israel’s response to the attack was there even the slightest scintilla of recognition that, if the attack on the Soroka Hospital was a war crime, Israel’s war crimes in relation to hospitals in Gaza are of a magnitude that is so much greater that it is almost incalculable. Last October, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.” Over the last 20 months, Israel has attacked all 36 hospitals in Gaza, often repeatedly, destroying many, and decommissioning all but one, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which is now the last surviving hospital for 2 million people, although it too is on the verge of collapse. As Israeli officials were whining, the WHO warned that, even as Nasser Hospital is overwhelmed with casualties from the ongoing aid massacres, fuel will run out within the next few days, with premature babies on incubators particularly vulnerable, not only because of the need for fuel for their incubators, but also because the hospital is running out of milk for them because of Israel’s ongoing siege. As I also note, Israel has also attacked hospitals and healthcare facilities in Lebanon, and, in the last week, has also attacked two hospitals in Iran.

Five days since Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, which led to immediate military retaliation, I examine the shameful hypocrisy of the west, which has been insisting yet again that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, even though Israel is very clearly not the victim in this scenario, having launched its unprovoked attack on the spurious basis that Iran was about to secure nuclear weapons. In particular, I note how, 20 months ago, the west’s unconditional support opened the door to all the horrors that have been taking place ever since, and especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which, until this latest development, had become so severe that western leaders were finally beginning to condemn Israel. Shamefully, as the situation in Gaza deteriorates still further, the west’s sudden indifference is especially despicable. I also focus on the crucial role of the US, under Donald Trump, who faces a divided Republican Party — on the one hand, fanatical supporters of Israel, and neo-cons who have long hoped to wage war on Iran, and, on the other, opposition from MAGA isolationists within his own Party who support his “America First” policy, which was supposed to eschew any further involvement in ruinously expensive foreign wars. I also mock Israeli efforts to make themselves the victims, as they finally face some blowback from their monstrous actions over the last 20 months, and I end by examining whether one imminent problem, not much discussed, is that the supply of the very expensive weapons for this type of conflict may soon run out.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the Grnefell Tower fire, a disaster that should never have happened, when 72 residents of a social housing block in west London died after an inferno engulfed the tower, a situation that only happened because those responsible for the safety of the residents were complicit in an industry-wide policy of profiteering and cost-cutting with the full backing of central and local government. In my annual reflection on the enduring significance of the fire, I focus in particular on issues of race and class, largely ignored in mainstream media reporting, and by the official inquiry, even though 85% of the inhabitants of the tower were of Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) origin, who are, it seems, disproportionately housed on the upper floors of high-rise social housing blocks. I also reflect on how social tenants have been marginalized in favour of a privatised rentier economy, resulting in them becoming, at best, second-class citizens, and, at worst, disposable, as the victims of ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’, and draw comparisons with the ultimate process of ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’; essentially, the entire State of Israel, where, with the backing of the same elites responsible for Grenfell, Israel is engaged, in Gaza, in a diabolical process of genocidal ‘gentrification.’

Marking 600 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, I report on how, despite robust criticism and threats of “concrete action” by western leaders, nothing “concrete” has emerged at all to disrupt Israel’s ongoing slaughter of civilians, still averaging 100 deaths a day. I also report on the cynical and broken efforts to implement a US- and Israeli-backed food delivery scheme, which collapsed into chaos on its first day yesterday, as the system, alarmingly resembling a concentration camp, was overwhelmed by starving Palestinians, some of whom were subsequently shot and killed. The aid plan, which includes intrusive interrogations and biometric screening, is, of course, a deliberately engineered exercise in humiliation and control, also designed to shut down existing aid organizations, and especially UNRWA, the UN organization that has been successfully supporting Palestinians for 75 years, but which Israel has smeared as a front for Hamas, without providing any proof, and which it also despises because it advocates for all exiled Palestinians’ UN-mandated “right to return.” UNWRA and other aid agencies have a demonstrable ability to distribute aid where it is needed, and have full warehouses in Jordan and Egypt. In addition, over 9,000 trucks are waiting on the border, but Israel’s only intention is to keep on starving Palestinians to death, and preventing the delivery of urgently needed medical supplies. As we mark 600 days of the genocide, instead of progress, Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have, instead, been doubling down on their messianic genocidal messages, continuing to implicate Israel’s supporters in policies of extermination drawn from the Old Testament, which, as I note, “scared me when I read it as a child, as it should anyone who believes that humanity cannot survive or thrive when weighed down by ancient hatreds.”

Last week, after starving Palestinian civilians for eleven weeks, and bombing them relentlessly for the last two months, Israel stepped up its aggression, launching “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” with even more savage bombing, and announcing its intention to militarily occupy the whole of Gaza, to erase every remaining building, and to force the surviving population into a concentration camp in the south, prior to an illusory program of “voluntary migration.” Plumbing unparalleled depths of depravity, after 19 months of unbearable horror, Israel’s genocidal endgame has finally provoked condemnation from its allies in the west, who, until now, have whispered barely a word of dissent. The foreign ministers of 22 countries and three senior EU officials issued a strongly-worded demand for the resumption of aid to prevent mass starvation, while the governments of the UK, France and Canada specifically threatened “concrete actions” if Israel continued its “wholly disproportionate” escalation, its starvation policies and its plans for the “permanent forced displacement” of the population, which, as they noted, “is a breach of international humanitarian law.” Words mean nothing to Israel, of course, and, if its allies are serious, they must follow up with arms embargoes, sanctions and more, but it remains noteworthy that so many countries are now turning against Israel, no doubt because the extent of its renewed escalation of hostilities and the impact of its starvation siege are so severe that they have suddenly become aware that they need to be seen to have made the right noises for when, inevitably, there will be a legal and moral reckoning. Hopefully, this turning of the tides is significant, reinforcing the recent warning, by opposition politician Yair Golan, that Israel, which is “kill[ing] children as a hobby”, that it “is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was”, and the admission by an Israeli Foreign Ministry official that “the world is not with us” and that “No one will want to be identified with Israel.”

An urgent update on the situation in Gaza, as Israel launches “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, which can only be regarded as its “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem”, with all the historical echoes that entails. Israel’s plan, announced 12 days ago, is to militarily occupy the whole of the Gaza Strip, to destroy all its remaining buildings, and to drive the surviving population to the south, to be held in a concentration camp where vetted individuals, subjected to biometric screening, will be allowed food, provided every two weeks, but only at the barest of subsistence levels to prevent death by starvation. Via posts from those trapped in Gaza, I report on the unprecedented escalation of military activity over the last two nights, as the severity of the attacks, and the death toll, have, shamefully, matched the scale and intensity of the earliest days of the genocide. I condemn western leaders for their continued inaction, and reserve particular contempt for Donald Trump, who, in his four-day tour of the Gulf, failed to say or do anything to help the Palestinians by calling for a renewed ceasefire and the resumption of desperately-needed humanitarian aid to stave off mass starvation, even after Hamas obliged him by releasing the US-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander. Instead, he revived his absurd proposal to remake Gaza — this time as a “freedom zone”, rather than “the Riviera of the Middle East” that he proposed in February, and has continued to endorse the “voluntary migration” of the entire population. Is he wilfully complicit, or just a rambling and incoherent fool? Sadly, no one even seems to know.

In my latest article, I follow up on Israel’s new plans for an escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, cutting through the failures of media commentators to establish what the plans actually reveal, which is nothing less than the extermination of the entire population. Everything about the plans is diabolical, including the screamingly illegal proposal to militarily occupy the whole of the Gaza Strip and to force the surviving population to the south, to be hemmed into a tightly-controlled area in which aid, at the barest of subsistence levels, will be provided by private contractors, but only to those who have submitted to monitoring and the use of facial recognition technology. However, it is the last component of the plan — for the “voluntary migration” of the population — that is even more troubling than the proposals for total military occupation and for a kind of techno-concentration camp. This is because, as few commentators seem to want to acknowledge, no country is willing to take in significant numbers of Palestinian refugees. Egypt and Jordan have persistently refused, because of legitimate fears of massive unrest were they to be complicit in mass ethnic cleansing, and in the countries of the west, as I describe it, “anti-immigrant sentiment is more virulent than at any other time in living memory.” As I proceed to explain, the proposal for “voluntary migration” is, therefore, nothing but an illusion that is being used by Israel to disguise its true intent, which, without any viable escape route for the Palestinians, consists solely of continuing extermination, either “a quick death by Israel’s ongoing military assaults, or a slow death via hunger, dehydration, and the myriad murderous outcomes of Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s entire medical system.”

I write to bear witness, to be counted as someone who didn’t stay silent as the most grotesque western-backed atrocities in most of our lifetimes were taking place in Gaza, but my heart has been breaking for the last two months as Israel resumed its genocide after breaking the six-week ceasefire, firstly via the reimposition of a complete siege on all supplies of food, water, medical supplies and fuel, and then, for the last six weeks, via a resumption of its intensive bombing of the civilian population. In my latest long read, I repeatedly condemn western politicians and the mainstream media for their persistent failure to challenge Israel, or to tell the truth about the genocide, and, with no end in sight to Israel’s screamingly illegal project, over the last two months, of coercion and murder to pressurize Hamas to free all the hostages and to surrender, with the only “reward” being the supposed “voluntary migration” of the rest of the population, I turn to Israel itself as perhaps our best hope, as, over the last month, over 140,000 former officials, members of the military and academics have openly condemned the resumption of the genocide. I also highlight the baleful role played by Donald Trump, both in his support for the resumption of Israel’s genocide, and in his assault on freedom of speech in the US via the kidnapping and intended deportation of peaceful students whose only “crime” has been to oppose the genocide, and I provide a warning about how “a depraved darkness within Israel itself has been deliberately spread so thoroughly throughout the western world that we are left gazing at the face of a renascent fascism, leeringly suggesting that there is nothing to protect any of us.”

My assessment of the almost inestimably important case of Mahmoud Khalil, the legal US resident abducted on March 8 and taken to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana for deportation. Targeted for his involvement in student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza at Columbia University, Khalil’s abduction and his intended deportation are a glaring example of the Trump administration’s intention to shred the First Amendment to support Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza, although they are framing it as a “national security” matter. The Secretary of State, the pliant and dim-witted Marco Rubio, seeks to justify Khalil’s deportation by invoking a barely-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, which gives him the authority to deport non-citizens if he has “reasonable ground to believe that [their] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” If successful, the Trump administration will be able to deport any green card holder or visa holder who has engaged in any kind of non-violent opposition to Israel’s genocide, a startling development which would not only formally make the US into a dictatorship, in which freedom of speech (or even thought) is not allowed; it would also do so in the service of a foreign country, Israel. This is a position that, as I describe it, “lays bare how the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, prioritizes Israel’s interests over its own, in what really ought to be seen as a betrayal of America’s self-interest — or even as an act of treason.” Although an immigration judge rubber-stamped Khalil’s deportation on Friday, a legal challenge is ongoing in federal court in New Jersey, and we must all hope that it is successful, although it seems certain that it will be a protracted process that will last for many years. Its importance, however, cannot be underestimated. As I say, “It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of the US depends on it.”