Here in the UK, Israel/Gaza is a test of our national character – part one

Last Updated: October 17, 2023By Tags: , , , , , ,

There is a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), saying that a UK citizen’s opinion of what is happening in Gaza is a litmus test of that person’s character.

Here it is…

… and it is absolutely right.

If enough people are voicing similar opinions – or they do it on the national media so they can influence others – is that not an indication of the national character that we are showing the world?

This Site seems to be suffering because of its coverage of the conflict (if you can even call it that; the current situation seems to be the two-million-strong population of Gaza cowering under relentless genocidal missile attacks from Israel); it seems that, if you say what you see instead of conforming to a fake “consensus reality” constructed in Whitehall and Broadcasting House, you will be suppressed.

But this too will pass and I have a duty to report what is happening – in this case, in the participants’ own words, as seen on the previously-mentioned ‘X’ site; it seems the most immediate source. We’ll start with the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

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When word of the Hamas attack on southern Israel came through, early in the morning of October 7, Sunak posted this response:

We must be fair: while Hamas later stated that it attacked only military targets, the information available to us at the time was that civilians were attacked as well. And who willingly believes an organisation that is said to be terrorist by almost all our trusted media outlets?

The BBC – which is now under sustained criticism for not calling Hamas terrorists – provided much-needed context courtesy of Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who pointed out that the people of Gaza have been effectively under siege for 70 years and that, in such a situation, it is perfectly natural for people to resist:

Here’s some more context, from Andrew Feinstein on Double Down News – showing that Israeli violence and murder of Palestinians has been a constant and continuing outrage that has gone ignored by western media and politicians who actually support it, including the leaders of both the UK government and its main opposition party.

He is also early in pointing out that resistance to Russia in Ukraine – that is supported by the west – is berated in Palestine:

Broadcaster Adil Ray chimed in early, with a balanced comment on the situation:

And then the right-wingers turned up to put the boot in. Here’s Mail on Sunday bovver boy Dan Hodges:

What’s not to believe about a claim that people who have been unjustly caged for decades might turn to violence in a desperate bid for freedom?

Ah, but those blasted lefties were putting out informative context that was undermining what people like Hodges were trying to say. For example, here’s a link to a Wall Street Journal article explaining how Israel helped in the creation of Hamas, which it saw as a Muslim opponent to the Palestine Liberation Organisation:

The PLO gave up its opposition to the existence of Israel, but Hamas has continued to deny that nation’s right to exist. Now, why would Israel support the creation of a group that wants to destroy it? Is it to give its people an enemy – a bogeyman to fear and hate? Is it to continue the aggression, despite other alternatives being available?

By the evening of October 7, anti-Palestinian sentiment was already being spread through the UK’s social media. Note: anti-Palestinian, not anti-Hamas. The aim was to link the innocent Palestinian people with the violent attackers:

Remember: Israel’s behaviour in bottling Palestinians up in Gaza and in supporting the creation of Hamas may very well have led to the violence it had suffered that day.

Adil Ray tweeted again that evening, putting his finger on the heart of the Israel/Palestine question:

Sadly, some supporters of Palestinian liberation in the UK chose to take to the streets and celebrate the Hamas attack on Israel that night – thereby playing into the hands of right-wing supporters of Israel.

Here’s a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, demanding that these UK citizens should be arrested and, if possible, deported. His claim that they may have direct links to organisations that threaten national security is plucked from the air. Racism?

On the morning of October 8, UK opposition leader Keir Starmer denied the history of Gaza by saying the Hamas attack had “no justification”. He ignored decades of suppression by Israel and said that country had “every right to defend itself”.

It is important to remember that Israel does indeed have a right to defend itself and its people. But how far should that defence go?

Meanwhile, more level heads were still trying to provide vital context:

This was that day that Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intended response to the attack on his country by a small group of armed militants: he said he would “smash Gaza to dust” and all people living there should leave – even though Israel had closed all its borders and so had Egypt:

Someone had previously made the point that Palestinians in Gaza have nowhere to go. Grace Blakeley provides just a couple of the response to it – made (I believe) before Netanyahu’s statement:

Evidence of pro-Israel propaganda (lies) was also starting to come out. So:

This was also the day we were reminded that…

Some might say this is just as much a piece of propaganda as Israel’s claim that a weekend rave was a peace festival. Who do you believe?

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t worried about conflicting stories from either side; his only concern was restoring peace. The response from a biased UK press and punditry was predictable:

“What kind of country has the UK become?”

More was to follow.

By this time, the world “unprovoked” was turning up in the comments of a large number of Israel supporters in what some interpreted as an attempt to create the “illusory truth effect”.

Here: see for yourself:

Now see this interview with a Palestinian politician based in the West Bank, who again states that the Hamas attack followed decades of occupation by Israel, did not target civilians, and took military personnel as hostages. Meanwhile, Israel could be seen to be bombing houses in Gaza.

He asked the crucial question of the current conflict: if Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas’ aggression, does Palestine not have a right to defend itself from Israel?

He quoted the Israeli finance minister, who self-describes as a fascist homophobe, saying Palestinians have three choices: to emigrate, accept a life of subjugation to Israelis, or die.

He pointed out that, in counterpoint to the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, more than 5,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including more than 1,260 who do not even know why they are there.

And he made the point that any Palestinian acting in a way described by the United Nations as entirely permissible in order to free their nation is described as a terrorist. This was to become a hot topic.

More UK politicians were passing comment. David Lammy’s sympathy for a UK citizen who died while fighting for Israel stirred up a strong response:

Labour’s Wes Streeting appeared on television, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself against an attack that had ended more than 24 hours previously:

On, Monday, October 9, this happened:

There was no vote and the Irish government subsequently lodged a complaint about the absence of democracy or legality.

And on the ground in the UK, public opinion was swelling against Palestine:

The Israeli bombing of Gaza was now proven to be killing Palestinian civilians, including children:

https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1711397654922412151

Some of us drew the appropriate conclusion:

It is indeed a war crime, against article 33 of the Geneva Convention: non-combatants must not be punished in any way for the actions of combatants.

Israel announced that it was laying full siege to Gaza, meaning it would cut off food, water and power to the region:

This is also a war crime. The justification is that it is intended to flush out members of Hamas who are hiding behind Palestinian civilians – but this is doublespeak; it is the civilians who are being harmed.

Is this true? Well… people in the UK were starting to pipe up, as they perceived an apparent disparity between what they saw happening to Gaza and what supporters of Israel were saying about it:

Luciana Berger, the right-wing former Labour defector who tried to stand against the party while Jeremy Corbyn was leader and was subsequently accepted back with open arms by Keir Starmer, was put on national television to condemn his call for peace:

Here’s what we may consider Mr Corbyn’s response – limited to the social media:

It still drew a strong response – that was ridiculed for its falsehood:

Back to the mass media, and here’s Iain Dale on LBC, urging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to hold back” in his response; basically he was supporting genocide in Gaza.

I provide here his video clip, along with a response from Tom London, putting the opposing view:

Why was he taking sides at all?

A note on the BBC’s refusal to call Hamas terrorists: its own guidelines indicate that this is permissible, but journalists seem to be – rightly, in This Writer’s opinion – following the line taking by news agencies like Reuters: “Reuters may refer without attribution to terrorism and counterterrorism in general, but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor does Reuters use the word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events.” This is to protect the editorial integrity of journalists.

On the streets, supporters of Palestine were still out in the evenings, doing their cause more harm than good, because it allowed other people to film them and post attack messages. There is a response, but hadn’t the damage been done?

The claim that Hamas had raped Israeli women is now hotly disputed, being only hearsay.

Back to national TV, and on Robert Peston’s show, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Netanyahu’s plan must be stopped before it “annihilates” Palestinians:

Back on the social media, Nile Gardiner repeated his call for anyone supporting Palestine to be arrested and deported as being pro-Hamas:

Labour’s David Lammy, who had already spoken in support of Israel, travelled from his party conference to London to attend a vigil for the Israeli people who had been killed in the Hamas attack:

He repeated the phrase that Israel has a right to defend itself, rescue hostages and protect its citizens. Taken at face value, these words are entirely accurate. Sadly, we were learning that, to many, Israel defending itself was about murdering Palestinians en masse.

On the streets again, pro-Israel supporters took video of a Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration outside the Israeli embassy. Tom Slater’s interpretation of the couplet, “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” is curious: it does not celebrate the murder of Jews or call for ethnic cleansing – it simply demands freedom from Israeli occupation.

But the post puts the words “ethnic cleansing” into people’s minds and associates them with the desires of Palestinians:

Nigel Farage – who is hugely influential, love him or hate him – posted up a video of a masked pro-Palestinian demonstrator who was hugely mistaken in his reading of the situation.

But then, look at what Farage wrote in response to it, which is no less mistaken in what it claims. Deliberately?

On October 10, Labour suspended a councillor for referring to Netanyahu’s plan for Gaza as a “final solution” – because he repeated words used by the Nazis about what they were doing to Jews during World War II, that are therefore considered anti-Semitic.

The problem is, his description of the plan – not including those words – was accurate, and many may question why the reference to words used to describe a genocide in the past is not appropriate to a genocide now:

Back to national TV, where Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, asked for an opinion on Israel’s decision to deprive 2.2 million people in Gaza of food, water and energy, said that the response to a terrorist attack could in no way be compared with the attack itself. This was not an answer to the question, but was absolutely right; what Israel was planning was several orders of magnitude more deadly.

His justification for the expected huge loss of life was that it would help Israel prevent Hamas from committing more terrorist acts:

On the social media, it was the turn of Tory Chairman Greg Hands to misrepresent the activities of his political opponents:

He was deliberately conflating Hamas with Palestine; supporting the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is not supporting Hamas.

And Israel is an apartheid state, of course. It has walled off occupied Palestine from the territories it has taken for itself; that is why it is easy to cut supplies of food, water and power to Gaza.

Back to national TV, and the BBC’s Newsnight interviewed Husam Zumlot, head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, who lost six family members in a carpet-bombing attack on Gaza by Israel.

Asked by Kirsty Wark if he condones the killing of Israeli civilians, he pointed out that the government of which he is a representative has opposed any activity other than peace for 30 years:

Here’s a forlorn hope from David Aaronovitch:

Release of hostages is unlikely to prevent Netanyahu from continuing with his plan to raze Gaza to the ground.

A prospective Tory Parliamentary candidate repeats unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped Israeli women:

On Piers Morgan’s digital TV show, Grace Blakeley responds to his claim that the deaths of (at the time) hundreds of Israelis is ISIS-level terrorism by pointing out that 6,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops since 2008:

Tory minister Robert Jenrick reinforces the use of the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas. Again, this creates the spectre of false association – that Palestinians could all be described as terrorists:

Ash Sarkar of Novara Media raises a significant concern:

James Cleverly backs Israel’s war crimes:

Social media commentators point out that UK media organisations have ignored Israeli brutality over many years – and this is now prejudicing their coverage of the current crisis:

A supporter of Israel claims that that country’s forces have never committed the kind of atrocities claimed of Hamas… and is put in his place:

Supporters of Israel are caught calling for genocide:

Information showing that Israel is committing war crimes is published… on the social media.

David Lammy redeemed himself a little by attending an event for Palestinians…

and was vilified for it:

Emily Hewertson, there, apparently believing that all Palestinians are members of Hamas. Job done, Robert Jenrick?

And then the lie that Hamas beheaded babies broke.

Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons was the first to embrace this falsehood:

https://twitter.com/JakeWSimons/status/1711746759309861311

And then the deluge:

https://twitter.com/sophielouisecc/status/1711751539000549745

I responded to this one:

Journalist Owen Jones tried to present the balancing view in a debate with Labour’s Margaret Hodge on Sky News – but she used the manufactured outrage over the “beheaded babies” lie to overtalk his concern about children being killed by Israel’s response. An edited version of the interview was released by Sky which omitted his own comments on the Hamas attack and reinforced Hodge’s attitude, so Jones released the full interview. You can tell that he was deeply distressed by the misrepresentation:

A fellow Guardian journalist (he says), Benjamin Butterworth, almost immediately attacked Jones online, as follows: “Jones exposed as the deeply condescending, arrogant and heartless individual he is. Unable to authentically sympathise with the people of Israel for the obsession with his own sense of intellectual superiority. He has always brought shame to the left.”

Andrew Neil, that pillar of the UK journalistic establishment, posted the claim on ‘X’, making it clear that he supported it. He was to be roundly contradicted, and this response was only one of many:

Here’s another:

Former (?) BBC journalist Jon Sopel chimed in to repeat Neil’s assertions and attack the BBC for refusing to describe Hamas as terrorists. I refer you to my comments on this subject above, but see also my reply to him:

The front pages of the national newspapers the following day were dominated by the story – which nobody had bothered to check:

This may be the most accurate comment on it:

It took until the afternoon of October 11 for some of us (yes, including This Writer) to check the accuracy of the story – and find it wanting:

Some reporters have subsequently retracted and tried to justify their comments – but many of us believe it is too little, too late:

https://twitter.com/yaraalafandi/status/1712045842591326690

Rob “some beheaded” Burley was not retracting. He doubled down – but his logical fallacy was quickly pointed out:

Meanwhile, Suella Braverman was calling on police chiefs to arrest anybody who seemed to be demonstrating in support of Hamas:

(In fairness, the letter does state that context is everything, and urges police to act only if appropriate indicators are visible.)

Keir Starmer leapt onto the pro-Israel bandwagon, voicing his own support for Netanyahu’s war crimes:

Ash Sarkar commented, correctly pointing out that Starmer was supporting the collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza, half of whom are children; she was criticised for it by someone calling her an extremist, and this is her response:

With whom do you agree?

Here is Starmer again, reiterating his claim that Israel has the right to defend itself and Hamas bears responsibility for any harm to Palestinians that occurs as a consequence (twice) – and claiming that cutting off food, water and power to Gaza is not a war crime, even though it is… as the responses show:

Jake Wallis Simons turned up with a lengthy ‘X’ post repeating the “beheaded babies” lie and suggesting that Egypt should accept Gazans into their country to escape Israeli bombs. In other words, he was calling for Gazans to flee their land and allow Israel to steal it:

https://twitter.com/JakeWSimons/status/1712028351370580308

By now, supporters of Palestine were also voicing their opinions on the conflict:

On October 11, Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf revealed that he has relatives in Gaza, and appealed for sanity. Some compared this with the attitude of the Labour leader and found Keir Starmer wanting:

October 11 was the day US President Joe Biden started using the phrase “humanitarian corridor” – wrongly:

Nour Joudah is correct: a humanitarian corridor is a route out of a combat zone for civilians, who would be allowed to return after the conflict ends – and/or into that zone for food and other supplies. What Biden was advocating was “forcible transfer” of Gazans out of their home – forever. And that is a war crime.

It is what happened recently in Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia:

So it seems Biden was suggesting another war crime:

Read the following speculation and keep it in mind:

We could see what was being lined up from October 10, then. And some of us were prepared to ask the awkward questions:

Back to Keir Starmer. Despite his support for Israel’s war crimes, and planned war crimes, the right-wing media saw a chance to discredit the Labour leader using guilt-by-association with previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who once referred to Hamas as “our friends”.

Mr Corbyn used that phrase during a meeting in Parliament in 2009:

He explained to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, during an investigation of alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party in 2016:

“The language I used at that meeting was actually here in parliament and it was about encouraging the meeting to go ahead, encouraging there to be a discussion about the peace process,” he said.

Asked whether he still regarded Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends”, the Labour leader said: “No. It was inclusive language I used which with hindsight I would rather not have used. I regret using those words, of course.”

So he only used that phrase diplomatically, in order to encourage aggressors to talk about peace.

But here’s Beth Rigby of Sky News, making it seem that he actually meant it, and accusing Starmer in connection with it. His response is shameful:

That’s a shocking denial of the facts by both participants in that interview.

Other UK media journalists seemed to be discovering their backbones – and started asking UK government ministers whether they agreed that Israel was breaking international law.

We know that denying food, water and power to Gaza is a war crime, so judge Grant Shapps’s words in this context:

After supporters of Palestine took to the streets, apparently celebrating the Hamas attack, the charity set up to provide protection for UK Jews against anti-Semitism – the Community Security Trust or CST – claimed that it was recording a rise in such incidents.

The problem was, its choice of example was bizarre – and the context note on the organisation’s ‘X’ post makes it look silly:

CST was soon joined by right-wing commentators with strident claims about UK Muslims:

Who do you believe?

Here’s another one. Is it inciting violence against Muslims, as the response suggests?

By this time, it seems, opinions in the UK were very much divided between those who wanted Israel to bomb Gaza into oblivion, with anybody living there getting out by any impossible means they could, and those who wanted Israel not to commit genocide on innocent Palestinians, while still wishing to see Hamas brought to justice.

These messages seem to sum up the opinions at this point:

To be continued…

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