On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a series of horrific atrocities. In their aftermath, it was natural that the world would feel sympathy for the innocent people who were killed. There was nothing wrong with this sympathy, but there was something deeply wrong with the support that Western states, including Britain, showed for Israel over the following weeks and months.
Britain has a historic responsibility for the creation of Israel and its current trajectory.
Britain has a historic responsibility for the creation of Israel and its current trajectory. When the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, went to Israel roughly two weeks after October 7, he would have been briefed about the nature of the Israeli reprisals on Gaza: indiscriminate attacks, hundreds of people dying daily, widespread destruction. He had both a moral and legal obligation to say, “Yes, a terrible event occurred, but you must not break international law or commit war crimes.”
Instead, both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition threw their weight behind Israel — or, more accurately, behind the United States. They would not break with the Biden administration and its policy in the Middle East, no matter the terrible events on the ground.
This created a situation of cross-party unity in the UK, in which some horrifying decisions were taken at the highest levels of the state that will be a permanent blot on the country’s reputation: undermining the International Court of Justice (ICJ), showing extraordinary hostility toward the International Criminal Court (ICC), continuing with arms sales to Israel, going along with the Israeli attack on United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and refusing to challenge unsubstantiated claims from the Israeli war cabinet that were used to justify the mass killings in Gaza.
Most British people wanted a ceasefire from the very start and felt that the only way to show their…
Auteur: Peter Oborne
