Joe Dawson

“There comes a moment in many people's lives when we adopt a course of action that defines us. Such a moment came to Labour leader and future prime minister Sir Keir Starmer when he joined LBC presenter Nick Ferrari in the studio a few days after October 7. At this point an unknown future stretched ahead. If Israeli politicians were to be believed it would assuredly include one of the most monstrous crimes of the twenty-first century. Israel's defence minister Yoav Gallant had just issued his grim announcement of a complete siege on Gaza: 'No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed'

The Starmer moment can still be witnessed on YouTube. It unfolds when Ferrari asks whether cutting off water and electricity supplies is an appropriate response to the Hamas attacks.

It should have been an easy question. Before entering politics Starmer was an acknowledged expert on international law. He would have known for certain that Israel did not have the right to cut off water and electricity supplies. Collective punishment of a civilian population is a war crime. In that day's reporting, there is no ambiguity.

But when Ferrari pressed: 'A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power? Cutting off water?" Starmer tried to have it both ways by simultaneously standing up for Israel and international law. 'I think Israel does have that right, he affirmed. 'It is an ongoing situation. Obviously, everything should be done within international law but I don't want to step away from the core principles that Israel has a right to defend herself and Hamas bears responsibility.'

Sir Keir's attempt to argue that Israel had the right to deny water and fuel to Palestinians in Gaza while respecting international law made mockery of the law and of his own professional standing. Gallant's openly stated plan amounted to a grave breach of international law as well as domestic British law. Subject to a pro forma caveat, the leader of the Labour Party was therefore giving the green light to a crime against humanity, as set out in the Rome statute, and enabling whatever atrocities Israel cared to inflict on Gaza's two million inhabitants, one half of whom were children.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“The thief holds a gavel; the liar holds a journalism degree; and the butcher's knives are publicly funded.”
― Mohammed El-Kurd, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal

“Indeed it has been painfully clear since October 2023 that those dominating the national conversation on Gaza lack the knowledge to scrutinise Israeli claims. British TV and radio studios are chock full of loudmouth presenters with big salaries but negligible understanding. Experts who have mastered the history of the Israel-Palestine dispute tend to be excluded from public discussion.”
― Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza

“The rise of Hamas was part of a regional trend that represented a response to what many perceived as the bankruptcy of the secular nationalist ideologies that had dominated politics in the Middle East for most of the twentieth century.”
― Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017