After more than a year and a half of bombardment, siege, and systematic starvation in Gaza, it is becoming harder than ever to grasp the true scale of Israel’s atrocities there. Not because the evidence is lacking, but because the horrors have become so appallingly routine.
Since March, when Netanyahu abrogated the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement, and effectively curtailed the further release of Israeli hostages, the Israeli military has killed almost 6,000 Palestinians, bringing the total Palestinian death toll to 56,000. Day after day, dozens of Palestinians are killed by Israeli soldiers while in their homes, in shelters, or in the queue for aid. Critical infrastructure has been destroyed, attacks on medics, aid workers and journalists have become commonplace, and famine is no longer a looming threat but a pervasive reality.
This week, Defence for Children International and Doctors Against Genocide co-published a report that gives a harrowing account of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against Palestinian children in Gaza. It documents in unflinching detail 33 cases of child starvation, nine of them fatal, caused by Israel’s systematic obstruction of humanitarian access to the Strip. Newborns, infants and children with chronic illnesses were found to be especially vulnerable to the effects of malnutrition and dehydration, and the report concludes that Israel is using child starvation as a method of genocide, with catastrophic consequences for existing and future generations.
These findings come alongside near-daily massacres at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food distribution sites. More than 450 Palestinians have now been killed while attempting to access lifesaving supplies. Desperate, hungry civilians are being forced to choose between starvation or Israeli gunfire. These are clear war crimes, as the UN human rights office recognised this week, and the UK should be using every lever available to stop them.
Meanwhile, in the illegally-occupied West Bank, settler violence, military raids, and illegal settlement expansion continue unchecked. Since mid-June, villages and towns have been locked down, new checkpoints installed, and movement heavily restricted. Israeli forces have ramped up their operations in Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem, using regional tensions as cover to escalate repression.
Mass arrests have also quietly surged. Last week alone, over 160 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces during military raids across various towns in the West Bank. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel – including children and medics – many held without charge or trial in overcrowded and degrading conditions that amount to systemic abuse. We rightly hear calls for the release of Israeli hostages but rarely is that call accompanied by an equivalent demand for justice for Palestinian prisoners. When one set of lives is blatantly treated as more valuable than another, it reinforces the deep racial inequalities underpinning the conflict.
This is a campaign of mass killing, dispossession and collective punishment on a scale that demands not just condemnation, but action. For a brief moment, the UK Government finally seemed willing to take a stand – but that window has closed. The UK has failed to prevent arms sales to Israel and continues to provide military support, despite mounting legal concerns. It has sanctioned two Israeli ministers but stopped short of sanctioning all those responsible for war crimes. It has suspended trade negotiations with Israel, yet continues to permit trade with illegal settlements, in direct violation of its obligations under the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion. Though increasingly uneasy on its back benches, Labour has consistently stopped short of implementing meaningful sanctions.
The recent focus on Israel’s confrontation with Iran has further encouraged this drift. Ministers are again speaking of Israel as an ally, returning to familiar narratives of defence and strategic partnership, while the daily horrors in Gaza and the West Bank once more fade into the background.
This is precisely where the Liberal Democrats must act. We are not in government, but we are not powerless. As the third largest party, we can use our platform in parliament to force Palestine back onto the agenda. Labour is heading for a major backbench revolt over plans to restrict disability benefits. That unrest reflects a deeper discomfort across the party, not least over Palestine, on which many MPs are increasingly uneasy with the leadership’s cautious stance. As we saw during the debacle over the SNP’s ceasefire motion in February 2024, a well-judged intervention can expose Labour’s divisions and compel decisive action. If the SNP could force a vote, so can we. Doing so would not only force the Government’s hand, but it could also provide a political boost for the Liberal Democrats at a time where there is clear public support for a ceasefire and arms embargo.
Liberal Democrats have long been vocal in calling for an arms embargo, comprehensive sanctions, and legal accountability. But if we want to stop the appalling suffering of Palestinians and end Britain’s ongoing support for this war, then words alone will not suffice. We must be willing to take risks, force confrontations, and make it impossible for Labour MPs to do nothing.
* Judi Conner is a former journalist, a member in North Norfolk and a committee member of Lib Dem Friends of Palestine.
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29 Comments
What Judi Connor says has a compelling importance to it. In years to come, as the true awfulness becomes yet more glaringly apparent, the question will be raised repeatedly: ‘Why did Western politicians do so little in the face of this man-made catastrophe? Why did they pass by on the other side, pretending not to see the degree of criminality?’ And when Palestine eventually obtains the freedom it should have been granted over a century ago, there will be a roll of both honour and dishonour. It is now late to make our choice but we can, if so inclined, try to make up for decades of neglect of the Palestine fiasco.
Excellent article Judi. My main take home from this is that our MPs badly need to force a vote on our Government’s complicity in war crimes. This would I’m sure attract enormous support from Labour MPs and force Starmer and Lammy to make significant concessions. I had hoped there might have been an Opposition Day coming up which would enable a motion to be tabled and voted on. Apparently that is unlikely but surely there must be some other way of forcing a vote. There is legislation going through the Commons I understand on Crime and Punishment that has provisions to interfere with protest rights, and also a misguided attempt to brand Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. The Civil Rights lobby is up in arms on both scores. I bow to others who understand parliamentary procedure better then me, but perhaps an amendment that focuses on Government complicity in war crimes could be put forward on one of these.
It’s sad that it seems necessary after a year and a half, but Judi Connor’s excellent summary – and her pointers to the way forward – ought to be a briefing paper for Liberal Democrat MPs.
As she says, the attack on Iran must not be allowed to distract attention from what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, or in my rather more cynical view, give the government an excuse for its continuing failure to take anything remotely approaching decisive action. It almost beggars belief that a newly elected government can’t see what it would gain itself, let alone the millions of Palestinians, by standing up for international law and the rights of the Palestinians and reflecting the will of the British people.
Hear, Hear
Channel 4 news had dreadful item tonight. Horrifying.
Thank you for an important and much needed article!
Might the ostentatious cruelties in Gaza and the West Bank be a manifestation of empire protection on behalf of the American finance and oil based, unstated empire which European leaders, including ours, work to further, despite the wishes of most of their citizens?*
* Michael Hudson’s current and recent blog explains this well.
John Kelly’s comment reminds us that not only is the UK government reluctant to fulfil its legal obligation to intervene in the probable genocide in Gaza, it has been acting to outlaw protest against its inaction. Palestine Action has no doubt broken the law in its actions against Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers (it has a base in Bristol), but the ‘Filton 18’ (who were arrested under draconian terrorist legislation) will have been in prison for more than a year before they come to trial for causing criminal damage. It is likely that the judge will refuse to let them speak in their defence, in case they persuade the jury to let them off by claiming they had to try to stop Elbit Systems operating in the UK, because of the government’s refusal to do so. Although the police and the judiciary are theoretically independent of government, it would be absurd to think the Home Office isn’t involved, and on Monday, Yvette Cooper will ask parliament to proscribe Palestine Action as a “terrorist organisation”. Palestine Action has taken protest to a level few of us would support, but is it ‘terrorism’ to attack a company producing the weapons used in the kill thousands of innocent and defenceless people in Palestine and Gaza ?
@David Raw, you’re right to single out Channel Four News. Over the past 18 months they have consistently held Israel to account, something the BBC usually doesn’t dare to do. But how has it come about that the people of this country are represented not by the political party they elected into government, but by a handful of courageous TV journalists, who have the power to verbally put Israeli spokespeople under pressure, but not the power to take action which would end the death and destruction in Gaza ?
@Steve Trevethan, I’m sure there are underlying reasons for the way the loyalties of the inheritors of declining empires (GB and the USA) are distributed in the Middle East, and maybe the oil industry is involved in some way, but I’m interested in comparing our attitudes towards Iran and Israel. Both want to assert greater influence in the Middle East, partly predicated on ancient history – for Iran the Persian Empire, which slightly pre-dated the Roman one, and for Israel the much smaller country ruled by King David and his successors. Both attack and kill enemies outside their own borders – called terrorism in the case of Iran, necessary assassinations in the case of Israel. Both use the promotion of the fear of annihilation by the other to gain support at home. The question is; why do we support Israel, and not Iran ? Both seem locked into a spiral of hatred, and both need our help in freeing themselves from the lunacy of their behaviour.
The comments on Channel 4 News are very apt. Last night’s programme showed a worrying new development – the destruction of two Bedouin villages. One of these was in the West Bank where destruction of villages seems now an almost daily occurrence – carried out by Settler thugs under the protection of the IDF. Even more alarmingly for the already second class citizens of Israel itself, the second village was actually in Israel.
To attempt to answer my own question, one reason for the UK and the US supporting Israel and not Iran, and for showing scant regard for the Palestinians in Gaza, could be that after centuries of assimilation in Europe (albeit sometimes in ghettos) the Israeli Jews are regarded as more or less European, whereas Arabs and Iranians are not.
However, the idea that we share cultural values with today’s Israel, under its current leaders, is ridiculous. Granted, Israel is in the Eurovision Song Contest every year (and seems to take it terribly seriously), but it’s fascination with the prowess of its armed forces, whose ability to crush weak opposing forces is undeniable, but wouldn’t be a source of pride anywhere else, and its total disregard for Humanitarian Law, the UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the opinion of virtually every world leader, not to mention the majority of people everywhere in the world, put it completely beyond the pale.
Admittedly, we don’t share many of the cultural values of the Iranian leadership either, but what distinguishes Iran is that the leaders are hated by virtually the entire Iranian population, whereas opposition to Netanyahu may be fierce in some parts of Israel, but my impression is that the majority are willing to go along with his plans. If that isn’t the case, why are hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers committing atrocities in Gaza on a daily basis ?
Both Netanyahu and Trump (the famous ‘peacemaker’) get enormous pleasure from military successes, especially bombing missions, and one has to wonder why ageing men of their type are so drawn to demonstrating their power to administer death and destruction. However, one clue might be that we were told the US had a much bigger bomb than Israel, and that it first penetrated the ground (to a surprising depth), and then went off a bit later. I don’t recall Trump calling it “a beautiful bomb”, but he was probably thinking it, and there are no doubt other things going on in his unconscious mind (and Netanyahu’s and those of other male warmongers), which you wouldn’t need to be a Freudian analyst to see. See, and lament, because people are suffering and dying every day in Gaza, and it seems to me they are dying for nothing, or if not exactly nothing, dying for the vanity of old men.
Are others aware that on 3 previous occasions military property has been targetted by activists who were aquitted using the defence that they were acting to prevent harm. In 1996 it was action against planes to prevent genocide in East Timor, In 2007 an attack on a fuel tanker to protect Iraq,( Keir Starmer was defence QC and used the defence of acting for the greater good, and in 2017 Typhoon jets were targetted to protect Yemen. Plus an extraordinary report by Craig Murray suggests that the RAF jets are owned by Polyglon Global PartnersLLP, a hedge fund. see Craig Murray.org
Might support for Israel come from political leaders who are determinedly loyal to the U. S. A., perhaps because such may have been/is of benefit?
Might support for Israel/its current government from regular citizens be significantly less because of its genocide and infanticide rates?
Might governmental money creation debt be markedly different from other debt because its debt creation element is reduced/managed/eliminated by the government’s power and practice of imposing taxation which reduces/destroys the debt element?
David McDowall 26th Jun ’25 – 1:23pm………What Judi Connor says has a compelling importance to it. In years to come, as the true awfulness becomes yet more glaringly apparent, the question will be raised repeatedly…
Were that only so.. The pro Israel lobby has effectively silenced most governments and almost all of the media.. CH4 seems to be a lone voice trying to show the ‘ethnic cleansing’ (no other description fits) in Israel and the occupied territories..
My fear, and my belief, is that when the killing and forced displacement finally ends, a ‘Greater Israel’ will be welcomed, back into the international community and all will be forgiven..
The old adage that, “History is written by the winners” was never more true..
In an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape, clarity and conviction on international justice are not just morally right, but politically astute. Your article provides an urgent blueprint for the former; the latter lies in actively cultivating the support of those abandoned by traditional political representation.
Thank you again for an essential piece of writing.
@expats, David McDowell is right, so don’t despair. History hasn’t been written yet, and nor has Israel emerged as the winner.
It is too late for far too many in Gaza, but not too late for Israel to be prevented from annexing the territories they have so brutally conquered. We all have a role in turning the tide in the British parliament, and Judi’s superb article will be part of that process if enough people get behind it.
Labour MPs wouldn’t have to fear reprisals from number 10 if enough of them demanded serious sanctions on Israel as a whole, which would signal to Netanyahu that the game is up. So far they haven’t had the nerve to do it. Sadly, it wouldn’t be hard to find a ten year old girl sent to queue for food in Gaza who couldn’t give them a lesson in courage.
The UK government keeps saying that it’s for a two state solution and yet only recognizes one state.
British Israelis are recognized by the UK government whilst I remain in the unknown. A genocide is horrific but denying a people their very identity is unforgivable. Our parents were beaten out of Palestine, most never discussed it, too upsetting. However, our generation, we will never stop discussing it. Whilst our parents wanted their children to become doctors and engineers we want our children to become genocide lawyers.
Breaking news is that Israel says Haaretz suggesting IDF soldiers have been ordered to shoot people queueing for food is a “Blood Libel”. Could someone tell the Israelis we’re all a bit fed up with hearing a phrase resurrected from medieval European racism being applied to reasonable criticism of a probable modern day genocide ?
Also, if those soldiers weren’t ordered to shoot, why have we not heard that they have been court-marshalled for for war crimes ?
Andy Daer 27th Jun ’25 – 4:30pm…
Andy, I wish with all my heart that you’ll be proved right but I’m old enough to remember the attack on an United States Navy vessel ( USS Liberty), by Israeli Air Force fighter aircraft and motor torpedo boats in 1967..An attack in which over 200 US sailors were killed or wounded..
The subsequent US cover-up shows that, no matter what Israel does, the US will not hold her to account.. Without that accountability Israel can do as she wants..
Clearly control of the supply of food to the people is the last great pillar of Hamas power in Gaza, and the Israeli/American aid centres are threat to that.
So we have to ask ourselves who benefits from shootings near aid centres? Clearly it is Hamas, so it is most likely that Hamas are committing these shootings themselves and/or making them up. The idea that we should take Hamas-approved reports to the contrary as anything but wartime propaganda is absurd. Western media reported the Hamas line initially – as they often do in this conflict – but largely backed down, editing headlines etc, when the allegations couldn’t be substantiated.
Israel needs to be able to supply food aid directly to the people who need it to have any chance of victory, and that is what frightens the terrorists and their supporters in the West so much.
@Joe Otten – “Israel needs to be able to supply food aid directly to the people who need it to have any chance of victory”
Err no, Israel doesn’t need to be involved in the supply of food aid to Gaza. In fact it should be letting the worlds media have free and unfettered access to both Gaza and Israel.
Also it is very clear, Israel want the Palestinians in Gaza to go elsewhere and be someone else’s problem. Remember the current state of Gaza is wholly down to the blind actions of Israel; October 2023 was just another tit-for-tat incident kicked off from the events of 1948, when a bunch of idealistic European men set foot in Palestine…
@Joe Otten
The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, has quoted IDF soldiers saying they are being ordered to fire on Palestinian crowds near food distribution sites. We don’t need to speculate or invent ‘alternative facts’ when we have plenty of good evidence of what is happening.
Joe Otten 30th Jun ’25 – 4:09pm… I suppose that Hamas were responsible for attacking hospitals, schools, churches as well as aid centres? They must also be responsible for the ethnic cleansing and murder of Palestinian and Bedouin in the West Bank..
No matter what the evidence there are those who refuse to hold Israel responsible for anything
Haaretz often engages in perfectly fair criticism of the Israeli government and that should be applauded. However on other occasions it will just repeat hostile propaganda. The nature of the news cycle is that allegations get published, and the substantiation or unsubstantiation of those allegations only happens when the story has moved on and it gets no attention. This happens with the BBC so we can hardly expect Haaretz to be immune.
There’s a rebuttal to the whole story here: https://youtu.be/p-zfQBfpqlw?si=Ji8VUj1HGyLHh9mN
Maybe the rebuttal is wrong and the story was true. Sure it’s possible. But it seems unlikely that Israel would directly further Hamas war aims at the expense of their own, except perhaps by breakdown of discipline (though that is not the allegation).
What is inexplicable in good faith is this thread full of people who seem to know the story is true just because they have picked a side.
Joe Otten
The lesson here is that you should learn to distinguish between credible news sources and anti-woke, pro-Trump propaganda channels on youtube.
Joe Otten 1st Jul ’25 – 11:17am…
Reference your video showing disguised men shooting into a crowd.. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel is arming clans in Gaza that he says are opposed to Hamas.
His comments came after Israeli media reports quoted defence sources as saying Netanyahu had authorised giving weapons to one particular group in the south of Gaza to which Netanyahu replied, “What’s wrong with this?” He is on video claiming that “It only saves the lives of Israeli solders” and he criticised the Israeli media for raising the issue stating, – “Publicising it only helps Hamas”..
Considering that he diverted money to Hamas to prevent the moderate PA from pushing the ‘two state solution’ such reports are very likely to be accurate..
On the face of it, the link posted by Joe Otten is produced by a pro Israeli group. I am perhaps cynical in not believing any propoganda from either side. As we all know, the first casualty of war is truth.
What we do know is that Hamas attacked Israel in autumn 2023 and Israel responded, but has gone far too far in its campaign against Hamas and the Palestinians.
We also know that both sides in this conflict hate each other with a passion and seek the destruction of the other. Every time a peace accord looks possible – and there have been several occasions – one side or another lobs a bomb, fires a rocket or sends in troops.
I despair that there will ever be peace unless there is a fundamental change of attitude on both sides. Frankly, that looks like asking for the moon