We have issued this morning's blog post on Starmer's decisions on Palestine as a video this evening, with a poll attached.
As we said in the description of this video:
Keir Starmer has not recognised Palestine. Despite media spin, he's placed conditions, granted Israel a veto, and ignored the suffering of Gazans. In this video, I explain how his policy is a betrayal – of truth, of justice, and of peace. This is not foreign policy. It's appeasement.
Watch, share, and if you're moved, please write to your MP using the transcript and link in the original video.
The transcript is, of course, in the original blog post.
This is the poll:
What do you think about Starmer's announcement on Palestine?
- Did Starmer get this badly wrong, as I suggest? (96%, 408 Votes)
- Was Starmer right to act as he did? (2%, 8 Votes)
- Would you rather we as a country avoided the whole issue? (1%, 5 Votes)
- Do you not know what to think? (1%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 426
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Another Angry Voice agrees with you. So do I, and I can’t understand other people who think it’s a brilliant idea.
https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/p/keir-starmers-palestine-statehood
MPs are on their summer holiday now and won’t be back until late September Starmer didn’t want to cancel his luxury holiday.
Not quite true.
They sit again in the first week of September.
Hello Richard,
I agree with every word you said, would that our gutless, greedy, shallow, narrow minded ‘leaders’ were only aware enough to see this in the same light.
I am a 69yr old man who didn’t believe that I would see such bestial cruelty on show as it’s happening. I mean by that, not only the unfathomable (‘words’ are inadequate here) acts going on in western Asia/eastern Mediterranean , but also the extent to which the politics of the ‘civilised world’ has descended.
Let me explain a little.
I’m not and have not been unaware of the systems which we live in, since my mid-teens. I have been in trade unions all my working life, having been a shop steward, later full time convener and tutor, I was chair of my local Labour ward. I went to John Moores as a mature student and finished my paid employment in various ‘support-worker roles’.
At the same time, I wasn’t aware that the ‘theories’ I held in my head, about the aims of those with power, were as bad as I thought they might be. It’s difficult for me to make this understandable, because it is not understandable! I didn’t think, really, that people could be as heartless and unempathic as they are showing in real-time.
Perhaps one thing we may differ on is, which borders should adopted for the state of Palestine. I think the only solution is that of ‘one state’, where all citizens are equal. But in a similar way to your assertions that it’s for the people of that state to decide who governs them, these wider issues ultimately are that people’s.
To use some of the sentiments of Irish Republicanism, we (people other than Palestinians) have no rights in Palestine, never had any rights in Palestine (or anywhere else) and never should have any rights in Palestine.
I hope this is not too rambling, thank you for all you are doing, I have learned a lot from your explanations on economics,
regards, Martin ☮
Martin
Thank you, and you are welcome here
Richard
I recommend a read of this article. It is a very very hard read, but it gets to the core of the problem.
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/to-restore-our-humanity-we-must-de
Most people, most citizens are good people. They try to do good things. But.
Our governments have been taken over by monsters. Citizens need to regain control.
& the “we-must-de” is de-zionise that is the core problem zionism & it has been since the start of the 20th century.
There are no reasons or justifications for the destruction and starvation of 2 million people, just as there were no reasons or justification for the extermination of 6 million Jews. The Nazis did their work largely in secret, surely a give away that they knew it was wrong. The Israeli government argues that there are extenuating circumstances and the stated aim of the right wing of the Netanyahu government is the imprisonment of the Gaza’s population and the territory’s annexation in order to destroy Hamas. This is being done in full view of many of the world’s governments which are allowing it to happen as well as trading and arming Israel. This atrocity implicates all of us. In John Donne’s words:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
The interconnectedness of mankind is being blown up. Starmer’s mealy mouthed words are rubbish.
Many thanks for this Anna. I agree with every word.
I am proud of my father’s efforts in fighting the Nazis in WW2. Never did I think that the sacrifices made by that generation would be subsequently betrayed and destroyed by Thatcher and those that followed her. And now we have reached this mess.
We must listen to Richard and his friends and the lessons they teach. We must each play our part in destroying the arguments of the neo liberals and their fascist friends. We can and must win for humanity’s sake. Keep going Anna. Evil such as this must be defeated.
“there were no reasons or justification for the extermination of 6 million Jews”
You need to read Frankopan’s “Slik Roads”. The reason was the failure of the invasion of the USSR (from a food point of view) & the decision not to let Germans starve (memories of the starvation @ end of WW1 were fresh). I am not justifying the WW2 genocide – but that is why the Nazis did it. The 6 million was composed of jews and lots of other people – such as gypsies. & no, at no point did the Nazis (or the German civil service) think it was wrong.
In the case of “extenuating circumstances”, well the Nazis thought they had one (obvs they were wrong) – where does that leave the Israelis and their justifictions?
The idea of international intervention seems to be causing a stir.
Thete are currently 11 United Nations peacekeeping missions in operation around the world, of varying effectiveness, including 4 in the Middle East:
Lebanon-Israel
Syria-israel
Cyprus
Jerusalem
https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-we-operate
so I’m not sure what is so radical about one to prevent genocide and monitor s ceasefire.
All that is missing is the international will to curb the slaughter of brown people.
Then of course there is UNRWA, with the expertise, the infrastructure and the actual food to feed people rather than slaughter them. They could act tomorrow.
The problem is – Israel does not want a single international person going inside Gaza and witnessing and reporting the carnage, the brutality and the scale of the destruction. It might dent the credibility of those nice Hasbara spokespersons who speak and look just like us.
The Warsaw ghetto horrified the world, once the news got out.
But today we have a livestreamed Gaza Ghetto going on, and our leaders don’t give a shit.
We are far more culpable as well informed witnesses who refuse to act. At least Europe went to war with Hitler. We are watching genocide and wringing our hands.
Hence my call for action, which I apm aware is upsetting some people.
Richard, Totally agree and thank you. The belated UK ‘only hypothetical’ recognition of Palestine is pathetic.
Starmer and Lammy are incapable of characterising the situation because they, and all the other ‘Labour friends of Israel’, have no informed unbiased view of the history. A little-known fact is that the UNGA agreed upon Israel’s admittance to the UN in May,1949 (UNGA Resolution 273 because Israel had pledged to accept the obligations contained in the UN Charter and was ‘able and willing to carry out those obligations’; and also because of Israel’s acceptance of the ‘right to return’. See link: https://opiniojuris.org/2024/03/11/a-forgotten-detail-the-right-of-return-was-a-condition-of-the-establishment-of-the-state-of-israel/
For statesmanship, I commend the Chair of the Elders, Juan Manuel Santos, speech on Monday at the UN’s Conference on the Two-State solution, who also insisted upon the wider Middle East security context. Link, if interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xni9i82iLRs
On the 2nd day at the UN, Lammy sounded the pompous windbag he was, in contrast to many of the world’s representatives who gave one a sense they understood this history.
Israel’s arrogant bellicosity across the Middles East is only partly fuelled by Netanyahu’s political survival needs. Israel may seem to be the tail wagging the US dog but they are as one. Trump will be eager to deflect attention from his continuing Epstein sore. His Zionist cabinet is unlikely to mitigate the genocide and may do nothing to reduce the risk of a ‘round 2’ with Iran. Yet short-term, that may be only way the obstacle of Israel’s arrogant intransigence can be removed. If a next time, Iran will make full use of its high precision hypersonic missiles.
This once ‘celebrated’ Israel, as it was over my lifetime, sooner, or later – this ‘Zionist settler-colonialist’ entity – will be doomed. Despite the ICJ verdict only likely in 2027, the imprint of ‘genocidal state’ upon Israel is becoming indelible. The BBC response would be, “Of course, Israel would say . .” Well in fact, many eminent experts have affirmed this IS a Genocide, including Israelis: Omar Bartov, Amos Goldberg and Ras Segal, and yesterday Israel’s B’Tselem and the Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI). Increasingly, Israelis will find their freedom of movement constrained as war crime prosecutions are pursued, by the likes of The Hind Rajab* Foundation, because there is such a glut of evidence. *(An angel: a 5-year old Palestinian girl murdered by the IDF)
Israel has attained notoriety and shame. This will only worsen as one day journalists will pour over the ruins of Gaza, the recollections will be accounted and the full truth will out. Then Zionist lobbying will be disempowered, shunned even, while Israel’s hubris & prestige will be no more; its shame will only endure. Only then, perhaps, might we get sensible UK leadership about the Middle East.
Tragically, the payment had to be by the vast Gazan devastation, by the deaths (easily into 6 figures) and sufferings of the Palestinians, and the many thousands held hostage in Israeli prisons without due process since October 2023. But let us never forget the medics, journalists and the all UNRWA staff who perished.
The IPC 4 page briefing on Gaza is here. Sadly, this can only mean the deathrate will accelerate: https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_GazaStrip_Alert_July2025.pdf
With relation to the opiniojuris.org article linked above, the Great March of Return of 2018-2019 seems to have been entirely forgotten since the attack of September 2023.
In what was a mainly peaceful protest, tens of thousands of Gazans approached the barrier fence with Israel and demanded their right of return to lands they had been expelled from. These marches took place every Friday from 30 march 2018 to 27 December 2019. Hamas support for this protest was of limited duration, but the people of Gaza continued for another year.
During this period 223 Palestinians were killed by Israeli snipers, while a further 13,000 were wounded. Many injuries were to the legs of protesters, with special ammunition used to cause the maximum damage, so a great many amputations resulted. Paramedics helping the injured were also targeted. One member of the IDF was injured.
I think this adds context to the attack in 2023 of the same border fence, invading the lands that Palestinians were cleared from. That the attacks were directed at kibbutzes as well as IDF bases, reflects the view that kibbutzes are colonising outposts, rather than the utopian collective farms of their original establishment.
In the self-admitted chaos of the IDF’s “defence” of the border, a lot of Gazans who were not members of Hamas or other disciplined military groups were able to join the incursion. It is not hard to speculate that there were plenty of young men whose brothers had been killed or maimed during the Great March of Return, who were out to revenge a grudge.
This not an attempt to justify the crimes that took place then. But the history of Israel from its inception is one of brutal attacks and brutal responses by both Jews and Arabs. There is evidence now that it was Israel’s stated policy to commit genocide and the shocking provocation of October 2023 gave them the licence to do so.
The fence-sitting of Starmer and Lammy is inexcusable. Although I have now lost faith in any sustained upholding of International Law or the Geneva Convention or indeed the UN, by our truly dreadful government or its king over the water, I hope that some more countries will join the 12 countries who are opposing Israel’s genocide.
Amongst all the gas-lighting and obfuscation, there are some clear sighted independent journalists and other observers. They are keeping record and I hope the perpetrators and the complicit will one day be held to account.
Thanks
As a side issue…
Israel is required, by it’s Constitution, to have a majority Jewish population ruling the country.
Therefore, if Netanyahu wishes to fulfill his declared desire for a ‘greater Israel’ which includes Gaza and the West Bank, he needs to remove the indigenous population in order to retain a Jewish majority. Otherwise, he’d be in breach of the Israeli constitution.
This is the current process being enacted.
I guess the fact that this would likely be in breach of international law, is not an issue for you?
Does international laws only matter when it suits you?
This is not law.
And 147 of the 195 countries in the world recognise Paletsine.
How then could we possibly be in breach international law? Go on, provide a reasoned argument if you are capable of doing so.
To elaborate on Richard’s point:
According to the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, today:
Philippe Sands KC, a professor of law at UCL, pointed out that in its advisory opinion last year the UN’s top court, the international court of justice (ICJ), recognised “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including its right to an independent and sovereign state”.
Sands said: “I have no doubt whatsoever that if it were asked, the ICJ would reject the argument that it is somehow unlawful to recognise the existence of Palestinian statehood. Palestine meets all the legal criteria of statehood; all that remains is a political consideration, namely whether to recognise or not that those criteria are met. The court’s language makes clear that that right exists now, and it exists because all the criteria for statehood are met.”
Victor Kattan, assistant professor in public international law at the University of Nottingham, said that the Montevideo convention was a “starting point” but that other rules of international law had emerged since, including the right of self-determination.
He said that many states had or had previously had border disputes and governance issues. “Of course the Palestinian Authority is not able to exercise all elements of government authority but that’s because of an occupation which the ICJ last year declared was unlawful,” he said.
Who signed the letter to Hermer?
It was reportedly signed by 40 peers, including many senior lawyers, among them Lord Pannick KC and Lady Deech. They are both patrons of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), whose chief executive, Jonathan Turner, has said that neither Israel’s occupation nor its settlements are illegal.
Another signatory, Lord Verdirame, unsuccessfully argued alongside Pannick, in a submission to the international criminal court, that it had no jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed in the occupied Palestinian territories. The former supreme court judge Lord Collins also signed.
I think you summarise the situation and biases on display very well
Other signatories include:
Arlene Foster
Eric Pickles
Andrew Lansley
This is a diversionary political, not a legal objection.
With regard to the borders of a Jewish homeland, there is an interesting, contentious, political, religious, historical, geographical and legal discussion to be had about that too, going back centuries, but it produces heat rather than light.
I’m not sure Palestinian babies are that bothered about legal distractions.
I know what Israel does NOT want in the headlines. Discussion of starvation, amputees, snipers, assassination of medical workers, aid workers and their families, carpet bombing, forced relocation into concentration camps, blockades, Israeli armed Islamist militia, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, comparisons with earlier genocide by Nazis, and Prime Ministerial fraud.
Let’s call it what it really is.
It’s total bollocks from a pile of people talking total crap.
Of course we can recognise Palestine – most countries in the world do and de facto we always have by saying a two state solution is possible, but then never delivering it.
Next these people will say it isn’t legally possible to recognise a genocide that’s happening in front of their own eyes.
Hang on a minute…that’s already been said, by Starmer.
Letter to MP Thurs. Article by Marc Weller I found useful: https://inews.co.uk/news/world/why-recognising-palestinian-statehood-much-more-than-empty-symbolism-3835300?ico=most_read_by_subscribers