Israel’s trauma is not a free pass for war crimes, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
IN THE wake of this month’s Hamas attack on Israeli settlements, the British government, along with other Western governments, gave vocal and emphatic backing to Israel’s “right” to “defend itself.”
This support has been undiluted even though Israel has cut off food, water and medical supplies to the civilian population of Gaza and unleashed a mass air assault on this tightly packed residential area — according to media reports, more bombs were dropped on tiny Gaza in 10 days than the US dropped on Afghanistan in its first year of operations there.
Israel has also ordered more than a million Gazan civilians, half of them children, to leave northern Gaza and cram into a tiny area against the Egyptian border.
The United Nations Office for Human Rights has condemned this as “mass ethnic cleansing” that looks set to be on an even worse scale than the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, that saw 750,000 innocent civilians violently driven from their homes, the area that is now Israel.
The Palestinian people are now overwhelmingly a refugee population. In a clear sign of what arguably could be described as Israel’s real intent, Israeli ministers have openly called for “another Nakba” to be inflicted on Gazans.
The UN secretary-general and its Human Rights Agency have said emphatically that Israel’s actions toward civilians in Gaza are a war crime, while the UN children’s agency has condemned the appalling physical and psychological impact on children.
Yet the British government has continued to support such actions as part of Israel’s “right to defend herself,” tacking onto its statements a line saying that Israel must follow international law, as if murdering civilians can somehow be done legally.
The government’s stance was mirrored by the decision of opposition leader Keir Starmer who appeared to tell radio broadcaster LBC that Israel has a “right” to impose the cut-off on Gaza, a position which also appeared to be supported by members of Starmer’s front bench during various now-notorious media interviews.
This one-sided response of the British Establishment has also been seen in Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s order to police forces to treat even displays of the Palestinian flag as a potentially criminal act, leading to a number of arrests at Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.
The government has also pledged extensive direct military support for Israel against Gaza, a region in which children represent half of the population.
However, collective punishment is a war crime, under international law, against Gaza’s 2.5 million civilians — as is forced transfer of populations.
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Claudia Webbe MP is member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe.