ISRAEL’S announcement that it will “teach a lesson” to the United Nations by denying visas to its representatives only highlights its growing isolation — and that of its Nato allies.
Its brutal bombardment of Gaza has already killed at least 29 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the besieged strip, a tiny proportion of the civilian casualties but a telling sign of Tel Aviv’s contempt for international law.
The UN’s structure has prevented it from giving a clear moral lead with the United States vetoing calls for a ceasefire. But the remarks by secretary-general Antonio Guterres that have so riled Israeli leaders — that Hamas’s attacks on October 7 did not happen “in a vacuum” and must be linked to “56 years of suffocating oppression” of Palestine by Israel — were a statement of fact.
More could have been said. It is not just the decades-long denial of Palestinian statehood, the ongoing routine violence of the occupation or the siege of Gaza that set the scene for those terrifying events.
It is that the oppression of Palestinians has become rapidly more extreme in recent years, from Israel’s adoption of the racist Nation-State Law, through the massacre of unarmed demonstrators on the Gaza border during the March of Return protests, to the appointment of self-described fascist ministers who would have been beyond the political pale even five years ago.
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It is not Western peoples who are isolated, but our politicians, as the huge Palestine demonstrations and the growing backlash against Keir Starmer for endorsing war crimes show.
If world opinion is for a ceasefire, British public opinion is too. The gulf between people and politicians should be used to build an anti-imperialist movement strong enough to stop the war.