Pro-Palestinian rights advocates display placards critical of the Labour Party leadership on May 18, 2024 in London, England. (Photo: Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
“There is a ‘real prospect’ individuals… may have knowingly facilitated the commission of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity,” a legal analysis found.
Amid reports that government officials have expressed doubt that the United Kingdom can continue supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza without breaking international law, a legal expert commissioned by a rights group warned the Labour Party on Wednesday that government ministers could be liable for possible war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Wednesday, advising him that the organization has commissioned a leading lawyer, Sam Fowles of Cornerstone Barristers, to provide a legal analysis of the U.K.’s potential breach of international law via its support for Israel.
Fowles determined that “the U.K. and individuals, including government ministers and senior civil servants, may be liable for crimes committed by the Israeli state or Israeli personnel during the country’s ongoing military operation in Gaza and through the country’s unlawful occupation of Gaza and the West Bank,” wrote Dearden, with the potential liability arising from the U.K.’s continued “aid and assistance provided to Israel.”
There is a “real prospect” individuals (including ministers and/or civil servants) may have knowingly facilitated the commission of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The legal opinion, said Tim Bierley, campaigner for Global Justice Now, should send “alarm bells… sounding across Whitehall.”
“The U.K. government is putting its own ministers and civil servants at risk of prosecution by its continued failure to withhold support for Israel,” he said.
In a 28-page report, Fowles pointed to the U.K.’s involvement with Israel since October 2023, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
U.K. surveillance aircraft have reportedly flown more than 200 missions over Gaza to assist Israel since October, and about 100 Royal Marines were sent to the Eastern Mediterranean shortly after the Hamas attack. The U.K. has also sent military aid to Israel and granted at least 42 new weapons licenses since Israel began its operations in Gaza, where Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered the IDF to release “all the restraints” that would protect civilian lives.
Israel’s full-scale assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been women and children, and has included numerous strikes on so-called “humanitarian zones.” It has also included Israel’s blocking of nearly all humanitarian aid, leading to a mass starvation crisis that United Nations experts last month said qualifies as famine, and the spread of diseases including polio.
According to Fowles’ legal analysis, said Dearden, the U.K. government “could be liable for Israel’s alleged breaches of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity during its military operation in Gaza since October 2023.”
Fowles also found potential liability for “Israel’s breaches of the right to self-determination and the prohibition of obtaining territory by aggression in its illegal and ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”
The barrister pointed out that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on July 19 that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is unlawful and that it breached international law by obtaining control of the territories by force. The ICJ also ruled in January that it was plausible that Israel has violated Gaza residents’ rights under the Genocide Convention since October 2023.
Fowles’ finding that the U.K. and its high-level government officials could be liable for war crimes was also bolstered, he said, by a report presented in May by the U.N.’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which found Israel “had committed multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Dearden wrote that Global Justice Now is hopeful that the findings will lead to “the swift and decisive action needed to end U.K. complicity in Israel’s war crimes,” particularly following the decision of Foreign Office official Mark Smith to resign from the government this week, saying there is “no justification” for continued arms sales to Israel.
The government is reportedly considering an arms embargo on Israel, but Dearden noted that on July 29, officials announced they were “seeking to develop a new trade deal with Israel.”
“We seek to highlight the legal advice which states that ‘it seems likely that the U.K., through its trade relationship with Israel, has helped facilitate the unlawful occupation,'” wrote Dearden.
Earlier this year, lawyers for the Conservative government that was voted out in July advised officials that Israel, with U.K. support, has breached international humanitarian law.
“What on Earth is [the government] waiting for?” asked Bierley. “It is long overdue for the U.K. to match words with actions by immediately suspending arms sales, trade talks, and other aid and assistance to Israel.”
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Journalist Richard Medhurst addresses supporters of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside 10 Downing Street following the second day of his final extradition appeal on February 21, 2024 in London. (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
“I criticized the Terrorism Act before getting on the plane, then got arrested under the Terrorism Act upon landing.”
Richard Medhurst, a Syrian-British independent journalist who defends Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli apartheid, occupation, and other crimes, said this week that he was recently arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport and held for nearly 24 hours for allegedly running afoul of a highly controversial anti-terrorism law critics say is used to silence legitimate dissent.
Medhurst—who is known for his work opposing U.S., British, and Israeli war crimes in the Middle East and for his advocacy for formerly imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—said on social media Tuesday: “I criticized the Terrorism Act before getting on the plane, then got arrested under the Terrorism Act upon landing. Can’t make this up.”
In a nearly nine-minute video posted Monday night on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, Medhurst said that “on Thursday, as I landed in London Heathrow Airport, I was immediately escorted off the plane by six police officers who were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft.”
“They arrested me—not detained—they arrested me under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and accused me of allegedly ‘expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization,’ but wouldn’t explain what this meant,” he continued.
If you thought Britain's draconian terrorism laws were intended simply to stop terrorism, think again.
They're also there to stop us learning about how our own government spreads terror.
Independent journalist Richard Medhurst gives shocking details about his arrest under the… https://t.co/A0SDKn20UI
The controversial law criminalizes anyone who “invites support for a proscribed organization” or “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive” of such a group. Violators can be punished with up to 14 years’ imprisonment and a fine.
As Laura Tiernan explained Tuesday at World Socialist Web Site:
Introduced by [former U.K. Prime Minister] Tony Blair’s Labour government, the act is a legal dragnet. In Medhurst’s case, it appears that commentary defending the right of Palestinians under international law to resist foreign military occupation and genocide is being defined as support for terrorism.
Hamas is among the organizations proscribed as terrorist by the U.K. government. While its military wing was proscribed in 2001, Hamas was banned in its entirety in 2021, aimed at criminalizing support for the Palestinian people. The political wing of Hamas won elections held in Gaza in 2006 and the organization also oversees charitable work.
Medhurst said: “I categorically and utterly reject all the accusations by the police. I am not a terrorist. I have no criminal record. Prior to this incident, I’d never been detained in my entire life.”
“I’m a product of the diplomatic community, and I’m raised to be anti-war,” he explained. “Both of my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as United Nations peacekeepers. They had a tremendous effect on my worldview and outlook and instilled in me the importance of diplomacy, international law, and peace.”
Medhurst said he was searched, handcuffed, and taken in a police van to a station where he was searched again, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in solitary confinement. His phone and work equipment were seized. When he questioned why he’d been arrested, “the police would say something like: ‘Well, we’re just the arresting officers. We don’t really know.'”
“No one in the world knew what had happened to me or where I was,” he said. “I had to ask like four or five different guards for several hours until I finally received a call. In total, I spent almost 24 hours in detention. At no point whatsoever was I allowed to speak to a family member or a friend. After waiting 15 hours, I was finally interviewed by two detectives.”
I am being politically persecuted by my own government, so unfortunately I am unable to speak freely or do my job as a journalist it seems.
I thought I'd seen it all in court with Julian's case, but this is really something.
“I felt that the whole process was designed to humiliate, intimidate, and dehumanize me and treat me like a criminal, even though they must’ve been aware of my background and that I’m a journalist,” Medhurst alleged. He contended that his arrest was “done on purpose to try and rattle me psychologically,” and noted that “many people have been detained in Britain because of their connection to journalism.”
He named Assange—who was freed in June following a plea deal with the U.S. government—as well as Scottish author Craig Murray, Grayzone correspondent Kit Clarenberg, and Glenn Greenwald’s late partner, Brazilian politician David Miranda, as people who have been targeted for their political beliefs and expression.
“Freedom of the press, freedom of speech really are under attack,” Medhurst warned in the video. “The state is cracking down and escalating to try and stop people from speaking out against our government’s complicity in genocide.”
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice over its 320-day assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, wounded at least 93,000 others, starved hundreds of thousands more, and obliterated the coastal enclave.
“We cannot call ourselves a democracy as long as reporters are dragged off of planes and detained and treated like murderers,” Medhurst concluded. “I am disgusted that I am being politically persecuted in my own country.”
The broadcaster’s in-house content studio has been paid to promote fossil fuel firms and petrostates with a history of persecuting journalists.
The BBC has produced dozens of films and articles for oil and gas companies, agricultural giants, fossil fuel states, and high-emission transport firms in recent years, DeSmog can reveal.
Experts say the BBC has been “greenwashing” the image of companies and countries contributing to global emissions by trumpeting their dubious climate credentials and promoting their favoured solutions to the crisis.
The content was produced by BBC StoryWorks, a studio that produces videos, podcasts, and articles paid for commercial clients, which it publishes on BBC channels outside the UK.
On its website, BBC StoryWorks boasts that it leverages the reputation of the BBC – “our century-long pedigree as the world’s most trusted storytellers” – to create content for commercial clients “that moves and inspires curious minds, across platforms and across the globe”.
BBC StoryWorks produces traditional adverts for its clients, as well as content “with an editorial style” (known as “branded” or “native” content).
Branded content appears outside the UK on the BBC website – the most viewed news platform in the world – and on its non-UK broadcast channels, in a similar format to normal editorial output. However, branded content promotes the paying client and typically features interviews with the client’s senior executives. It is only distinguished by a disclaimer that it has been paid for by an external organisation.
BBC Studios – which includes StoryWorks – generated £1.8 billion of sales in the year 2023/24, according to the broadcaster’s annual accounts. The BBC‘s financial deficit is projected to reach nearly £500 million next year, with the licence fee – its primary funding source – having been frozen for several years by the last Conservative government.
In recent months, the BBC has created content for a number of oil and gas companies, including the French fossil fuel company Engie, which owns a number of coal-fired power plants and relies heavily on gas for its energy production.
BBC StoryWorks has also produced content for liquified natural gas (LNG) companies, and has touted the energy source as a cleaner alternative to other fossil fuels. This is despite experts warning that the booming LNG industry could contribute more heavily to the climate crisis than the ongoing use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
Agriculture accounts for 21 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and BBC StoryWorks has produced films for some of the world’s biggest food and farming firms, including Nestlé and Bayer, often promoting the disputed green technologies backed by the industry. As previously revealed by DeSmog, BBC StoryWorks has produced dozens of documentaries sponsored by the pesticide giant Corteva, publicising the technologies developed and sold by the firm.
Petrostates with a history of human rights abuses – including the imprisonment of journalists – have also been promoted by BBC StoryWorks.
An investigation by DeSmog and Drilled previously revealed that many of the world’s most trusted English-language news outlets regularly promote the fossil fuel industry’s narratives on climate-related topics. Bloomberg, The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Politico, Reuters, and the Washington Post all have internal commercial studios that create advertising content for fossil fuel firms.
The BBC is committed to science-led climate reporting and in 2021 signed the Climate Content Pledge, promising to do “more and better climate story-telling on screen across all genres.”
However, critics say that BBC StoryWorks is using the broadcaster’s reputation – including its role as a public service broadcaster – to make money from commercial content that often flouts its editorial values.
“The contracts to make this sort of content are won on the back of the BBC’s reputation as an honest and impartial broadcaster,” Patrick Howse, the BBC’s former Baghdad bureau chief, told DeSmog. “Accepting money from sources like this, to make content like this, risks undermining the BBC’s own hard-won reputation and will ultimately put it on the wrong side of history.
“This is a huge disservice to the BBC’s audiences, and a betrayal of the many brave and conscientious BBC journalists around the world who see holding power to account and telling the truth as their raison d’etre.”
Last year was the warmest year since global records began in 1850. The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said that “immediate and deep emissions reductions” are needed “across all sectors” to limit global warming to 1.5C – the global target established by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
In June 2024, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that advertising agencies had “aided and abetted” the fossil fuel industry, “acting as enablers to planetary destruction”.
“Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet – they’re toxic for your brand,” he said.
A BBC StoryWorks spokesperson said that the studio “operates entirely separately from the BBC’s editorial operations” and that its output “is clearly labelled as commercial content”.
However, content labelling doesn’t always help readers and viewers to understand that it has been paid for by a commercial client. A 2018 Boston University study found that only one in 10 people recognised native advertising – which includes branded content – as advertising rather than reporting.
The BBC StoryWorks spokesperson added that, “BBC StoryWorks operates under robust and established governance and is required to comply with the BBC’s guidelines as set out in the publicly available Advertising and Sponsorship Guidelines.
“Central to these guidelines is a commitment to factual accuracy in any piece of content. All of the content cited in this article was approved as compliant with the BBC’s advertising guidelines prior to its publication.”
Fossil Fuel Firms and False Solutions
In April and June, BBC StoryWorks published two articles paid for by Engie, a global energy company with annual revenues of $60 billion, which is part-owned by the French state. The articles promoted Engie’s green credentials, claiming it has a mission “to accelerate the energy transition”, despite the firm’s extensive fossil fuel interests.
Though ENGIE has ambitious renewable development objectives, it plans to expand its LNG terminals in Europe, is one of the top European developers of gas power plants globally, and has agreed to import American shale gas beyond 2040.
Between 2016 and 2022, the firm sold 16 of its coal plants – a 60 percent reduction in its coal capacity. However, Engie chose to sell these assets rather than close them down. This transferred the polluting plants to different owners, meaning that the plants will still contribute to global emissions.
The BBC StoryWorks articles didn’t provide information about the company’s existing polluting activities, or the global need to rapidly scale-down oil, gas, and coal production.
Professor Peter Newell, an academic at the University of Sussex specialising in environmental politics, told DeSmog: “Because branded content looks like regular BBC journalism which the public trust as independent, it compromises the integrity of the organisation and its public role, including to help society respond seriously to the climate crisis.”
In 2021, the broadcaster launched a “Humanising Energy” series “presented by” the World Energy Council, a global forum for sustainable energy development, followed by a second series in 2023.
The two series featured dozens of five-minute films paid for by individual firms, showcasing their supposed climate solutions. These films typically involved one-on-one interviews with people either creating or benefiting from these green innovations, as well as cinematic shots of the technologies being deployed.
A screenshot of a BBC StoryWorks film from its ”Humanising Energy“ series. Credit: BBC
Sponsors of films in the two Humanising Energy series included the fossil fuel companies Engie Brazil, Gasum (the largest distributor of LNG in the Nordic countries), CLP Holdings (which has said it won’t phase out its coal assets before 2040, and hasn’t committed to phasing out its gas assets), Mabanaft, and Invenergy, the energy services firm Voith, and the engine manufacturer Cummins.
All of these films touted the supposed climate credentials of the featured companies, without examining their contribution to global emissions or the viability of the featured technologies.
In January 2024, Cummins agreed to pay a record $1.7 billion fine – the second largest environmental penalty ever in the U.S. – after facing charges that it equipped roughly one million vehicles with devices that bypassed emissions sensors. The company didn’t admit wrongdoing.
Just a few months earlier, BBC StoryWorks produced a film for Cummins boasting of the firm’s efforts to help decarbonise commercial vehicles.
The Invenergy film focused on its construction of an LNG plant in El Salvador. While the content attempted to show how the plant was providing energy and jobs to the local community, it also tried to tout the environmental benefits of natural gas.
During the film, an Invenergy spokesperson suggested that natural gas generates 30 percent less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels, neglecting the fact that natural gas is composed largely of methane, which is over 80 times more potent than CO2 across a 20 year period. Even relatively small methane leaks during the process of extracting, shipping, and processing natural gas contribute significantly to global emissions.
One of the films in the Humanising Energy series – “The evolution of home energy” – promoted the role of hydrogen in supplying home heating. Yet, while green hydrogen is widely accepted as necessary for decarbonising heavy industry and other sectors where alternative renewable energy sources are unworkable, it is not considered viable for heating homes.
A peer-reviewed assessment of over 50 independent studies in 2024 concluded that hydrogen use in domestic heating is inefficient, costly and resource-intensive compared to other low-carbon options such as heat pumps.
The BBC StoryWorks film was paid for by DNV, a Norwegian company that claims to be “the world’s leading resource of independent energy experts and technical advisors”, including the oil and gas sector. DNV says on its website that it “delivers broad technical expertise and experience to enable hydrogen to play a key role in the energy transition”.
A DNV spokesperson said that, “While DNV does work with oil and gas companies and organisations across renewable energy production, it is not involved in the direct production or distribution of energy… Our approach to energy solutions is rooted in comprehensive research and rigorous testing, and our position as an independent third party is a central part of our identity and our work.”
The Humanising Energy series also featured twofilms advocating for the development and deployment of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) – one paid for by the aviation giant Boeing, and one paid for by the energy and chemicals company Sasol alongside the gas company Linde.
A screenshot of a BBC StoryWorks film, sponsored by Boeing, from its ”Humanising Energy“ series. Credit: BBC
SAFs have been criticised as being environmentally damaging and currently economically unviable. The Advertising Standards Authority this month banned a Virgin Atlantic advert for making the “misleading” claim that it had developed a “100 percent sustainable aviation fuel”.
In August 2022, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) said that the amount of money invested by airlines in SAFs was “insufficient” and that it seemed as though the technology was simply “about burnishing airlines’ images” by inflating their environmental credentials.
Sasol told DeSmog that its SAF initiatives were not an example of greenwashing and that it believes SAFs hold the “promise to be an enabler of our own decarbonisation and contribute to decarbonising aviation.”
Aviation contributes approximately 2.5 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, yet BBC StoryWorks has produced content for a number of airlines in recent months and years, including Uzbekistan Airways (March 2024), China Southern Airline (2022), and Korean Air (2017).
BBC StoryWorks has also worked extensively with other polluting transport companies.
It produced an advertising campaign for the shipping and cruise company Cunard that appeared on BBC StoryWorks social media pages in July 2024. Europe’s 218 cruise ships emitted as much sulphur oxides as one billion cars in 2022.
BBC StoryWorks has also produced brandedcontent for the car company Hyundai, as well as for Lexus, Volkswagen, and Jaguar. In addition, the studio has produced a six-part series paid for by the Indian multinational motorcycle company Royal Enfield.
Transport contributes roughly one quarter of all energy related greenhouse gas emissions, while outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause more than 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide every year.
“This important investigation reveals that BBC StoryWorks has been doing the greenwashing work of major polluting firms driving the climate crisis by obscuring their role and promoting their preferred ‘solutions’, however discredited by science,” Professor Newell told DeSmog.
Greenwashing is when a company falsely brands something as eco-friendly, green or sustainable. In 2017, the BBC itself produced a guide to the “seven ways to spot businesses greenwashing”.
Big Ag Polluters
BBC StoryWorks has also been paid to produce content for major agricultural polluters and their lobbyists. This content has often promoted the technological hacks that food and farming giants claim will reduce the sector’s emissions, rather than the more fundamental changes in production and consumption that scientists say will be crucial in limiting Big Ag’s climate impact.
In 2023, BBC StoryWorks produced an advertising campaign for the pesticides giant Bayer, the world’s second largest crop chemicals company, boasting of the firm’s efforts to facilitate “scientific breakthroughs”.
In addition, as part of a branded content series in late 2023 entitled “The Climate and Us”, BBC StoryWorks was paid by Bayer to produce a film on the digital apps helping farmers to monitor and reduce their emissions.
The film, which featured an interview with Bayer’s vice president of digital farming operations, promoted the firm’s technologies with no additional comment from experts on its efficacy, or Bayer’s stance on climate change.
A screenshot of a BBC StoryWorks film, sponsored by Bayer. Credit: BBC
According to the Pesticides Action Network, over a third of Bayer’s sales derive from products that are highly hazardous to the environment, animal or human health. (The methodology for this classification is strongly disputed by Bayer on the grounds that it uses different criteria to internationally accepted rules).
Bayer told DeSmog that it is “committed to ambitious sustainability goals and has a positive track record while recognising the ongoing challenge.”
Experts say that the overuse of chemical pesticides is harming the future of food production. Biodiversity is in sharp decline across the world, and numbers of birds and pollinators are plummeting in Europe.
Bayer, which makes almost $10 billion in agrochemical sales every year, has also faced millions of dollars in lawsuits over health issues allegedly related to its products, including from farmers.
In 2023, DeSmog revealed that BBC StoryWorks had produced three documentary series and 26 articles – viewed at least 65 million times – sponsored by Corteva, one of the world’s largest pesticide firms.
The BBC said that the Corteva-sponsored content, which focused on sustainable food production, was editorial in nature and not influenced by its corporate client. However, experts said the documentaries gave a “totally biased” picture of global food problems, while the content promoted a number of the technologies developed by Corteva.
BBC StoryWorks also produced two articles in 2023 paid for by Australian Dairy – the country’s industry trade group.
The first article promoted the supposed contribution of milk and dairy to a healthy diet, while the second advocated for “precision farming” – in other words, using technology to ensure that resources are used efficiently and to track climate impacts.
Scientists and health professionals agree that dairy products are not necessary for a healthy diet, and they agree that for people who are able to have a varied diet, lower meat and dairy consumption is healthier than diets higher in milk and dairy.
Experts also doubt that precision farming can be rolled out widely enough to meaningfully reduce agricultural emissions. The environmental group Friends of the Earth has said that: “Faced with global climate and biodiversity emergencies, better ‘optimisation’ of existing production processes cannot possibly go far enough to meet the challenges we face.”
According to a March 2024 Harvard Law paper, which surveyed more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, meat and dairy production must be drastically reduced – and fast – to align with the Paris Agreement. The report concluded that global emissions from livestock production need to decline by 50 percent during the next six years, with “high-producing and consuming nations” taking the lead.
Sophie Nodzenski, a senior campaign strategist on food and agriculture at Greenpeace International told DeSmog: “Tinkering with the status quo is no longer an option. Meat and dairy companies are climate killers. The livestock sector is one of the leading sources of human-made methane emissions, which move us faster and further past the 1.5C threshold, worsening global heating.
“Meat and dairy companies must stop misleading the public with pseudo solutions and focus on reducing their livestock herds drastically to bring down emissions instead. This reduction can give us a fighting chance against climate chaos.”
In 2023, BBC StoryWorks also produced content for the world’s largest food and drink company Nestlé, boasting of the company’s efforts to support sustainable farming through “regenerative agriculture”.
The film failed to acknowledge that Nestlé – whose 87.5 million tonnes of annual emissions are similar to those of Chile – spent 14 times more on “marketing and administration” in the last year than it did on regenerative agriculture over the previous five years combined.
A screenshot of a BBC StoryWorks film, sponsored by Nestlé. Credit: BBC
“Nestlé’s strong focus on using regenerative agriculture to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock farming – one of Nestlé’s main strategies to achieve net zero – is not backed by robust scientific evidence,” Nodzenski said.
“Increasing carbon storage in soils, as well as forests and other vegetation, is necessary, but should not replace a drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock farming – one of the main sources of Nestlé’s emissions.”
The Nestlé film was part of a “Food for Thought” series backed by the trade body FoodDrink Europe, whose members feature major polluters including Cargill, Coca-Cola, and Unilever.
A Nestlé spokesperson said: “We continue to invest in and deliver on our net zero roadmap. By the end of 2023, we had reduced our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 13.5 percent in absolute terms since 2018. Our GHG reduction targets are third-party approved by the Science Based Targets initiative and include a 20 percent absolute cut by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030 covering all sources of agricultural emissions in our supply chain.
“We continue to ramp up our climate efforts using world class research and development, including via the Nestlé Institute for Agricultural Sciences.
“Nestlé has committed to invest $1.2 billion to pay premiums to farmers for ingredients grown using regenerative agriculture practices, provide technical assistance and support investment.”
Petrostates
Over recent years, BBC StoryWorks has also produced content for some of the world’s leading fossil fuel states, many of which have a poor record on human rights and press freedom.
This year’s flagship COP29 climate summit will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan. The country is a petrostate with oil and gas production accounting for roughly half of its GDP and over 90 percent of its exports. The country, run under an authoritarian system with little effective political opposition, plans to increase fossil fuel production by a third over the next decade.
Azerbaijan’s government has also been accused by of a media crackdown by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch ahead of November’s summit, arresting 25 journalists and activists in the past year.
However, since November 2023, BBC StoryWorks has produced several adverts promoting Azerbaijan as a place to visit, while greenwashing its image.
For example, in December 2023, the studio released an advert paid for by the country’s space agency Azercosmos, attempting to show “How digitisation is changing the game for Azerbaijan’s quest for renewable energy.”
The advert was accompanied by an article claiming that Azerbaijan plans to transition “from an oil- and gas-based economy into a thriving modern hub.” The article did not mention the country’s plan to expand fossil fuel production, which contravenes globally agreed efforts to limit rising temperatures.
A screenshot of a BBC StoryWorks advert, sponsored by Azercosmos. Credit: BBC
BBC StoryWorks has also produced content promoting the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the host of the 2023 COP28 climate summit and another petrostate with a poor human rights record.
In 2023, the studio produced a branded content podcast series on behalf of Abu Dhabi Tourism, featuring five 20-minute episodes each “highlighting the message that Abu Dhabi [the capital of the UAE] is a destination for every kind of traveller”.
The series was shortlisted for a 2023 World Media Award and, in the award submission, the BBC said it “challenged preconceived notions and [positioned] the city as a cultural gem worth exploring”. The series was downloaded 115,000 times, according to the BBC.
The UAE derives roughly 40 percent of its income from oil and gas, and this isn’t the only time that BBC StoryWorks has produced content promoting the petrostate.
The story stated that the UAE is “planning to increase oil production to more than five million barrels a day by 2030”, but said that the country “has been looking toward more sustainable energy sources”. It went on to say that “Clean energy projects are coming of age” in the UAE, “from record-breaking solar parks and green hydrogen to waste-to-energy plants”.
The UAE’s overall climate action has been rated as “critically insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that monitors government climate action and measures it against the Paris Agreement.
Weeks before COP28, the country’s national oil company, ADNOC, awarded contracts worth $17 billion for the development of new offshore gas fields.
The Gulf state also has a poor record on human rights and press freedom. The UAE continues to arrest and imprison activists, academics, and lawyers who speak out against its monarchic rulers. UAE authorities also continue to discriminate against women, LGBTQ communities, and migrants.
According to Reporters Without Borders, “The government prevents both local and foreign independent media outlets from thriving by tracking down and persecuting dissenting voices.”
“The rise of renewable energies in oil-rich regions” article also attempted to promote the ways in which “women are playing an increasing role in the renewable energy sector”. The story cited the fact that women are leading green initiatives in Kuwait, and Jordan.
However, many Gulf states routinely discriminate against women. In Kuwait for example, the country’s personal status laws discriminate against women in matters of marriage, divorce, and child custody.
Despite this, BBC StoryWorks has frequently promoted the country. In December 2023, the studio published an advert from the Kuwait Fund, the country’s state-run development agency, boasting of its efforts to help “disadvantaged regions, women and minorities”.
Reporters Without Borders states that Kuwait’s censorship laws prohibit journalists “from criticising the government, the emir, the ruling family, its allies or religion”. In particular, it is “difficult for journalists to tackle migrant worker rights, women’s rights and corruption.”
Oil and gas revenues account for roughly 60 percent of Kuwait’s GDP.
BBC StoryWorks has also produced content for the petrostate Qatar, promoting the country as a tourist destination despite its record of discriminating against women and minorities.
BBC StoryWorks has a history of working for repressive regimes, including China. The U.S. publication Deadline reported in December 2022 that BBC StoryWorks had partnered with at least nine Chinese state-affiliated bodies, including a media outlet banned from broadcasting in the UK.
“Those commissioning and paying for this content are deliberately using the BBC’s brand to greenwash or whitewash their own reputations. It’s an exercise of cynical manipulation,” the BBC’s former Baghdad bureau chief Patrick Howse told DeSmog.
“Commissions like this are lucrative and therefore attractive to a corporation that has been deliberately and severely financially squeezed by the UK government over a long period. This has forced the BBC to seek money from wherever it can find it, and this poses a risk to its editorial independence and honesty, which will ultimately undermine the trust of the BBC’s audience.”
An injured Palestinian baby is treated in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 7, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.
As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s press conference. “We are here because we want to win a better world.”
Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.”
Such support, Alawieh added, is also “preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children… being killed using U.S. weapons.”
DNC Press Conference: Uncommitted delegates discuss why they are urging Vice President Harris to unite our party, which has been divided by Biden’s horrific Gaza policies, and stop sending American bombs to Netanyahu’s far-right Israeli government. https://t.co/mVtbjUfliz
— Uncommitted National Movement 🌺 (@uncommittedmvmt) August 19, 2024
“The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy,” Alawieh continued. “Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians.”
“Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue,” Alawieh added. “Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire.”
There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of “massacre after massacre” and “suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale.”
“Tell the world what you saw,” she said they told her. “We cannot afford another day of this.”
On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
The Democratic National Convention held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights Monday, including harrowing testimony from Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who volunteered at a hospital in Gaza earlier this year. "We have witnessed civilian massacre after civilian massacre," she said. pic.twitter.com/BZd05zzLVH
On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza “cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”
“I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” she stated. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”
Haj-Hassan continued:
For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers…
Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths… This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.
Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed… another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.
“And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan added. “History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”
Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. However, like Biden, she’s also proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that “she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.
According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel’s 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel’s genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.
Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli troops enter Nablus, West Bank on August 19, 2024. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
Promises of “absolute victory” in Gaza are nothing but “gibberish”, according to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Gallant’s comments were not meant to be public, but somehow were leaked and published by Israeli media on 12 August.
The explanation of why Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing a losing war in Gaza has been largely confined to the prime minister’s personal interests, not least the avoidance of corruption trials, preserving his extremist government coalition and avoiding an early general election. Still, none of these rationales explain the absurdity of continuing with a war which, in the words of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, is “The worst failure in Israel’s history.”
What else could explain Netanyahu’s motive for the war? And why are his most crucial government allies, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, determined to prolong it? The answer may not lie in Gaza, but in the occupied West Bank.
While Israel is extending its failed military campaign in the Strip with no clear strategic objectives, its war on the West Bank is driven by very clear motives indeed: the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory and the ethnic cleansing of large sectors of the Palestinian population. This is not only obvious through Israel’s daily actions in the West Bank, but also because of the clear statements made by Israel’s extreme far right government officials, including a commitment by Netanyahu’s own Likud party to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria.” The latter, of course, is what Zionists call the West Bank.
An audio recording obtained by the Israeli group Peace Now conveyed the following remarks by Smotrich at a June 9 conference: “My goal is to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent, for God’s sake, its division… and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
To do so, the far-right politician has assigned himself the job of “change(ing) the DNA of the system.” This “system” was put in place decades ago, following Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It began a slow but determined process of illegal annexation of Palestinian territories. The process included the establishment, in 1981, of the so-called Civil Administration.
This was and remains essentially a branch of the Israeli military.
However, it was described as “civil” as part of a government effort to convert a temporary military occupation into the permanent colonisation of Palestine. This entailed the practical annexation and continued expansion of the illegal Israeli Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land after the June 1967 Six-Day War.
The Oslo Accords in 1993-94 gave Palestinians nominal administrative control over small areas in the West Bank, designated as areas A and B. This necessitated the transfer of some of the Civil Administration’s responsibility to the newly-formed Palestinian Authority, based on the understanding that the PA will always prioritise Israel’s security. The arrangement allowed Israel to expand, unhindered, its illegal settlements in most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, tripling both the size and population of the settlements between 1993 and 2023.
As Israel’s colonial plan in the West Bank reached its zenith, Netanyahu sought in 2020 to reinforce Israeli gains with the annexation of more than 30 per cent of the West Bank. Due to international pressure and growing Palestinian resistance, however, Netanyahu postponed his plan, albeit with the understanding that “annexation remains on the table”.
Without much fanfare, though, Israel swapped its hope for a sweeping de jure annexation of the West Bank with de facto control, through rapid seizures of Palestinian land and the expansion of its settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.
Although the Israeli military is faltering in Gaza, the genocide is being used as a smokescreen to finalise Israel’s settler-colonial plans in the West Bank.
This process was dubbed by Smotrich in 2017 as a “victory by settlement”. Now in a position of power and with access to a massive budget, he is making his life’s goal a reality.
For Smotrich’s dream to be realised, he needed to revitalise the once central role of the Civil Administration. In May, he invented a new position called “deputy head” of the administration, granting the position to his close associate Hillel Roth.
Now both men have unparalleled and sweeping rights to expand the settlements. Since coming to power in December 2022, Netanyahu’s latest government has approved 12,000 new housing units for illegal settlements, while ordering the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and other civilian infrastructure.
In the first three months of 2024, Israel declared nearly 6,000 acres of the West Bank to be “state-owned land”, and therefore made it eligible for settlement construction. The decision was described by the Israeli watchdog Peace Now as the “largest West Bank land grab in 30 years.”
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is already under way. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, in the first half of 2024 alone, at least 1,000 Palestinians were forcefully displaced while nearly 160,000 were affected by home demolitions.
The Israeli war on the West Bank has come at a high price in Palestinian blood. As of 12 August, at least 632 Palestinians had been killed with 5,400 wounded in the West Bank alone, according to the Ministry of Health. When the war on Gaza is over, the war on the West Bank will grow more intense and bloodier, but with the clear strategic goal of annexing the whole territory, even though the International Court of Justice resolved on 19 July that Israel’s “annexation and… assertion of permanent control” in the West Bank is illegal.
To avoid an even greater war and genocide than that which is taking place before our eyes in Gaza, the international community must use all available means to enforce international law and bring to an end Israel’s brutal, genocidal occupation of Palestine.
