Tony Blair sent the SAS to hunt down suspected Bosnian war criminals in the 1990s who were accused of lesser abuses than Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
…
Whitehall’s weak reaction to ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant stands in contrast to the exertions it made towards the former Yugoslavia and, more recently, Russia.
When the ICC announced an arrest warrant for Russian ruler Vladimir Putin in March 2023, the UK increased funding to the organisation and hosted an international conference in London.
“The ICC plays a vital role in global efforts to end impunity for war crimes”, the UK Ministry of Justice said.
A year earlier the UK had galvanised a group of governments to refer Russian atrocities in Ukraine to the ICC to enable it to proceed straight to an investigation – a process known as ‘state party referral’.
David Lammy described the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin as “an historic step”, adding that “President Putin is now a wanted man”.
By contrast, the current foreign secretary has only grudgingly conceded that, in the cases of Netanyahu and Gallant, “there is an obligation on me to transmit to the courts should those named seek to come in to our country”.
When in 2006 former Liberian president Charles Taylor was undergoing a war crimes trial in The Hague for aiding rebels in Sierra Leone notorious for hacking off limbs of civilians, the British government offered to house him in a UK jail if convicted.
Sentenced to 50 years imprisonment, Taylor began serving his conviction at HMP Frankland near Durham. It seems inconceivable that Netanyahu and Gallant will ever see the inside of a British jail.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK 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.
A demonstrator is seen marching while holding a placard criticizing BP in London on November 16, 2024. (Photo: David Tramontan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“By facilitating the transport of oil that fuels military operations in Gaza, BP has contributed to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the region,” said the director of the organization backing the claimants.
A group of Palestinians whose family members have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip over the past 14 months have initiated legal action in the United Kingdom against the British fossil fuel giant BP, arguing the company is aiding the assault on the enclave via its ownership of a pipeline that provides Israel with crude oil.
In a 36-page letter before claim, the group contends that BP’s role in supplying oil to Israel violates the company’s stated commitments to human rights, including its expressed support for the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
“Israel relies heavily on crude oil and refined petroleum imports to run its large fleet of fighter jets, tanks, and other military vehicles and operations, as well as the bulldozers implicated in clearing Palestinian homes and olive groves to make way for unlawful Israeli settlements,” the letter notes. “Some fuel from refineries goes directly to the armed forces, while much of the rest appears to go to ordinary gas stations where military personnel can refuel their vehicles under a government contract.”
The group demands from BP an “immediate cessation of oil supply to Israel and facilitation through” the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline as well as an “admission liability and a commitment to mediation for assessing damages.”
“Our clients seek justice for the profound suffering and loss they have endured and call on BP to act responsibly by immediately halting its involvement.”
Tayab Ali, head of international law at Bindmans LLP and director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP)—which is supporting the group of claimants—said in a statement Monday that “this legal action marks a new phase in accountability for those that are complicit in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“The evidence against BP demonstrates a clear failure to adhere to its own human rights policies and international law,” said Ali. “By facilitating the transport of oil that fuels military operations in Gaza, BP has contributed to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the region. Our clients seek justice for the profound suffering and loss they have endured and call on BP to act responsibly by immediately halting its involvement.”
According to ICJP, the claimants include “a British citizen of Palestinian origin who lost 16 family members to Israeli airstrikes,” “a second British Palestinian claimant whose relatives in Gaza have suffered fatalities and displacement,” and “additional claimants who have endured catastrophic physical and psychological harm including amputations and loss of family members.”
The group sent its legal letter just over a month after a coalition of environmental groups published a report identifying BP as one of the “top corporate suppliers of oil to Israel.”
“The major international oil companies, including BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies, may be linked to 35% of the crude oil supplied to Israel since October [2023],” the report states. “These companies, as well as state-owned entities and other private and publicly traded oil producers, profit from supplying oil to Israel’s refineries, where a proportion is likely refined into fuels for Israel’s war machine.”
Last week, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations argued that “foreign governments have an obligation” under international law “to end the supply of fuel to Israel unless they can guarantee it will only be used for nonmilitary purposes.”
“This includes both a ban on the export of crude oil, military jet fuel, and other fuels, as well as a prohibition on the transport of these commodities through their territory,” the group said.
People check the damage outside the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, following Israeli strikes around the medical complex on December 6, 2024, as the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group continues. (Photo: -/AFP via Getty Images)
“If Kamal Adwan Hospital is decommissioned, there will be no way of preserving conditions of life to the remaining 75,000+ civilians in north Gaza,” the hospital’s director said.
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday ordered one of the last partly operating hospitals in northern Gaza to shutter and evacuate, even as hospital staff say there are not enough ambulances to do so safely and persistent firing on the facility makes people afraid to leave.
Israel launched bomb, artillery, and sniper attacks on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia beginning Saturday, as the Wafa news agency reported. The attacks killed three people in the area and wounded several, according to Wafu. On Sunday, an Israeli drone strike on the hospital’s fuel tanks and power generator shut off its electricity, the AnadoluAgencyreported.
“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators,” hospital director Dr. Husam Abu Safiya said in a statement on Sunday. “We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time.”
“Every bomb that slams into Kamal Adwan Hospital, every nurse forced to watch a child slip away, every life lost from denied treatment indicts us all.”
Abu Safiya described the onset of what he called an “unprecedented” attack in a message Saturday evening local time:
The Israeli military has targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital with different types of weapons without prior warning. We are being directly attacked, the ICU unit, along with the maternity and nursing departments, are coming under fire.
The bombing is being conducted with tank fire and quadcopters, directly targeting us while we are present inside the hospital departments. We don’t know why we are being targeted at this hour.
Several people were wounded in attacks on the hospital’s laboratory and mechanical department,according to Al Jazeera.
“What we are seeing now is a deliberate attack on the health facility,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Deir el-Balah. “The Israeli military has ordered evacuations from the hospital, but they have also created an intimidating environment that makes people feel it’s unsafe to leave.”
Mahmoud said he lost contact with the hospital Saturday night.
Footage shared on social media and verified by Al Jazeera also showed patients sheltering in hallways to avoid the Israeli attack.
Responding to reports from the hospital on Saturday, World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a cease-fire around the hospital and for the protection of patients and staff.
“Tonight’s reports of bombardment near Kamal Adwan Hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome,” Ghebreyseus wrote on social media. “The hospital has been in the midst of fighting for too long, and the lives of patients are at risk.”
Also on Saturday, the Palestine Mental Health Networks and Doctors Against Genocide issued a statement in support of Abu Safiya and Kamal Adwan, demanding that the international community act to open a humanitarian corridor in Gaza, protect healthcare facilities and staff, and end the blockade on the besieged enclave.
Arguing that the “relentless assaults on Kamal Adwan Hospital—a sanctuary meant to save lives in northern Gaza—are part of a deliberate genocidal campaign,” they wrote:
Humanity cannot pretend not to see. Neutrality in the face of genocide is complicity. Every bomb that slams into Kamal Adwan Hospital, every nurse forced to watch a child slip away, every life lost from denied treatment indicts us all.
The world is watching. Will it once again stand idly by as another hospital crumbles, another child’s breath is silenced, another fragile hope is extinguished? Or will it finally rise to restore the sanctity of life and the universal right to health?
In a video message shared by Drop Site News early Sunday morning Gaza time, Abu Safiya said that he had been ordered to evacuate patients to the Indonesian Hospital, but that this would be “impossible” since the hospital needs ambulances to transport the wounded and would need to move supplies as well. He said a successful evacuation would take days.
In a second message on Sunday, he linked the IDF’s attacks on Kamal Adwan to similar attacks on hospitals throughout Gaza. In October, a report from the United Nation’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” carrying out nearly 500 attacks on healthcare facilities between October 7, 2023 and July 30, 2024.
Abu Safiya said that the IDF did not provide hospitals with the support they needed when it ordered evacuations, such as equipment and safe passage:
We call on the world to witness this pattern once again. We have repeatedly requested assistance and have openly invited the occupation to see for themselves the internal workings of our hospitals so that we may continue to serve our population without fear of attack and death. These calls were rejected.
We also call on the world to witness, that if Kamal Adwan Hospital is decommissioned, there will be no way of preserving conditions of life to the remaining 75,000+ civilians in north Gaza.
We call on the world to witness these crimes of extermination and act now.
Abu Safiya also said the IDF was targeting the hospital’s fuel tanks, which would explode if hit, causing “mass casualties.”
Gaza’s Government Media Office urged the WHO to visit the hospital on Sunday, saying the attack was part of a concerted attempt to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system.
“These attacks are ongoing and have not stopped for nearly 80 days since the ground aggression on the northern Gaza Strip Governorate began, which has claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, left many missing, wounded, or detained,” the statement said.
In response to the reports from the hospital, the IDF told The Washington Post that it had not targeted Kamal Adwan on Saturday to its knowledge. It also said separately that it was operating in Beit Lahia. Israel has intensified military operations in northern Gaza over the past three months, according to Reuters. The IDF further told Reuters on Friday that it had helped to evacuate more than 100 patients from Kamal Adwan and provided fuel and food to the hospital. It did not respond to a request for comment about Saturday’s attacks.
Also on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli attacks had killed 32 people and wounded 54 in the last 24 hours. At least eight people, including children, were killed in a strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
“We came out to see the scale of destruction, with dead bodies, blood, and body parts all over the place. Israeli warplanes fired three missiles on this school. The explosion was huge and frightening to us and to our children,” witness Um Aref Ahel, who has been displaced by the war, told Al Jazeera. “We appeal to the whole world to bring this war to an end.”
The official Gaza Health Ministry death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza, which began October 7, 2023 in response to a deadly Hamas attack on Southern Israel, stands at over 45,000, though many remain unaccounted for beneath the rubble. This month, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports labelling Israel’s assault a genocide.
Palestinian truck drivers and United Nations vehicles wait near the Rafah border gate on the Gazan side to cross the Egyptian side after the Israeli army took control of the Rafah Border Gate, Gaza on May 14, 2024. [Hani Alshaer – Anadolu Agency]
Over two months, just three trucks carrying food and water have reached North Gaza Governorate, where families scavenge through rubbish for scraps, Oxfam reports. While 25 trucks were granted entry by Israel, most were obstructed or delayed by the Israeli occupation military, leaving countless Palestinian civilians without aid.
Since October, Oxfam and other humanitarian organisations have been unable to deliver consistent aid to north Gaza as Israel’s intensified siege of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun blocks access. Thousands remain cut off without food or water, with trapped families making desperate calls for help.
One convoy of 11 trucks was stopped at Jabalia, where supplies were seized and redirected to a militarised zone inaccessible to Palestinian civilians. Another convoy of 14 trucks saw only three reach Mahdia Al-Shawa school in Beit Hanoun. Hours after distribution, Israeli forces attacked the school, forcing families to flee and shelled the building the next day.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) recently warned of a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in northern Gaza, with famine risks spreading across the entire Strip. Families are resorting to unimaginable measures to survive, exposing themselves to disease and injury from sharp debris and unexploded bombs.
Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world as its healthcare system collapses, lacking critical supplies like anesthetics.
Oxfam has condemned Israel’s ongoing blockade, warning that these actions violate international law. Aid organisations continue to call for unrestricted access as Gaza’s humanitarian crisis spirals further into catastrophe.
Oxfam warned of an “apocalyptic” situation, with famine likely underway in northern Gaza. Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s regional director, condemned the international community’s inaction, saying: “The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter. It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing.”
“Gaza has been widely destroyed and the entire population is suffering. The public sector has collapsed and the humanitarian system is on its knees. We plead with the entire international community – stop this, now. You have the diplomatic and economic levers to make Israel stop. Every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.”
The Palestinian Civil Defence reports 2,700 deaths in North Gaza since October, with half of the bodies unrecovered amid relentless shelling. Over 130,000 have been displaced, most of them women and children now sheltering in overcrowded, freezing conditions in Gaza City.
Aid delivery remains severely hampered as critical crossings are barely functional. Winter weather will worsen conditions for over 1.6 million people living in makeshift shelters, with half a million in flood-prone areas. The UN reports that only 23 per cent of displaced Palestinians have received materials to shield them from cold and rain, leaving over 900,000 at risk of exposure.
Food prices have skyrocketed, forcing families into dire situations. One Palestinian man, who evacuated from Al-Maghazi refugee camp, shared: “Adults tell the kids not to play so they don’t get dizzy. One pack of biscuits is all we have for 15 grandchildren. We need shelter but a simple plastic tarpaulin costs $180. We’re doing everything we can, but it’s not enough.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
STARMERISM is an attempt to turn the clock back. It isn’t working, cannot work and tolerating it risks disaster for the working-class movement.
It has always been an attempt to turn the clock back. The entire Starmer project was, from his election as Labour leader on a false prospectus, an attempt to undo Corbyn: to drag the unruly Labour Party back to a supposed “middle ground” of support for neoliberal economics and imperialist war.
It has been a project pursued with total ruthlessness: Labour members were, and are, broadly supportive of Corbyn’s manifesto commitments to greater public ownership and redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation, and certainly weren’t happy with the former leader being portrayed as the devil incarnate and cast out of the party, so Starmer had to smash Labour democracy.
His regime has banned debate in constituency parties, suspended those in their entirety when they wouldn’t play ball, and expelled anyone who dared to object. Since coming to power, MPs have found themselves excluded from the parliamentary party for backbench rebellion against child poverty — an authoritarian intolerance for dissent far harsher than anything Tony Blair ever expressed.
The paranoia reflects an underlying reality: Starmer and his acolytes know the majority are against them and must coerce because they cannot persuade. In this sense, the project is about much more than exorcising Corbyn.
It is part of a wider ruling-class effort to reboot the British system so we are back where we were in 2015 or even 2007 — pre-Corbyn, pre-Brexit, pre-bankers’ crash: when the world was one the liberal elite understood and had mastery over.
It is an impossible task. In foreign policy, the “unipolar moment” is gone: the West is no longer economically strong enough to dictate to the world, and its attempts to do so merely alienate.
In domestic policy, the consensus for privatisation and unfettered corporate domination of the economy can only continue to deliver what it delivers already: worsening services and falling living standards.
The two come together because Establishment liberalism is collapsing in the cockpit of imperialism, the United States. It is already defeated there by hard-right nationalism of the Farage type, but the nature of the US-led “free world” forces the ostensibly liberal leaders of Europe to fawn on the demagogic leader of the counter-revolution, Donald Trump.
Labour members fooled into voting for Starmer on the grounds he might be a polished, media-savvy version of Corbyn misunderstood Establishment hatred of the Corbyn project: it was about content, not form, and any leader threatening real reform would have met the same vitriol.
Similarly, the angst now expressed by liberal commentators from the Guardian to Channel 4 about Starmer not having what it takes to see off Farage is off-piste. Starmer is bad at politics, but that is not the root of a problem that engulfs Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden too. Liberalism has nothing to offer and populations across the West can no longer be duped.
The labour movement needs to wake up to this. Without a radical change of direction from Labour, Britain will soon be ruled by nasties of the Donald Trump sort, whose hostility to trade unions (see Elon Musk) equals their viciousness towards immigrants.
The Jonathan Freedlands and Robert Pestons wonder if Starmer needs to be replaced. He does, but not because he is incompetent: because his zombie-Blair politics are anachronistic. The political consensus of the 1990s is not coming back.
It’s over a century since Rosa Luxemburg defined the choice facing humanity as socialism or barbarism. It is the choice now, for sure. We can break with Starmer-Labour or we can resign ourselves to Reform UK: there is no middle ground.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
