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/QILgUHrdWRE
Peace campaigners blast government for ‘aiding and abetting’ Israel’s genocide in Gaza while announcing extra millions to prosecute Russian war criminals
THE British government was accused of “hypocrisy and double standards” today after announcing extra millions in funding to prosecute Russian war criminals in Ukraine while arming Israel’s criminal genocide in Gaza.
The Ministry of Defence said that it is to give £4.5 million to support Ukrainian documentation, investigation and prosecution of Russian war crimes.
The money comes on top of £6.2m previously committed.
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Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “The reek of hypocrisy and double standards coming from Whitehall has rarely been stronger.
“This latest announcement is about the most brazen yet. It is giving millions to investigate Russian war crimes while at the same time is aiding and abetting the war criminal [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu by providing weapons, military support and political succour to a government committing genocide against the Palestinians.
“If David Lammy wants to do the right thing he should stop arming Israel and demand a complete cessation to Israel’s attacks on Yemen, Lebanon and Syria as well as his ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.”
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 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 view of destruction following the Israeli attack on the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital and its surrounding buildings in Beit Lahia, Gaza on December 25, 2024. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The hospital’s director was detained by Israeli forces and his whereabouts are unknown.
The World Health Organization on Saturday demanded the protection of healthcare facilities in Gaza as it announced that Friday’s Israeli raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza put the facility entirely out of service—leaving the besieged region without any major health centers in operation.
WHO said parts of the hospital were badly burned and damaged, including a laboratory and surgical units.
On Saturday, 12 patients and a healthcare worker were reportedly forced to evacuate to Indonesian Hospital, which is not functioning, and “some people were reportedly stripped and forced to walk toward southern Gaza,” said WHO.
Fifteen patients who had been in critical care were forced to transfer to Indonesian Hospital on Friday, leaving medical experts concerned about their health conditions at the damaged facility.
“The movement and treatment of these critical patients under such conditions pose grave risks to their survival,” said the agency. “WHO is deeply concerned for their wellbeing, as well as for the Kamal Adwan Hospital director who has been reportedly detained during the raid. WHO lost contact with him since the raid began.”
Gaza health officials said Saturday that Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, had been taken by Israeli forces to “a detention center for interrogation” along with dozens of other hospital staff.
“With Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals entirely out of service, and Al-Awda Hospital barely able to function, and severely damaged due to recent airstrikes, the healthcare lifeline for those in North Gaza is reaching a breaking point.”
Israelraided Kamal Adwan claiming that the hospital served as a “Hamas terrorist stronghold,” but did not provide evidence for the allegation. Health authorities in Gaza strenuously denied the claim.
The U.S.-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed Saturday that Abu Safia was among those who had been detained but did not say where he’d been taken.
“With Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals entirely out of service, and Al-Awda Hospital barely able to function, and severely damaged due to recent airstrikes, the healthcare lifeline for those in North Gaza is reaching a breaking point,” said WHO. “WHO calls for urgently ensuring that hospitals in North Gaza can be supported to become functional again. Hospitals have once again become battlegrounds, reminiscent of the destruction of the health system in Gaza City earlier this year.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations called on the Biden administration to demand the release of Abu Safia, who was reportedly beaten before he was detained.
“Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on medical personnel, patients, and hospitals must be condemned by all people of conscience who value international laws and norms,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the group. “The Biden administration, which is complicit with Israel’s genocide, must call for an end to Israeli attacks on medical facilities throughout Gaza and must demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.”
A Palestinian girl cries as Palestinians who escaped from the attacks of the Israeli army and took shelter in the Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and who are struggling with hunger wait in line to receive meals distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 27, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said the humanitarian aid organization.
UNICEF, the United Nations agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid for children, released a statement Thursday decrying the recent deaths of Gazan children, particularly those who have perished because of cold and lack of adequate shelter.
“Cold injuries, such as frostbite and hypothermia, pose grave risks to young children in tents and other makeshift shelters that are ill-equipped for freezing weather. For newborns, infants, and medically vulnerable children, the danger is even more acute,” said UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder.
“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that more children’s lives will be lost to the inhumane conditions they are enduring, which offer no protection from the cold,” he added.
The Quds News Network reported Thursday, citing the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, that four Gazan newborns have died in the past few days because of low temperatures and lack of shelter.
“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said Beigbeder.
One of those babies was Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old girl, who died Sunday “from the extreme cold” in a tent where her forcibly displaced family is sheltering on a beach in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” for displaced Palestinians that has repeatedly come under attack.
Sila’s father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told The Associated Press that the family attempted to keep the baby warm as the temperatures fell to 48°F (9°C)—below the fatal threshold for hypothermia—in their unsealed tent on cold ground.
“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it,” al-Faseeh said. “We couldn’t stay warm.”
Over 14,500 children have reportedly been killed since October 7, 2023 as of mid-December, according to UNICEF, though the Gaza Government Media Office cites a higher figure.
The U.S. government successfully sought the retraction of a report from an organization monitoring food crises that warned of looming famine in north Gaza under what the report called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” according to Thursday reporting from The Associated Press. The move drew concern from aid groups, per AP.
In November, more than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned that humanitarian assistance entering the enclave had “fallen to an all-time low” due to Israel’s continued blockade.
The situation has also exacted a punishing psychological toll on the children of Gaza. A report from the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management released in November found that, of the more than 500 Palestinian children it surveyed in Gaza last summer, 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, and 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more “show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness.”
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/O74hZCKKdpA
Five-year-old Misk Bilal al-Madhoun struggles to survive due to health problems such as cerebral palsy and body weakness as a result of malnutrition in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on December 18, 2024. (Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy—to interfere,” said one human rights expert.
Veteran human rights expert Kenneth Roth said Thursday that the withdrawal of a report on imminent famine in northern Gaza negates “the whole point” of the office that produced the analysis: “to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations.”
The decision by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to retract its December 23 alert on the rapidly spiraling starvation crisis in the northern part of the besieged enclave came after the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, publicly criticized the report.
FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said in its report that Israel’s “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” for nearly 80 days has made it “highly likely that the food consumption and acute malnutrition thresholds for famine… have now been surpassed in North Gaza Governorate.”
The report referenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations-backed assessment that classifies famine as “phase 5” and declares famine in a region once more than 30% of children under age five are acutely malnourished, more than two people per 10,000 die each day from starvation, or once 20% of households face an extreme lack of food.
On Thursday, a note on the group’s website said the “December 23 Alert is under further review and is expected to be re-released with updated data and analysis in January.”
FEWS NET is hardly the first group to warn of impending famine in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since early October and where nearly all humanitarian aid has been cut off for thousands of Palestinians who are trapped in the region.
Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, said the area was facing a “full-blown famine” in May, and independent United Nations experts made a similar assessment in July.
But the FEWS NET report drew criticism from Lew, who said the analysis relied on “outdated and inaccurate” data pertaining to how many people are currently in northern Gaza.
The report was based on a population of 65,000-75,000 people in northern Gaza, said Lew, but Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) “estimates the population in this area is between 5,000 and 9,000,” said Lew, while the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “estimates the population is between 10,000 and 15,000.”
“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” said Lew.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations was among those who said Lew appeared to reject the report by boasting “about the fact that [northern Gaza] has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population.”
Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Lew’s “quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in.”
“The Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone,” he told the Associated Press.
The Biden White House has been a vehement supporter of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since October 2023, insisting that the country is only defending itself following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel—even as the death toll has passed 45,000 and as numerous reports have shown that Israel is waging attacks that officials know will kill hundreds of civilians.
In October the administration said it was giving Israel a month to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid was getting to Palestinians and threatened to cut off military aid, but when the deadline passed, no changes to U.S. political and military support were made.
The U.S. is prohibited from supplying weapons to countries that are blocking U.S. humanitarian aid under its own laws, including Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.”
Roth suggested that by pushing for the retraction of the FEWS NET report, USAID was acting on its vested interest in denying that Israel is starving Palestinians.
“It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy—to interfere” with the report, Roth told the AP.
Scott Paul, a senior manager at Oxfam America, told the outlet that Lew “leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency.”
Relatives and friends mourn over the bodies of five Palestinian journalists who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, December 26, 2024
ISRAEL bombing the airport in Yemen’s capital Sana’a when World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was actually at it shows a brazen contempt for the United Nations.
It is not new. Israel has expressed this contempt repeatedly. Most dramatically when its ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan used a miniature shredder to shred the UN Charter after the general assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine full membership in May.
But it is seen too in the bombardment of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the evidence-free assertion that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA harbours Hamas fighters and subsequent decree banning the agency from operating in Israel-controlled territory — meaning the whole of Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the United Nations of intrinsic hostility to Israel, calling it an “anti-Israel flat Earth society” which has “an automatic majority willing to demonise the Jewish state.”
The siege mentality is deliberate: only by presenting this fortress state, so extravagantly armed by its Washington sponsors that it can extend its bombing campaigns across Lebanon, Syria and Yemen after over a year of carpet-bombing Gaza, as under constant existential menace can he justify its frenetic aggression.
Enforcing this narrative is why Israel has become more authoritarian in step with its increasing belligerence, codifying institutional racism through measures like the Nation-State Law and pending legislation that could bar parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel (and the Communist Party of Israel to boot) from standing in elections.
As its suspended communist MP Ofer Cassif warns, there is no positive outcome possible from this vicious cycle: an unendable, unwinnable war against the world will bring Israelis neither security nor peace.
Israel is a rogue state, a danger to itself and others, but it will not be stopped by other rogue states. Just as the agony of the Palestinians continues due to the US policy of unlimited support for Israel, we cannot expect the so-called “free world” to step in on Yemen’s behalf.
Least of all Britain. When evidence of Saudi Arabia deliberately bombing Yemeni schools and hospitals became undeniable, even the United States paused arms sales — but Britain did not.
Expecting our government to be persuaded or even shamed into upholding international law is a fool’s errand.
There is much to criticise in the United Nations: its undemocratic structure, the way the veto power can be wielded to shield perpetrators of war crimes.
Even so, since the beginning of the 21st century a clear division has emerged between the US-led West, awarding itself the right to violate international law by invading, bombing and assassinating whoever it likes, and emerging powers which support the United Nations — a creation of the Allied victory over fascism, intended to prevent the lawless aggression that characterised Nazi Germany and its allies.
China brokered peace in Yemen through a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. China continually makes the case too for UN recognition of a Palestinian state, and hosted talks between 14 Palestinian factions last year in an attempt to forge a united Palestinian leadership capable of taking that project forward.
China, like most of the global South, is not happy with an international system designed in Western capitals 80 years ago, and calls for a more equitable international order. Yet China, unlike the Western founders of that system, is acting to uphold its principles and prevent the world descending into the kind of “might is right” violence the UN was supposed to stop.
We need to recognise how the world looks from outside the West. The “rules-based international order” is not threatened by emerging powers, but by the US-led imperialist camp. We don’t rein in Israel, because its violence is ours.
This is why solidarity with Palestine means fighting for peace and disarmament in Britain, and resisting the constant militarist propaganda pretending our country is under threat.
