Of course, straight after 7/10, mainstream journalists were quick to promote the deployment of planes and personnel to support “our ally” in the region.
While the Sun splashed photos of British jets and frigates heading to the eastern Mediterranean with the headline “United We Stand”, the BBC basically reproduced a Ministry of Defence press release in its story, “UK to deploy Royal Navy ships to Middle East to ‘bolster security’.”
On 2 December, the Ministry of Defence released a short statement on UK military activity in the region, ostensibly to secure the release of (only) Israeli hostages.
The BBC, along with other news outlets, immediately ran a story repeating the MoD’s words verbatim (with a sprinkling of additional text from the Pentagon) as if these were to be innocent “surveillance flights” despite the fact that over 15,000 Palestinians had already been killed in brutal air strikes since 7/10.
This was followed by a flurry of highly bullish coverage of two further military interventions directly related to bolstering UK support for Israel – evidence of the “extensive defence and security cooperation” between the two countries that was embedded in the ‘Roadmap’ agreement signed in 2023 (and ignored by the media).
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Censorship by omission
This lack of interest in the British government’s military links to Israel shouldn’t suggest, however, that there is nothing to investigate.
Indeed, Declassified UK has published multiple stories on the more opaque actions of the UK government that have been largely ignored by mainstream news including the deployment of a British spy team in Israel since 7/10, the dozens of flights by UK military aircraft to Israel in this period, the surveillance activities in support of Israel and the training of Israeli military personnel in the UK. Almost none of these have been followed up in broadcast bulletins and articles.
There is one area, however, in which the media do appear to have engaged with this topic: British arms sales to Israel that, according to the Campaign against Arms Trade, amount to £576 million since 2008.
That there were 2,648 stories mentioning “arms sales to Israel” and “UK” between 7 October and 19 June 2024 might suggest this is a major area of concern for journalists.
Not so fast. 85% of all stories appeared after 1 April when three UK citizens were among seven aid workers killed when Israeli jets attacked the food convoy they were managing.
For the 177 days between 7/10 and 1 April, the media (with the exception of the Scottish National, Guardian and BBC Parliament) showed little inclination to open up discussion on the issue.
Despite serious concerns that, through its exports of weapons to the Israeli military, the UK is complicit in ongoing war crimes, major news outlets only started to show an interest in the topic once British people, not Palestinians, were the story.
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Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024. Second version of this image with text slightly altered.Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs U.S. President Joe Biden. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The president’s level of indifference to the human suffering of Palestinians can only be described as soulless.
With the world’s sensibility already reeling from Israel’s deliberate incineration of dozens of civilians huddled in tents in a purported safe zone in Rafah, the genocidaires doubled down two weeks later by slaughtering nearly 300 Palestinians and wounding 700 more during their U.S.-aided rescue of four Israeli hostages.
Upon receiving word of the blood-drenched June 8 operation, American President Joe Biden celebrated the “safe rescue” of the hostages while wholly ignoring the so-called collateral damage—innocent civilians, most of whom were women and children. That level of indifference can only be described as soulless.
So goes the ongoing reveal of the American president’s true nature.
Nothing he’s ever done measures up to his unconscionable decision to sponsor Israel’s genocide in Palestine, while simultaneously running interference to prevent anyone else from stopping it.
Biden has sculpted his political career by leaning into his persona as an indefatigably decent and compassionate man. Until now (save for the MAGA crowd), you’d have been hard-pressed to find someone on either end of the political spectrum who disagreed with that characterization. Which is why his increasingly heartless response to Israel’s genocide in Palestine can be so difficult to process. Yet, a number of the choices he’s made in recent years offered a preview of what lies beneath his public facade.
Biden telegraphed his approach to foreign policy by choosing Israel apologist Antony Blinken to serve as secretary of state and Avril Haines (architect of Barrack Obama’s assassination-themed drone program, and whitewasher of a Senate committee report on the CIA’s torture of detainees) as his director of national intelligence.
In addition to genuflecting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden’s tenure as president includes his embrace of strongmen Abdel Fattah al-Sissi (Egypt), Narendra Modi (India), and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (a.k.a. MBS). For good measure, he granted the latter legal immunity, sparing bin Salman the indignity of facing any consequences for orchestrating the murder of Saudi journalist, and critic of the crown prince, Jamal Khashoggi.
Closer to home, the man who’s consistently portrayed himself as someone who cares deeply about the well-being of his fellow citizens has solidified his allegiance to the insurance industry by doing everything in his power to prevent Universal Healthcare from becoming a reality in America. Along the way, Biden invited Michael McCabe—the man who advised pollution giant DuPont chemical company on how to circumvent government regulations—to join his Environmental Protection Agency transition team.
But nothing he’s ever done measures up to his unconscionable decision to sponsor Israel’s genocide in Palestine, while simultaneously running interference to prevent anyone else from stopping it. He’s even taken a page out of his political arch-enemy’s playbook by lying through his teeth every chance he gets about what the rest of us can see with our own eyes—repeatedly claiming that Israel isn’t deliberately starving the Palestinian people and that the tens of thousands of civilian casualties, as well as the trauma inflicted upon millions more, are merely a regrettable side effect of Israel’s precision-like effort to nullify Hamas militants.
Donald Trump (whose defining characteristic is his amorality, which is entirely different) can get away with spewing lie after lie without fear of losing the support of his truth-averse loyalists because he’s telling them precisely what they want to hear. Biden, on the other hand, seems to believe his base isn’t bright enough to notice his deceit, or that they just don’t care about his complicity in the ongoing massacre. He’s deluding himself on both counts.
But this condemnation isn’t about numbers. It’s about the most powerful man on the face of the Earth figuratively giving the world the finger while actively participating in a crime that has no equal.
He might as well be piloting Israeli bombers over Palestine, raining fire from the sky.
A Palestinian girl stands at the entrance of her family tent at a makeshift tent camp for those displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis, Gaza, June 18, 2024
DOZENS of people were killed in Gaza today, including some sheltering in tents and waiting for aid, as Israeli forces push deeper into Rafah’s western neighbourhoods..
Rafah and the central regions of Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat are the current focus of attacks as Israel claims to target Hamas.
In Rafah, at least three people were killed and dozens of others wounded in air and land strikes at historic refugee camps.
A house in the al-Nurseirat camp was targeted by planes, killing two women, while tanks shelled areas in the al-Maghazi and al-Bureij camps.
Shelling was also reported in most areas of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city which was previously declared a safe zone, as well as heavy machine-gun fire.
The bombing of a road south of Gaza City killed one person.
About 37,400 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its assault after the October 7 events.
CONFRONTING SIR KEIR: Andrew Feinstein is standing to unseat the Labour leaderPhoto: Marija Carter
THE latest opinion polls are showing that it is possible Rishi Sunak will lose his own parliamentary seat come July 4. The voters in Richmond, Yorkshire, may be as tired of the Tory Premier as the rest of the country.
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The voters in Holborn and St Pancras also have the chance to speak for the nation by rejecting a bankrupt and duplicitous leader.
Did Starmer represent the people of Camden, the borough his seat sits within, when he endorsed Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, refused to call for a ceasefire until given permission to do so by Washington, and backs continued arms sales to the aggressor? Not likely.
Do they endorse his Islamophobic political positioning, his authoritarian indifference to civil liberties, his culling of any remotely progressive Labour candidate? We doubt it.
Now they have a unique opportunity to clip Starmer’s wings. The country may want, as much through weary resignation and anti-Tory sentiment as anything else, a Labour government. There is absolutely no indication that it wants a specifically Starmer-led one.
And Holborn and St Pancras has an outstanding alternative. It is Andrew Feinstein, an independent left candidate who has parliamentary experience from his service as an African National Congress MP in his native South Africa.
Feinstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is well-placed to call out Starmer’s cynical abuse of anti-semitism as a political weapon against the left. He is one of many progressive Jewish men and women sanctioned by the Starmer apparatus.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Veterans mobilize in front of the White House on June 8. (Photo: Mandy Wilkens)
Peoples Dispatch speaks to US veterans who are standing against their government’s complicity in genocide and organizing more to do the same
On February 25, US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell became the first active duty US soldier to earn the title of “martyr” among oppressed people worldwide. The 25-year-old set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest of the US government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, declaring, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” before self-immolating.
Bushnell’s sacrifice was the most high-profile action by member of the US army in solidarity with Palestine and signaled an enormous sea change among active duty military as well as veterans—who are increasingly taking a bold step to denounce their government’s involvement in genocide.
According to Mike Prysner, who was an active duty soldier during the Iraq War and has been organizing veterans and active duty military ever since, the momentum among current and former members of the US military “hasn’t been this high since the Bush era.”
“The sector of service members who have turned against the US/Israeli policy in a profound way is undoubtedly much bigger than we can see at the moment—one the Pentagon is no doubt aware of as well,” Prysner wrote.
As Prysner told Peoples Dispatch, although the anti-war veterans movement is not as big as it was during the Iraq invasions, it is significant that veterans are organizing at such a high level today because unlike Iraq, the genocide in Palestine is “not a direct US war.”
“Most service members haven’t had direct experience with supporting Israel,” Prysner said. “They’re just disgusted by the fact that the military they served in and are serving in is playing a support and a propaganda role.”
However, Prysner notices significant anti-war momentum in the US Air Force in particular, which “does have more of a direct role in the other branches” in Gaza, in terms of “all the logistics that Israel needs” to carry out genocide. “I have noticed the active duty of the Air Force becoming more engaged because of their direct role,” Prysner says, including Bushnell.
“The potential for there to be unrest within the military is historically something that plays a major impact in adding to the pressure on Washington to end the war,” Prysner told Peoples Dispatch.
Shortly after Bushnell’s self-immolation, Prysner worked with other veterans of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars to organize an action in Portland in which former US military members burned their uniforms collectively in protest. This type of action was later repeated throughout the country as other veterans and active duty military drew inspiration from the momentum.
Veterans in Portland, Oregan also recently organized a massive projection of anti-war imagery on a US Navy warship docked for “Fleet Week”. The images had slogans such as “Stop the US war machine” and “Blood is on your hands”.
Not only do veterans organizing within the anti-war movement inspire active duty military to take further action as well, but they also galvanize the entire anti-imperialist movement, says Prysner. He references the contingent of veterans who attended the recent 100,000-strong protest in front of the White House on June 8. Prysner noticed “a lot of excitement among the attendees” of the protest that veterans had mobilized.
On June 8, Peoples Dispatch spoke to two of the veterans who attended the mass mobilization in front of the White House to declare a “people’s red line” against genocide. Adrian served in the Air Force from 2002 to 2009, and went to Iraq. He now openly identifies as both an anti-imperialist and Marxist, organizing with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and credits his time in the military as contributing to his shift in consciousness.
“War is a profit-making business,” US vet declares
“As a person who served in the United States Air Force, I’m very familiar with how the imperialist war machine works. Naturally, this isn’t something that one joins the military knowing. It was part of the whole radicalization process for me, being in the military, realizing that it functions very much like a corporate entity, and that war is a profit-making business,” Adrian told Peoples Dispatch.
“It was part of my being a working class person in the military, coming from the background that I came from, going to a foreign country to fight other poor and oppressed people, that created such a cognitive dissonance in me, that I had to address it in some sort of way.”
Adrian continued, “there are many things that active duty people, reservists and guardsmen can do. They can conscientiously object and thus separate from the military, but they can also organize outside of the military. They can attend rallies. They can organize with professional revolutionary organizations such as our own. They can do many other things to raise consciousness and awareness among their fellow servicemen.”
Chris Stevens, who was an infantryman in the US Army from 2007 and 2013, told Peoples Dispatch what his message is to prospective, current, and former service members who are disgusted by US complicity in genocide.
“Don’t be seduced in the first place. If you’ve yet to sign a contract, you should turn the other way. Your recruiter’s lying to you about everything, whether it be the job that you can have or the life that you’ll lead, the benefits that they promise you are not cast in stone and they will take anything they can from you,” Stevens said, referencing the predatory US military recruitment process.
Military recruiters in the US notoriously prey on working class and oppressed youth to lead them into military careers, luring them with promises of free college education. This phenomenon is part of what anti-war activists dub the “poverty draft,” in which poor young people have few opportunities apart from joining the US military, risking life and limb, and participating in the imperialist machine.
“For those who are already involved, my message is that you don’t have to listen to what they tell you to do,” Stevens continued. “There are significant historical examples from the Vietnam and Iraq wars, where entire units have decided to say no to their orders. As long as it’s not you alone resisting, if you can get a squad or a company together to say, we will not participate in this, there’s not much that the army can do.”
“So if you’re in a position where you are actively supporting this genocide that’s happening in Israel, you don’t have to,” Stevens said.
The issue of Palestine was particularly galvanizing, as Adrian mentioned: “I don’t want to see children murdered anymore. This is beyond the pale of what can be justified in the name of nationalism, in the name of anything that would be any semblance of what one would call the sovereignty of a so-called nation. The self-determination of the Palestinian people is paramount to humanity. And their fight is our fight.”
