Consider these two parallel universes. One is Gaza, the scene of some of the worst atrocities committed in the 21st century, as Israel’s genocidal rampage offers a new reminder of our species’ capacity for depravity. According to research by Oxfam, more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in the last year “than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades”.
What makes this all the more disturbing is that the figures are conservative: the 11,355 children and 6,297 women listed as violently killed are only those who have been officially identified. Many of the dead have not been recorded in this way, not least the thousands buried under rubble, listed as missing, or incinerated by Israeli missiles, leaving not a trace. Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, too, has laid waste to the system of reporting fatalities. Those caveats notwithstanding, in no 12-month period were so many women and children butchered in the killing fields of Iraq and Syria, despite those populations being much greater than Gaza’s.
Then there is a fresh revelation about Israel’s deliberate attempt to starve Gaza’s population. Last week the US investigative outlet ProPublica reported that the US Agency for International Deveopment (USAid) – a government department – had delivered a detailed assessment to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, concluding that Israel was intentionally blocking the deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza. The agency described Israel “killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine”.
In a particularly egregious example, food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border at an Israeli port, including sufficient flour to feed most Gazans for five months; it was deliberately withheld. The state department’s refugee agency also concluded Israel was deliberately blocking aid, and recommended the use of US legislation that mandates the freezing of weapons shipments to states blocking US-backed aid. But Blinken rejected these assessments, and the US government has just approved another military aid package, worth $8.7bn, to a state its own agencies have concluded is deliberately starving the population of Gaza.
Now transport yourself to another universe: that of the British political elite. Two Tory leadership candidates have proposed making loyalty to Israel a central feature of Britishness. The frontrunner, Robert Jenrick, declares the Star of David should be displayed at every point of entry to Britain to show “we stand with Israel”. Kemi Badenoch declares she is struck “by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel”, adding: “That sentiment has no place here.” Meanwhile, after Iran’s ballistic missile attack – with no reported Israeli casualties – the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, passionately declares, “We stand with Israel”, in an official Downing Street address. Here is a man who has not mustered the tiniest fraction of that emotion for the tens of thousands of Arabs slaughtered by Israel, from Palestine to Lebanon. What word is there for that disparity in response, other than racism?
Fortunately, these are not the universes inhabited by the British public. Two thirds of voters now have an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with 17% opting for favourable: a record low. Seven in 10 believe it likely that Israel has committed war crimes (just 8% dissent), while 54% believe an arrest warrant should be issued for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity (with 15% dissenting).
But this devotion to Israel among our rulers has survived both unspeakable atrocities and ever more repulsed public opinion. In a rational world, advocating a heartfelt alliance with a state engaged in such murderous mayhem would leave you driven from public life in disgrace; here it is the mainstream, respectable position, with those dissenting demonised as hateful extremists.
What exactly is Israel supposed to do to shake this? It has conducted the worst massacre of children in our time, from reported sniper shots to the heads of infants to butchering terrified families in their cars, and now it is clear it deliberately starved an entire population. It stands accused of raping male and female detainees alike, while Save the Children condemns Israeli soldiers for sexually abusing Palestinian children in prisons. It has killed at least 885 healthcare workers, and left women having caesarians and children having amputations without anaesthetics. Its soldiers push Palestinian bodies from roofs in scenes reminiscent of Islamic State. Meanwhile, Israeli ministers, politicians, army officers, soldiers and journalists compete over bloodcurdling murderous and genocidal rhetoric.
If a state hostile to the west was guilty of atrocities this obscene, there would be widespread consensus that it was one of the great crimes of our age. But, as the Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu puts it, “The world tells us that nothing can justify October 7, and yet everything Israel has done can be justified by October 7.” It is easy to focus on the most rabid cheerleaders of Israel’s actions, but there are also many, from commentators to public figures, who have remained silent or offered cursory hand-wringing, despite their country being complicit in this endless bloodbath, not least with continued arms sales. The horrors of our past were always made possible by the silent.
Seriously, what does it take? What atrocity could Israel commit before it becomes a matter of public disgrace to champion our alliance? Does a threshold even exist? And what terrible harvest will the west reap for so unapologetically telling the world that it attaches so little value to these Arab lives snuffed out of existence?
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
