The UK must break with Israel
JVL Introduction
Genocide scholar Martin Shaw pulls no punches in his call in Tribune for Andy Burnham to break the UK’s ties to Israel.
‘We got Gaza wrong’, said Burnham.
But what did we get wrong?
The fact that we upset some former Labour voters? Or the fact that we are on the wrong side of history and now is the time to put it right?
The genocide continues, and Britain still supplies Israel with key logistical information as well as spare parts for its F-35 planes.
As Shaw point out, the Genocide Convention
“binds the UK to ‘prevent and punish’ genocide when the risk is evident, not years later when a court finally delivers a ruling. This duty was triggered in January 2024, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that there was a ‘plausible risk’ and deemed it necessary to order Israel not to commit genocide.”
It’s not simply that supporting Palestine is the “right” thing to do. Of course it is that. It is also in Britain’s interests to break its long dependency of the US and its forever wars which are costing us dearly.
This article was originally published by Tribune on Thu 20 Aug 2026. Read the original here.
The UK must break with Israel
No more piecemeal measures. The government should sanction the genocidal occupying state and renounce the UK-Israel relationship.
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“Still, few believe that Labour can deliver anything like the change that’s needed.” I am one of those who after a spark of hope, just gave up any faith in Burnham a man I really liked. Once. He won’t, as he professes to want, achieve a united ‘Labour family’ that can fight off Reform and Restore, unless he does what Tribune is calling for. And he wont’ do it. The past 48 hours we heard from Open Democracy about the funding Burnham received from the same big donors who fund ‘Labour Together’, like Lord Sainsbury. Another clue as to his weakness, is when he appointed Yvette Cooper as Secretary of State for Health, a woman for whom I feel nothing but contempt. She is the architect and manipulator of the legislation that saw the proscription of Palestine Action as terrorist,which has had consequences for hundreds of vulnerable elderly protestors and for the young Elbit systems prisoners. Thousands of progressive protestors feel unsafe in their own country under Mahmood and Mark Rowley’s Met, while Tommy Robinson’s foaming at the mouth Nazis are let off scot free. Burnham would not have had his Makerfield seat but for the now rewarded Josh Simons, the man who plotted and paid a PR firm to investigate Paul Holden the author of ‘Fraud’ and Gabriel Pogrund of the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team.
Yes Rosie Brocklehurst, my spark of hope is now virtually extinguished and I don’t think things are going to be radically different under Burnham other than in his vastly better communications.
Burnham retaining Mahmood as Home Secretary is hardly encouraging. Mahmood who would surely find the current crop of Tories or even Reform a much better fit.
I confess to a rueful smile though to think that the Machiavellian machinations of the likes of Labour Together to get Starmer into power were obviously employed to get shut of him also!
Totally agree Rosie. You can add Wes Streeting and Alan Milburn (arch NHS privatisers and beneficiaries from US, in the main, private health vulture companies) to the batch of unacceptable remnants of the damnable Starmer regime.
“Starmer criticised settler excess, banned some weapons sales and sanctioned individual ministers, with little to no impact in winning back former Labour voters. It is betting a lot on Burnham’s communication skills to believe that this will work a second time.”……………….Starmer banned so little in the way of weapons, as to be a joke. The vital parts for the main bomb delivery system, the F-13, still make their way to Israel, regardless of claims to the contrary by Starmer’s dissemblers. And it won’t work a ‘second time’ as it failed the ill-described ‘first time’ unless it is truly aimed at cutting off more than weapons: all contact i.e. BDS.
Might it be a good idea to drop the word “Genocide”?
And, before you recoil in shock at the suggestion, consider how the constant – and extremely tedious – debate as to whether Israel is, or is not, committing genocide, gets in the way of actually holding Israel to account.
Of course the state of Israel is guilty of genocide, and reading the arguments mounted by politicians and other fence-sitters is like viewing mediaeval debates as to how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. The ICC have not “actually” declared a genocide, and we have to “wait for their decision”. And more ongoing similar bollocks.
The simple fact is that, genocide or no genocide, Israelis have been guilty of tens of thousands of war crimes, crimes against humanity and straightforward murders, assaults, false imprisonments and – witnessed by their own legal system – apartheid.
And these crimes continue with no consequences for the perpetrators from governments such as our own, so hung up on definitions of genocide that they appear incapable of recognising that there might be anything else that requires action on their part.
Words should be used accurately. Ordinary members of the public, scholars of genocide and lawyers prosecuting genocide all agree that Israel is committing genocide. So why call that crime anything else?
We all know how adopting a new, more “pleasant” word to describe something that’s awful, appalling and unforgivable deed is pointless and confusing for everyone. A site at which nuclear pollution is ongoing remains what it is, whether it’s known as “Windscale” or “Sellafield”.
I’m particularly opposed to using new words when those who advocate it do so because they don’t want to admit the horror(s) and suffering they describe. That’s not what you’re doing, William … but I do feel the resistance in Israeli media and society to hearing the word “genocide” is due to the deep but hidden shame felt by its perpetrators and by all those who know and care for them.