The tone – but little else – has changed about Gaza
Published
by
Leah Levane
JVL Introduction
Starmer and others in the UK and EU have changed their tone; their language is more direct and their tone is harsher and yet….why is the UK (and many other countries) still helping to arm Israel when what they are doing is now deemed “intolerable”?
There is little to add here to this article by Nesrine Malik who has been consistently clear about what is happening and that Israel – and its backers – are responsible. Action is already too late but it is action that is needed, not fine words.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 26 May 2025. Read the original here.
The turning point that wasn’t: the way the world talks about Israel’s war has changed. Nothing else has
An air of complicity has prompted new rhetoric from UK and EU leaders. But it won’t redeem them – or change history’s course
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The sense you get from Starmer and Lammy is that their change of tone is purely performative – something that trump does instinctively – in the hope it’ll persuade people who aren’t paying attention that ‘something’ has changed …. nothing has changed
This apparent change of tone is surely only an exercise in placing on record some soundbites that can be retrieved at the time of any future judgement. Dimitri Lascaris referred to this recently as ‘covering your ass (sic)’. Nesrine Malik does suggest the possibility that it might be ‘ … designed to fend off a reckoning, … ‘, but, given the ludicrous gulf between UK government words and actions, as well as the zero chance of mere words affecting Israeli actions, the sole motive can only be a genuine fear of some future day of reckoning.
Satanyahu and his ministers are talking openly of committing ethnic cleansing, as per Trump’s proposals, something that inevitably involves acts of genocide. As a signatory of The Universal Declaration on Human Rights the UK, (and others of course), has a duty to take action to prevent or stop Crimes Against Humanity. I’m asking my MP what steps the the UK is taking in this regard, Others might like to do likewise with their MPs.
And, even now, the ‘G word’ does not appear in the article. To be fair, I suspect that this is Guardian editorial policy rather than Nesrine Malik’ss own views.
Excellent article. So good to read the truth. So tragic we have not been able to shift our politicians practice.
Nesrine Malik, one of the honourable exceptions to her dishonourable band of colleagues, has consistently ‘told it as it is’. I wonder how many of her columns made it into print unmoderated over the last 19 months. I can also only imagine the mental kicking and screaming suffered by Starmer and Lammy as the too slow change in world opinion filtered through the LP’s defensive screens, to drag them even slower in its wake.
Kim Jong Starmer has ignored two successful votes at conference critical of Israel and BDS is still banned from discussion at future conferences. BDS is the very least that the UK could implement given that loss of sales of F-13 parts to Israel could be countered by cutting Disabil……. oh, that’s already about to be done, but Reeves will think of something.