{"id":6141,"date":"2025-01-16T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6141"},"modified":"2025-01-16T13:43:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T11:43:06","slug":"starmer-gaza-ceasefire-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-01-16\/starmer-gaza-ceasefire-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer’s support for the Gaza ceasefire is riddled with lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Estimates are that it will take 80 years to rebuild Gaza. How is a ‘sovereign and viable Palestinian state’, or a ‘better future’, going to emerge out of ruins on that scale?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There are so many lies, deceptions and misdirections in Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s statement on the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas yesterday that they need to be picked apart line by line.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Starmer: After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for. They have borne the brunt of this conflict – triggered by the brutal terrorists of Hamas, who committed the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under no reasonable definition can the last 15 months be described as a \u201cconflict\u201d. The slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as Israel\u2019s programme to starve the rest of the population, should rightly be understood as a genocide, one the International Court of Justice began investigating a year ago, and one that has been attested to by every major international human rights group, as well as a growing number of Holocaust scholars.<\/p>\n

Starmer does at least hint at the truth in conceding that the ceasefire is \u201clong overdue\u201d. The genocide in Gaza could have been brought to an end at any point by US pressure. Indeed, the outlines of the current ceasefire were advanced by the Biden administration back in May. It was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blocked progress. Israel\u2019s western patrons, including Starmer, rewarded him with weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover. If the ceasefire is \u201coverdue\u201d, Starmer is fully responsible for that delay.<\/p>\n

Further, the \u201cconflict\u201d wasn\u2019t \u201ctriggered\u201d by Hamas\u2019 attack of October 7, as Starmer claims. The \u201cconflict\u201d has been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, triggered<\/em> by Israel\u2019s continuous efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, with western backing, in an explicitly colonial project. Israel wants us to believe the \u201cconflict\u201d clock started ticking on October 7. Only the ignorant, and contemptible politicians like Starmer, repeat that lie.<\/p>\n

The killings on October 7 2023 weren\u2019t \u201cthe deadliest massacre of Jewish people\u201d since the Holocaust. That\u2019s another cynical Israeli talking point, repeated by Starmer, whose sole purpose is to rationalise Israel\u2019s genocide. The \u201cdeadliest massacre\u201d for Jews since the Holocaust was, in fact, committed by the Argentinian junta, which disappeared and murdered<\/a> thousands of Jews in the late 1970s. And unlike Hamas, whose victims were killed not because they were Jews but because they were Israelis and viewed as members of an oppressor nation, Argentina\u2019s generals killed Jews specifically for being Jewish. Nonetheless, that massacre \u2013 inconvenient to the West \u2013 has been carefully memory-holed, including by Starmer.<\/p>\n

Starmer: The hostages, who were brutally ripped from their homes on that day and held captive in unimaginable conditions ever since, can now finally return to their families. But we should also use this moment to pay tribute to those who won’t make it home – including the British people who were murdered by Hamas. We will continue to mourn and remember them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the innocent Palestinians whose homes turned into a warzone overnight and the many who have lost their lives, this ceasefire must allow for a huge surge in humanitarian aid, which is so desperately needed to end the suffering in Gaza.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Notice Starmer\u2019s sleight of hand here. He blames Hamas for everything<\/em> that has happened over the past 15 months, including the mass slaughter of Palestinians carried out by Israel.<\/p>\n

First, he correctly holds Hamas responsible for taking Israelis hostage \u2013 though, of course, like everyone else, Starmer fails to make the important legal distinction between the civilians who were taken hostage, a war crime, and occupying Israeli soldiers who were captured, not a war crime. But he then goes on to hold Hamas, not Israel, responsible for the genocide of the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n

Presumably for that reason, the Israeli dead need to be \u201cmourned\u201d, \u201cremembered\u201d and paid \u201ctribute\u201d. But according to Starmer\u2019s statement, the Palestinian dead need to be neither mourned nor remembered.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Whatever Starmer claims, Palestinian homes weren’t \u201cturned into a war zone\u201d, with the implication \u2013 again echoing a favourite and mendacious Israeli talking point \u2013 that Hamas has used Palestinians as human shields, leaving Israel with little choice but to kill them by the tens of thousands. Rather, Palestinian homes were deliberately levelled in an Israeli campaign of bombing far more intense than anything inflicted on Dresden or Hamburg in the Second World War. We know from the Israeli media that the targets of these bombing campaigns were generated automatically by AI programmes<\/a> that were given the widest possible licence. In most cases, buildings were bombed without reference to any Hamas activity in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

Next, Starmer falsely makes a connection between the ceasefire and the ability of international agencies to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza. But it was not fighting that stopped humanitarian aid entering Gaza. It was Israel\u2019s decision to impose a genocidal, Medieval-style aid blockade, with the stated goal of starving the population. A goal, let us never forget, that Starmer explicitly endorsed, stating that Israel had the right to deny the people of Gaza food<\/a>, water and power. Let us note too that Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are being sought by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity that relate specifically to the starvation policy Starmer supported.<\/p>\n