{"id":309102,"date":"2025-05-22T05:49:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T05:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=309102"},"modified":"2025-05-24T05:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T05:26:15","slug":"the-blood-of-gaza-will-never-wash-from-keir-starmers-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=309102","title":{"rendered":"The blood of Gaza will never wash from Keir Starmer\u2019s hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

John McEvoy \u2013 Declassified UK May 21, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

The UK government announced yesterday that it would suspend free trade talks with Israel, as David Lammy condemned in parliament the \u201cmonstrous\u201d situation in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Three illegal settlers in the West Bank were also sanctioned by the Foreign Office. Those included Daniella Weiss, the settler leader who featured in Louis Theroux\u2019s recent BBC documentary The Settlers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find this deeply painful as a lifelong friend of Israel and a believer in the values expressed in its declaration of independence\u201d, Lammy declared in the Commons.<\/p>\n

The first signs of a shift in the UK government\u2019s tone came on Monday night, when Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney issued a joint statement on the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe strongly oppose the expansion of Israel\u2019s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday\u2019s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate\u201d, they declared.<\/p>\n

The immediate background to these developments was the escalation in Israel\u2019s bombardment, siege, and starvation of Gaza, with the United Nations warning on Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.<\/p>\n

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to pre-empt international condemnation over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by allowing a minuscule amount of aid into the strip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to take control of all the Gaza strip\u201d, he announced<\/a> on Monday. \u201cOur best friends in the world \u2013 [US] senators I know as strong supporters of Israel \u2013 have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, declaring the same day that humanitarian aid was only being allowed into Gaza \u201cso the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes\u201d. The goal, he added, was to \u201cconquer, clear, and stay\u201d in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Still complicit<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The official calls for a final solution in Gaza, it seems, prompted the UK government to attempt to put some daylight between itself and the Netanyahu regime.<\/p>\n

But reading beyond the headlines, it\u2019s clear that Starmer and Lammy are very much as complicit in the Gaza genocide as they were last week.<\/p>\n

While the UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement negotiations have been ongoing since 2022, there seemed little prospect of them concluding any time soon.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Israel\u2019s foreign ministry even declared<\/a> on Tuesday that \u201cthe free trade agreement negotiations were not being advanced at all by the current UK government\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Labour government has thus paused negotiations on a potential future<\/em> deal, while pre-existing trade agreements with Israel remain in place, and the \u201c2030 roadmap for UK-Israel bilateral relations\u201d has merely been put under \u201creview\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are elements of that road map, particularly as they pertain to security issues and the work we do jointly on Iran, that would not be right to suspend, but we are reviewing it\u201d, Lammy said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Military collaboration<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"

IAF F-35-Adir. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Which brings us to Britain\u2019s ongoing military collaboration with Israel.<\/p>\n

The joint work on Iran presumably refers to Project HEZUK, a secret defence agreement between Britain and Israel which is designed<\/a> to counter \u201cthe destabilising regional activity of Iran and Hizballah\u201d.<\/p>\n

Project HEZUK would achieve this, according to leaked Israeli documents, by strengthening UK-Israeli intelligence collaboration and increasing military cooperation, with the effect of deepening bilateral security integration.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the spy flights.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s Ministry of Defence informed Declassified<\/em> yesterday that the Royal Air Force (RAF) would continue to send surveillance planes over Gaza to collect intelligence for Israel.<\/p>\n

The same evening, around four hours after Lammy\u2019s announcement, a spy flight took off from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and spent around five hours collecting footage over Gaza.<\/p>\n

The MoD\u2019s press office declined to make ministers or senior officials available for an interview about this policy.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the sale of arms.<\/p>\n

Last week, it was revealed<\/a> that the Labour government had licensed exports of more military equipment to Israel than the Tories did for all of 2020-2023 combined.<\/p>\n

These figures, downplayed by Lammy in parliament as \u201cclickbait\u201d, were drawn from the government\u2019s own strategic arms export data.<\/p>\n

Lammy has also ruled out stopping exports of F-35 parts to global pools which supply Israel, despite those fighter jets being directly linked<\/a> to war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The UK government\u2019s lawyers argued<\/a> in court last week that there was no evidence that Israel was targeting women and children or committing genocide so that it could continue to supply F-35 components to global pools used by Israel.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, they also claimed that while the UK government has a \u201cduty to prevent genocide\u201d, a determination that this duty has been violated \u201ccannot be made until genocide actually occurs\u201d, the facts of which can only be determined by the \u201ccompetent court\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since it may take years for the \u201ccompetent court\u201d to adjudicate on Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, the UK government has thus effectively relieved itself of any obligation to \u201cprevent genocide\u201d in the here and now.<\/p>\n

Sanctions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Lammy also condemned Smotrich\u2019s plans for \u201ccleansing\u201d and \u201cdestroying what\u2019s left\u201d of Gaza as \u201cextremism\u201d, \u201cdangerous\u201d, \u201crepellant\u201d and even \u201cmonstrous\u201d. He added that the Israeli finance minister\u2019s statements indicated \u201cwe are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet in court last week, the Labour government\u2019s lawyers argued that Smotrich and National Security minister Itamar Ben Gvir \u201chave limited influence\u201d over the Israeli government and their words therefore \u201cdid not reflect the strategy of the decision makers within the War Cabinet\u201d.<\/p>\n

Either Smotrich\u2019s statements are reflective of Israeli policy, or they are not. The UK government cannot have it both ways.<\/p>\n

Lammy\u2019s apparent revulsion at Smotrich\u2019s rhetoric only emphasises the Labour government\u2019s failure to impose any meaningful sanctions on Israeli officials.<\/p>\n

Former UK foreign secretary David Cameron admitted<\/a> last year that the Tory government had been \u201cworking up\u201d plans to sanction Smotrich and Ben Gvir, describing them as \u201cextremist\u201d.<\/p>\n

What happened to those plans under Labour?<\/p>\n

Ceasefire<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Labour\u2019s top brass could have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and meaningful sanctions on Israel at any point during this genocide \u2013 but it chose not to.<\/p>\n

On 31 October 2023, as leader of the opposition, Starmer told Chatham House that he did not believe a ceasefire was the \u201ccorrect position\u201d because hostages would still \u201cbe held\u201d in Gaza and Hamas would be left \u201cwith the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7th\u201d.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, the Labour party whipped MPs to abstain on a crucial ceasefire motion brought by the Scottish National Party, with Starmer admitting<\/a> that he had privately spoken with Israeli president Isaac Herzog about the issue.<\/p>\n

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now dead<\/a>, and the Labour government is belatedly conceding, with apparently zero introspection, that its approach was a disaster and played firmly into Netanyahu\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s plan is morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counterproductive, and whatever Israeli ministers claim, it is not the way to bring the hostages safely home\u201d, Lammy told parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly all the hostages have been freed through negotiations, not military force\u201d, he admitted, undermining the MoD\u2019s own rationale for spy flights, adding that Israel\u2019s military plan \u201cwill not eliminate Hamas or make Israel secure either\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Labour government\u2019s suspension of trade talks with Israel is too little too late. If international law is to mean anything, Starmer and Lammy should be tried in the Hague.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Your donations fund our investigations<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK government may have condemned Israeli actions in Gaza but Keir Starmer is still complicit in the slaughter of Palestinians. Apart from conducting regular surveillance flights over Gaza, Britain also supplies key parts for Israeli F-35s. Without which, they wouldn\u2019t be flying <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Commentary","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309103,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309102\/revisions\/309103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}