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Even the hard-right Express can’t ignore Israel’s genocidal brutality any longer

Israeli occupation forces have been murdering dozens of starving people almost every day in recent weeks. Since the start of their genocide in Gaza, it was already clear for many that the occupied Palestinian territory was a concentration camp. But now, we are constantly seeing images of shockingly thin children which one former UN official says are “reminiscent of those taken in Nazi concentration camps”. One year ago, UN experts already clarified that:

Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.

In May this year, a UN humanitarian spokesperson said “Gaza is the hungriest place on Earth” due to Israel’s efforts. Famine expert Alex de Waal, meanwhile, has described how Israel has “minutely engineered” the “most intense, most severe” deliberate starvation campaign since the Second World War.

There’s no excuse for not calling it famine after “over four months of a medieval siege“, according to ex-UN official Moncef Khane. But because Israel has intentionally decimated Gaza’s health system and made international data gathering near-impossible, an official international designation of ‘famine’ is unlikely until it’s too late.

Even the Daily Express is disgusted

The situation is now so disgusting that even the strongly right-wing Daily Express, once infamous for its lack of empathy, has had enough. In fact, it possibly had the most humane and serious front page of all the mainstream newspapers on 23 July:

The Daily Express is generally awful (though it hasn’t been quite as awful as it once was since it came under new ownership in 2018). But as most Western governments continue their longstanding complicity in the horrors that Israeli war criminals are inflicting on people in Gaza, the paper has chosen to do the right thing and call its readers’ attention to the brutality.

Deep shame

In a new open letter, over 100 aid and human rights organisations have slammed Western “symbolic gestures” as “a smokescreen for inaction”. They say:

Massacres at food distribution sites in Gaza are occurring near-daily.

As the UN’s Philippe Lazzarini has stated, Israel has created “a sadistic death trap” for starving people in Gaza, killing over a thousand since the end of May.

The open letter adds, agonisingly, that:

Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food.

Israel (with the complicity of its Western allies) has actively blocked the international aid system from stepping in. And the group insist:

Governments must stop waiting for permission to act. We cannot continue to hope that current arrangements will work. It is time to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; ensure access to everyone in all of Gaza; reject military-controlled distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund principled and impartial humanitarian organisations. States must pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.

Anything less is unacceptable.

As Amnesty International says “Israel is continuing to use starvation as a method of warfare, a war crime, and as a tool to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip”, some lone voices in Britain have been speaking up. Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn has stressed that:

Empty words cannot hide the truth: the UK government is complicit in crimes against humanity.

Internationally, the Hague Group of 30 nations has sought to challenge Western complicity with the genocide, promising recently to act to ensure the enforcement of international law. 12 of those have committed to implementing six measures immediately, including blocking arms transfers to Israel and reviewing “all public contracts, to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory and entrenching its unlawful presence”.

Corbyn has asked the British government to back this international action:

However, it seems clearer and clearer that only a big increase in mass resistance in Western nations will be able to stop our government’s complicity. All media outlets, meanwhile, have an ethical and professional duty to expose our politicians’ outrageous ongoing support for the genocide in Gaza – and that includes the Daily Express.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.