Palestinian kids "can just go to hell", thinks UK journalist

The case of Dan Hodges is instructive: you can say almost anything about Palestinians in the Western media, and face no consequences

People have been smeared, threatened, de-platformed, arrested, sacked for opposing an Israeli onslaught defined by the mass murder of Palestinian men, women and children, by the maiming of countless people, by starvation, by apocalyptic levels of destruction, by the mass murder of aid workers, medics, journalists, by torture, by rape.

But those who have cheered on one of the worst crimes of our age suffer no consequences - quite the opposite. They remained treated as mainstream, as respectable. As I’ve often said from the beginning of Israel’s genocide - the world is turned on its head.

Which brings me to the case of Dan Hodges, a newspaper columnist for the Mail on Sunday. It is tempting to simply dismiss this man as a glorified internet troll who, like many of the nepo-babies who populate the incestuous cesspit that is the British media, may not have intelligence or insight, but did have a famous mother.

Many of those who cheered on Israel’s genocidal onslaught have simply gone quiet as the scale of depravity became simply too obscene for them to unapologetically defend. They walked away from the crime scene, hands in their pockets, whistling, hoping nobody would notice.

Dan Hodges’ own interventions on the subject are few and far between these days. His latest contribution, if we can call it that, came in response to Israel’s official twitter account posting about the Israeli hostages who were released this question. And this “contribution” is so grotesque, there aren’t really the words to do it justice.

To be clear, as I have been from the start, taking civilians hostages is a war crime for which there is no justification, and they should always have been released.

Israel’s official account shared before and after pictures of these hostages, showing how much weight they lost in captivity.

As the Israeli journalist Dimi Reider put it:

“First and foremost: taking civilian hostages is a war crime, and Hamas is entirely responsible for every hostage's physical and mental state.

But dear fellow Israelis and their cheerleaders, what did you think would happen to the hostages when you decided to starve Gaza?”

At the very beginning, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced there would be a total siege on Gaza, blocking the essentials of life. Last April, two US government agencies concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking aid from getting to the people of Gaza.

Last October, the United Nations reported that more than 1.8 million Palestinians were suffering “extremely critical” levels of hunger, with 70% of crop fields destroyed.

There have been multiple cases of Palestinian children who died because of starvation-related complications.

As Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch put it last April:

The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has proven deadly for children in Gaza.

There wasn’t even the tiniest fraction of outrage over Israel’s deliberate starvation of an entire people, in which little kids starved to death, as there has been about these Israeli hostages.

It should also be noted that the conditions of Palestinians in captivity are overall much much worse. Thousands of Palestinians are detained without charge and without trial, while others are subjected to kangaroo military courts, where the judge is an Israeli soldier, the trial lasts minutes, it’s conducted in Hebrew, with a 99% conviction rate

Israel is the only country on earth to routinely put children on trial in military courts.

As Save the Children reported before 7th October, child detainees are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. There are well over 200 Palestinian children in detention

Other detainees have included an 82 year old woman with dementia.

There are multiple examples of sexual abuse and rape. One detainee was gang raped on camera. One of Gaza’s most prominent doctors was reportedly raped to death, with three Israeli guards taking it in turns to rape hm with their M16 rifles.

At least 54 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons, many of them clearly tortured to death.

Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem have revealed the “systemic policy of abusing and torturing thousands of Palestinians in its custody”, detailing:

“harsh arbitrary violence on a frequent basis, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation, forced lack of hygiene, sleep deprivation, restriction and punishment of religious worship, confiscation of all group and personal belongings, and denial of adequate medical care.”

Meanwhile Palestinian detainees have been repeatedly released appearing emaciated and clearly ill treated.

There is no outrage about any of this. Why? Because Palestinians are not treated as though they’re human beings. It is very straightforward. Very simply, Israelis are seen as ‘us’, Westerners, and Palestinians are treated as ‘them’, with any amount of depravity inflicted on them not only tolerated, but enthusiastically embraced.

Now Dan Hodges tweeted, in response to Israel’s tweet about the hostages;

“I do not want to see a single penny of British taxpayer's money spent on the reconstruction of Gaza until every Hamas terrorist is either dead or in jail. I don't care about the broader politics.”

When journalist Matthew Stadlen responded:

“In the meantime the civilian population - including hundreds of thousands of children - can just go to hell, right?”

Dan Hodges responded bluntly:

“Yes. Basically.”

Another told him: “Being pro-genocide is not a good look, Dan.”

And he responded: “I’ll wear it lightly”

When another user tweeted:

“I feel sorry for the ordinary Palestinians. They’ve been cynically used by Hamas/Iran.”

He responded:

When he was asked about other Arab states paying for the reconstruction, he responded:

They shouldn't pay for it either until Hamas have been completely destroyed.

Let’s just digest for a moment what this national newspaper journalist who appears on mainstream and radio is saying. He was specifically told what his statement meant, that the entire civilian population can just go to hell and he said ‘yes. Basically’. And he was specifically asked about ordinary Palestinians. He didn’t just say he had pretty low sympathy for “ordinary Palestinians”, he put “ordinary Palestinians” in inverted commas, which I would interpret as him disputing there is such a thing as an innocent Palestinian civilian. He is inferring both collective guilt - and collective punishment.

When he says that Gaza should be deprived of any financial support from anyone, including Arab states, until Hamas is destroyed, which he says means every Hamas terrorist is either dead or in jail.

What he describes there is literally an impossible goal. As former Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it just before the end of Joe Biden’s tenure as President:

We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.

That was after 15 months of one of the most sophisticated militaries on earth, armed to the teeth by the world’s only superpower, reducing Gaza - a tiny strip of land - to apocalyptic rubble, with Israel’s military intelligence service, Shin Bet, concluding a year ago that Hamas would survive in some form.

It turns out you cannot defeat an idea, and if you slaughter huge numbers of innocent people, then some of their loved ones - their parents, their children, their lovers, their friends - are going to fight you to the bitter end.

Indeed someone pointed this out to him

Another tweeted:

Hamas will always be there. The young ones will take up arms to replace the one‘s who have perished. Israel’s deadly actions will always have resistance. Sadly there will never be peace in the region.

And he responded:

Fine. Then leave it in rubble.

In any case, Israel repeatedly lies about who is Hamas. As soldiers told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Israeli military murders civilians and then claims their victims are ‘Hamas terrorists”, meaning their official tally of Hamas terrorists is itself a lie.

They offer one example when an IDF spokesperson announced their forces had killed over 200 militants. But in practise, of those 200 fatalities, only 10 confirmed as known Hamas operatives

What Dan Hodges is supporting in practise, would mean almost everyone in Gaza dying. As just one example, 83% of Gaza’s plant life has been destroyed.

As Donald Trump himself has publicly conceded, albeit to justify ethnic cleansing, Gaza is not a place that can sustain life as is.

Hodges supports Israel waging a never-ending war, because if you wage a remorseless war on an entire people, there will always be an endless supply of new recruits wanting to fight back, and Israel will always falsely claim that people they are killing Hamas.

Indeed Hodges makes very clear his anti-Palestinian racism. He is self evidently an anti-Palestinian racist. He isn’t even trying to hide it. When asked yesterday if he still stood by his tweet about Palestinian civilians, including specifically hundreds of thousands of children going to hell, he replied: “Yes.”

Going “to hell” means dying. It means babies dying. It means children dying. Half of Gaza’s population are children. It means pregnant women dying. It means elderly men and elderly women dying.

He openly embraces collective punishment - indeed, when someone tweets ‘that’s collective punishment’, he responds ‘Fine’.

That is a grave war crime. This is not an intelligent man, to be clear, but he knows that’s a war crime.

Just imagine, after 7th October, a commentator tweeted that they had pretty low sympathy for “ordinary Israelis”, which they placed in scare quotes. Just imagine that they agreed that Israel’s civilian population, including hundreds of thousands of children, should go to hell. Just imagine they willingly embraced collective punishment of those civilians.

That person would immediately lose their job. And if they had continued to tweet all of what Dan Hodges has tweeted about Israelis, they would likely be arrested.

I spoke to a British lawyer about this, who said his statement is dangerous close to, if it has no already violated UK law, including the Public Order Act, which criminalises stirring up racial hatred.

They add:

Even more concerningly, inciting or endorsing actions that could contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity may itself violate UK law, including provisions under the International Criminal Court Act 2001’

But in the here and now there are no consequences for Dan Hodges’ career. Almost no British mainstream journalist has even criticised Hodges.

I just want to add some further context. Dan Hodges was one of those who spread the lie that Israeli babies had been beheaded on the 7th October. This is important, so let me just repeat exactly what he said.

He quote tweeted Rob Burley, formerly the producer of BBC live programming, who said:

Reports of 40 babies, some beheaded, found at a kibbutz. This isn’t ‘freedom fighting.’ It’s depraved violence perpetrated by sick men.

Someone challenged him:

Is this fact? I’m sure you would not post this without verification For shame if you did.'

Burley then posted a clip from Israeli television. Astonishingly, he never deleted this misinformation.

Hodges added his own comment to this disgusting lie. He said:

People have said Israel’s response must be “proportionate”. Fine. What’s a proportionate response to this. What would our “proportionate”response be if terrorists did that here.

When someone responded the right response ‘isn’t massacring Palestinian babies & children who are not responsible for Hamas’ murderous crimes.”

Dan Hodges responded:

I didn’t ask that. I asked what a “proportionate” response should be to the massacre of babies. Can you tell me?

When asked if people would have been happy for the RAF to bomb nationalist communities in Northern Ireland when the IRA were happily slaughtering British troops and civilians on mainland UK, Dan Hodges said:

If they’d walked into a maternity ward and beheaded 40 babies, yes.

Notably people, at the time, challenged him on whether these reports had been confirmed yet - that is, private citizens challenging a journalist at a national newspaper on the most basic principles of journalism.

No Israeli babies were beheaded on 7th October - not one. The number of Israeli infants killed on 7th October is one, 8 month old Mila Cohen, who was shot through the door of a safe room by Hamas militants. Indisputably a crime, no question, along with the other war crimes committed that day.

The purpose of the false claim about the beheading of Israeli babies, which was spread by multiple British newspapers and by the President of the United States, was very straightforward. There is almost nothing you can think of which is more depraved than beheading babies. The intention was to present violence committed by Palestinian militants as uniquely depraved. And you can see from Hodges’ tweets why - it was to build acquiescence and consent for Israel’s mass slaughter of the Palestinian people. As soon as people felt horrified or traumatised by the butchery of Palestinian civilians, Israel’s cheerleaders could go - remember the beheaded Israeli babies. Dull your senses of empathy, of revulsion - because Gaza is inhabited by monsters.

While 1 Israeli infant was killed on 7th October, by 1st January 2025, 1,091 Palestinian infants had been reported violently killed, out of at least 17,400 children, compared to the 36 Israeli children killed on 7th October.

That is, infants aged under the age of 1. And of those, 238 were babies born after 7th October.

These are likely to be considerable underestimates, excluding those, for example, who died because of a lack of medical care, or because Israel destroyed Gaza’s hospitals - or simply the collapse of the casualty reporting system.

These babies were burned alive by Israeli weapons, their tiny fragile bodies, with their little fingers and their little toes and their delicate skulls were ripped apart. Others were crushed to death under rubble. Others were beheaded by Israeli weapons. Others were starved to death. Some died instantly, some did not, they died in pain. Born into a world of horror, they died unimaginably cruel deaths.

The likes of Dan Hodges expressed infinitely more horror over fictional killings of Israeli babies than they have over the actual real mass slaughter of Palestinian babies. And note how Hodges has never deleted his false claims or apologised for his false claims.

What possible justification could there be for that?

If I said that Israeli soldiers were going round beheading Palestinian babies - leaving aside the Palestinian babies who have been beheaded because of Israeli weapons - if I said Israeli soldiers were using knives to behead Palestinian babies, and that was shown to be false, what would happen? What would happen even in the context of Palestinian babies being slaughtered in vast numbers?

Again, that would likely to be career ending. I would be torn apart. I would be regarded as a disgrace to journalism.

But Hodges can get away with spreading false claims with no consequences. And as we can see, he used those false claims to try and build support for an onslaught which then actually slaughtered huge number of babies as well as other innocent civilians.

Dan Hodges offers up an instructive case study about the British media. Hodges can openly support war crimes, he can openly support the mass slaughter of civilians, he can openly make clear his racist contempt for an entire ethnic group, and suffer no consequences.

Well that simply cannot be allowed to happen. We cannot normalise this depravity. Normalising this sort of depravity will have devastating consequences not just for Palestinians, but for humanity itself. If we simply normalise murderous racism, which is what that this is, then we will go to ever darker places. All of the worst crimes of our history were made possible by the sort of attitudes expressed by Dan Hodges - that is, obscene levels of dehumanisation which are used to justify barbarism.

In the here and now, he won’t suffer consequences. But we must not give up until people like Hodges face the consequences, by which I mean his tawdry little career ended in disgrace, and him being turned into a public pariah like other apologists for other terrible atrocities.

Either Israel’s genocide is remembered for what it is - a terrible crime - or it is normalised as humanity descends into a hellish abyss of violent barbarism.

And it might years and years until we get accountability. But we can never give up fighting for accountability. We must keep receipts, we must remember what people did and said when there was no excuses - when it was perfectly, abundantly clear what Israel had done to the people of Gaza.

Right now, the likes of Hodges feels impunity, which is why he uses his platform to so shamelessly and unapologetically issue such depraved statements. That impunity must end - because the stakes are simply so high.