The Financial Times savages Western silence on Gaza

The tide is turning on Israel

This feels like a big moment. Western complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people is being denounced by a right-wing newspaper and Conservative MPs.

What does that tell us? It tells us that it’s increasingly clear what the judgement of history will be on this grotesque crime - as well as the judgement of the courts.

Let’s start with the Financial Times, a pro-business newspaper which has mostly backed the Conservative party in the last few UK general elections.

Their editorial - which reflects the official position of the newspaper - is headlined ‘The west’s shameful silence on Gaza’..

It opens with:

After 19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and drawn accusations of war crimes against Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is once more preparing to escalate Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Well, look, yes technically they are accusations because nobody has been tried and convicted in a court of law - yet - despite the International Criminal Court issuing public arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for both war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is understood the ICC will issue further charges and arrest warrants, though it has been ordered to make those secret.

But it is as obvious that war crimes have been committed by Israel as it is that the earth revolves around the sun and that autumn follows summer. Every war crime possible has been committed - they have been publicly confessed to and boasted about by Israeli leaders, officials and soldiers, they have been recorded on film, documented by experts and Palestinian journalists. Amongst legal experts, there is a consensus that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed, just as there is a near consensus among genocide scholars that genocide is being committed.

The article goes on:

The latest plan puts Israel on course for full occupation of the Palestinian territory and would drive Gazans into ever-narrowing pockets of the shattered strip. It would lead to more intensive bombing and Israeli forces clearing and holding territory, while destroying what few structures remain in Gaza.

This would be a disaster for 2.2mn Gazans who have already endured unfathomable suffering. Each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land.

Well look, there is no reason to speculate about this, because the Netanyahu government has simply gone out and said what they intend to do. At the end of March, Netanyahu said that Israel “will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding this and are ready to discuss it at any time.”

Clearly voluntary migration is a nonsense - Palestinians don’t want to leave their home. Israel has objectively sought to make Gaza uninhabitable, as the Financial Times suggest, with the hope that the survivors feel there is no other choice but to flee - because there are no homes left standing, the healthcare system is destroyed, agriculture and food production is destroyed, reliable access to clean fresh water is destroyed, there is no education system, there is no plan to offer any reconstruction to offer a future.

But in any case, the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared this week:

Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to ... the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.

There’s no subtlety there. From the very start, all you had to do is take the statements issued by Israeli leaders and officials literally. But Western media outlets refused to do this. It’s like those statements were being issued in a parallel universe, as far as the Western media were concerned. If they’d done their job, they would have framed their coverage around the often nakedly genocidal statements being issued by the Israeli leadership, because they exposed intent. Even now, that does not happen.

Here is a crucial passage in the Financial Times article

For two months, Israel has blocked delivery of all aid into the strip. Child malnutrition rates are rising, the few functioning hospitals are running out of medicine, and warnings of starvation and disease are growing louder.

Yet the US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.

Here the Financial Times refers to a straightforward war crime. It is, as they note, an objective fact that Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza since 1st March - Israel publicly declared this, it’s not a contestable assertion. Imposing a total blockade on all the essentials of life reaching a civilian population is inarguably a war crime, which is why the Financial Times does not earlier on this editorial need to refer to “accusations of war crimes against Israel.”

Nonetheless - the Financial Times makes a striking point. Israel’s Western allies have issued barely a word of condemnation. And this right-of-centre establishment newspaper, read by City slickers, hedge fund managers and the like, says that Western governments should be ashamed of their silence.

The sort of words we have heard for a long time from the platforms of pro-Palestinian protests, now printed as the official position of the Financial Times.

It should be noted of course that Western complicity goes far beyond silence. After all, many of these states have armed Israel to the teeth. They have offered diplomatic support and political support. They have demonised, clamped down on and silenced those who have sought to oppose the genocide. They are not just complicit with their silence - they have directly facilitated this monstrous crime from the very start.

The Financial Times notes that Trump has acknowledged Palestinians are “starving” and will help get food to Gaza but that “So far, the US president has only emboldened Netanyahu”, that a deal was struck in which Hamas agreed to free hostages in phases while Israel withdrew from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire struck, but then Trump announced what the Financial Times describes as “an outlandish plan for Gaza to be emptied of Palestinians and taken over by the US.”

Well come on now: what Trump proposed is a grave crime, and describing it as “outlandish” is rather euphemistic in the circumstances. Outlandish suggests unfeasible, far fetched, not practical, rather than a grave crime.

Nonetheless, the Financial Times say:

In March, Israel collapsed the ceasefire as it sought to change the terms of the deal, with Washington’s backing.

What is disturbing here is just reading this feels like coming up for air, because even this incontrovertible fact has hardly been treated as such by Western media outlets.

The newspaper goes on:

Senior Israeli officials have since said they are implementing Trump’s plan to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza. On Monday, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip.”

Right, so we don’t need to “suspect” anything, not least given Smotrich’s further statement.

The article goes on to condemn Netanyahu further, noting the renewed onslaught will imperil the lives of Israeli hostages as well as “further undermine Israel’s tarnished standing” - well, think it’s fair to say the boat sailed on that one long ago, a state which commits genocide in full public view has crossed a Rubicon and cannot return.

The newspaper goes on to rightly critique Arab leaders for being infuriated by Netanyahu but being compromised by Trump’s promises of multi billion dollar investments and arms deals, rightly demanding that Arab states stand up to Israel.

The article concludes:

The global tumult triggered by Trump has already distracted attention from the catastrophe in Gaza. Yet the longer it goes on, the more those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit.

As I have said all the way through, those with power and influence who have stayed silent are complicit. Those who still support this grotesque abomination were beyond the pale a long time ago - they should be regarded frankly as sociopaths.

It’s the silent who need to be damned, too. And the silent does not exclude those who say - well it’s all so complicated - and issue platitudes about the suffering of Palestinians. It’s those who fail to call a crime what it is. That still counts as silence.

Now as well as the Financial Times, British Conservative MPs who were previously staunch supporters of Israel have started to speak out. More than a dozen Tory MPs have broken ranks to demand the immediate recognition of Palestine. And listen this Tory MP here Mark Pritchard here:

This is quite astonishing. He says there straightforwardly that he got it wrong, having been a loyal supporter of Israel. This illustrates how people are beginning to realise the savage judgement that will befall all those who failed to do something when they had the chance.

That even the Financial Times, that even Conservative MPs who previously were Israel supporters, have spoken in these terms underlines how this will all end.

This is one of the great crimes of our age. And some of us knew from the very beginning that this would be one the great crimes of our age. We took literally what Israeli leaders and officials said, we saw the apocalyptic devastation unleashed by Israel from the very beginning, we saw the war crimes being livestreamed every day.

There was no excuse for not knowing. No one can claim ignorance. And now the silence is beginning to disintegrate as the obscene scale of the crime is impossible to ignore. Well, accountability will come, we can be assured of that.

I’m honoured to have been shortlisted for Amnesty’s People’s Choice Award. If you want to support the work we’ve been doing covering Israel’s genocide, you can vote here.