Tony Blair was back in the news last week, weighing in on Brexit, immigration, social media misinformation, and the possibilities of AI.
This is the life cycle of a modern British leader: overseeing mass death atrocities in the Middle East, getting the boot for transgressing one neurosis of the British public or another, and then being periodically trotted out to shore up support for our ever-increasing immiseration.
Last to experience the downswing was David Cameron who, breaking the mould, was brought back to the cabinet as Foreign Minister to be in charge of Britain’s response to the first stages of the genocide in Gaza. He was tossed out with the rest of Rishi Sunak’s zombie government in the July elections and now the responsibility has fallen to David Lammy.
After months of speculation about the recommendations from the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) regarding arms sales to Isreal, Lammy finally announced — “with regret” — that the UK is partially suspending arms sales to Israel over fears they were being used in the commission of war crimes. Crucially, the suspension affects only 30 of the UK’s 350 arms export licenses.
This comes after British Foreign Office diplomat Mark Smith resigned over arms sales to Israel in August, stating the government “may be complicit in war crimes,” in his resignation letter, and then Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Alicia Kearns stated in March she was “convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make.”
Now, a former FCDO adviser is claiming that David Cameron during his time as foreign secretary, received advice that there was clear evidence Israel was in breach of IHL and did nothing. The source stated the advice given to the Foreign Office warned that if the UK did not act, they would risk being complicit.
When Kearns pressed Cameron about the legal advice he had received in January, he demurred. “I cannot recall every single bit of paper that has been put in front of me,” he said. He also suggested he was unsure as to whether Israel was an occupying power.
This is surely enough to warrant an investigation into what Cameron knew when he was advised, and what he did in response. If the findings show he breached British and/or international law, he must be tried and held accountable.
As the FCDO source put it: “The tragedy has to be considered: how many lives might have been saved if the arms export licences had been stopped then and not in September, and what the potential ripple effect might have been on how other countries would have reacted in ceasing trade.”
But the buck cannot stop there. Regarding Lammy’s measures to address the advice, it seems dubious they are in any way sufficient to meet the UK’s duty to prevent based on what we have witnessed over the past 11 months. The FCDO source stated that the government memorandum published alongside the decision to suspend the export licenses, similar to what was being sent to the Foreign Office since at least February, was watered down compared to previous drafts.
Western institutions have failed Gaza
In the policy paper titled Summary of the IHL process, Decision and the Factors Taken into Account, the FCDO claimed that while there was credible evidence of “mistreatment of detainees,” and Israel's failure to allow the free passage of humanitarian relief, “it has not been possible to reach a determinative judgment on allegations regarding Israel’s conduct of hostilities.”
This only makes sense in a world where the government has not had access to the same near-daily footage of horrors beyond comprehension as the rest of us.
More plausibly, they are playing the ostrich to cover themselves, much the same as their counterparts in the US State Department. They know what’s being carried out, we know they know, and still, this song and dance carries on.
Day after day Matt Miller and Vedant Patel choose to get behind the podium and give the same mealy-mouthed answer to questioning regarding events from Hind Rajab’s murder, the flour massacres, the unearthing of mass graves outside hospitals, the burning of tents in Rafah, footage of people carrying white flags being shot, and Sde Teiman: “Israel is investigating.”
It is a pathetic effort aimed at getting us to doubt what we see plainly with our own eyes long enough for the news cycle to move on.
If Western officials are unwilling to look at the atrocities we see every day, perhaps they can be convinced by Israelis in their own words. For months now we have seen how the culture of impunity has emboldened genocidal speech at every level of Israeli society.
The brazen comments made by Israeli leaders were a central piece of evidence in South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. A riot broke out at Beit Lid army base when military police attempted to detain suspects in the gang rapes at Sde Teiman, joined by far-right MKs.
Most recently, the Israeli English language podcast Two Nice Jewish Boys sparked mass outrage with their comments about Israelis’ enjoyment of the suffering in Gaza. Hosts Naor Meningher and Eytan Weinstein said, “You can’t help but think that it’s nice to know that you are dancing in a concert while hundreds of thousands of Gazans are homeless … It makes it even better… more enjoyable concert…”
They also discussed having the hypothetical power to end all life in Gaza. “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow… I would press it right now.”
Perhaps having subsequently been advised that direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a crime under Article III of the Genocide Convention, they published a lengthy post stating “We made it very clear that we did NOT call for the genocide of Palestinians: we were making a larger point about the fact that most Jewish Israelis do not care about the cost in civilian casualties…”
Curiously, they chose to defend themselves by listing a series of Israeli polls and statements that endorse mass violence and genocide. “It’s also worth noting,” they wrote, “that many victims of October 7 share our sentiments: This is a member of Kibbutz Beeri, saying: ‘I will come back to Beeri only after the very last Palestinian (in Gaza) is dead’…”
It is worth highlighting two of their tweets from October 7 itself. One reads, “Why are there still buildings standing in Gaza?!” The other, “Gaza should be wiped off the face of the planet. Not Hamas. Gaza.”
It is unlikely that justice will be meted out to these nice boys anytime soon, if ever. However, failure to hold Western officials to account for their role in Israel’s assault on Gaza will only embolden them to kill again and again, at home and abroad.
As if to illustrate this point, Tony Blair responded to the publication of the scathing report from phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry. Contradicting the report’s finding that the Grenfell deaths were avoidable, Blair told Sky News, cynically, that no matter what systems a government has in place, people are “going to make mistakes.”
Blair should be behind bars, and those aiding and cheering on the genocide in Gaza should join him. It is time to end the age of impunity.
Alex Foley is an educator and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a research background in molecular biology of health and disease. They currently work on preserving fragile digital materials related to mass death atrocities in the MENA region.
Follow them on X: @foleywoley
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.