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zionism
UK Foreign Secretary’s Empty Words: Weapons and Spy Flights Expose Hollow Promises
Lammy called Israel’s escalation of the genocide “morally unjustifiable.” But what is beyond unjustifiable is for Lammy to say this while directly arming and providing surveillance information for the genocide.
May 23, 2025
On Tuesday, after releasing a joint statement with France and Canada threatening “concrete actions” if Israel did not allow aid into Gaza, the U.K. government suspended talks on its upgraded free trade deal, summoned the Israeli ambassador, and imposed new sanctions on settlers in the occupied West Bank. While this might appear substantial for the goal of isolating the Zionist state, it amounts to little more than face-saving measures.
In his speech announcing these measures, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy couldn’t even bear to say these words without condemning the October 7 operation and maintaining Israel’s right to commit genocide. We can’t fall for these empty measures, even if they appear to be a positive push toward some justice. In reality, they are a distraction and feign action from a government supporting Israel as it accelerates its genocidal attacks. Each day, as Israel commits new massacres with American weapons, it is using the Royal Air Force Akrotiri, a British military base on Cyprus, to conduct surveillance flights and facilitate weapons transfers.
The government’s suspension of negotiations on its free-trade agreement is misleading. This is not the existing free-trade agreement in place between Britain and Israel, but a future plan to deepen relations. Known as the 2030 Roadmap, this was initiated under the previous Conservative government in 2022, and the Labour government continued negotiations immediately after entering government in July 2024. Stopping these negotiations is a good first step, but they must end their current free-trade agreement if Lammy’s words are worth their salt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the world “won’t stop us.” Our leaders bought by Zionism will certainly not, but the people will.
The sanctions on a handful of people and companies in the occupied West Bank might be a generally positive step. But at a closer look, these measures are only on three people, two outposts, and two organisations. All of the 700,000 settlers occupying the West Bank in their 150 settlements and 128 outposts are illegal under international law. These very narrow sanctions then give wider justification for the illegal occupation of the West Bank, scapegoating a handful of “extreme” characters but not contending with the occupation itself. Last year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal. Once again, Britain is ignoring international law, just as it does in refusing to hand over surveillance data on Gaza to the International Criminal Court.
Britain’s recent moves should rightly be compared with the United States, which has formed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private company of U.S. military veteran mercenaries to run an aid distribution operation, better described as a trojan horse to occupy Gaza. As Israel accelerates its genocide in Gaza, the U.S. and Britain are attempting to conceal their role in the violence. We might see these as necessary measures for Israel to be committing what many are referring to as the final stage in the genocide.
Over the past few days, the Starmer government’s statements have given us the illusion of a change in course toward Israel. Yet in five of the six days leading up to May 20, Britain has flown a surveillance flight over Gaza for Israel.
Britain has made no material change in its policy of arming Israel, providing surveillance information, and using its military base on Cyprus for weapons shipments. Therefore, not only are these statements hollow and vacuous, but they are a pernicious and sly attempt to divert attention from Britain’s role as it directly participates in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
On Sunday (May 18th), Britain sent an A400M Atlas plane to Israel from RAF Akrotiri. This aircraft can carry up to 37 metric tons of cargo, including weapons and soldiers. Two hours later, it sent a surveillance flight over Gaza. These operations have been purposefully concealed from public knowledge, but this is clearly shifting. The only reason we know about these flights is because of the work of Matt Kennard, Declassified U.K., and Genocide-Free Cyprus, among other groups. There clearly is mounting pressure as a result of the revelations of Britain’s direct role in Israel’s genocide, and perhaps we must recognize it has a role in Lammy’s face-saving attempts.
Last week, the U.K. government defended its continued provision of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, pointing to the need for “national security.” In court, they claimed “no genocide has occurred or is occurring,” that Israel is not “deliberately targeting civilian women or children.” Britain is defending Israel legally, diplomatically, and militarily. No statement can change that fact.
Israel stopped all aid trucks from entering Gaza on March 2. It has taken more than 11 weeks for the government to take any action at all. Every day, the Israeli occupation commits heinous massacres. They are even bragging that the world “won’t stop us.” And so far, they’re right.
In the face of this, we cannot despair. Palestinians in Gaza remain steadfast each day, for the 18 months of this escalation in the genocide that has been ongoing for more than 77 years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the world “won’t stop us.” Our leaders bought by Zionism will certainly not, but the people will. We must continue our demands for a full arms embargo, an end to British surveillance flights, and the total liberation of Palestine.
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Systematic Starvation: Genocide and the Engineered Collapse of Gazan Society
The deliberate destruction of food systems, water infrastructure, medical systems, and communal cohesion is not incidental, it is an intentional form of warfare aimed at inducing despair, division, and eventual displacement.
May 22, 2025
Consequent to the escalated Zionist genocide of Indigenous Palestinian people, and after a blockade of all goods since the beginning of March 2025, Gaza is experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread food scarcity and starvation among its population. Human rights organizations and international agencies report the Israeli blockade has led to catastrophic levels of hunger, particularly affecting children and vulnerable groups.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) indicates approximately 244,000 people in Gaza face the most severe level of food insecurity, with nearly 71,000 children under five at risk of acute malnutrition. The World Food Program warns famine is imminent, affecting nearly the entire population of 2.3 million.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, a gross violation of international law, while noting children have died from starvation-related complications due to the blockade.
Israeli and American strategies of siege, blockade, and forced starvation create the very social fragmentation they later cite as proof of Palestinian dysfunction and innate barbarity.
The United Nations and other organizations have called for immediate, unrestricted humanitarian access to prevent further deterioration. In addition, aid groups have criticized the proposed systems for potentially facilitating distribution of food and other essentials as being inadequate to meet the urgent needs.
Now, seemingly under pressure from the United States and conveniently using its mercenaries, Israel will allow “minimal” food and supplies into the besieged Palestinian enclave, while intensifying its devastating military assault.
In a recent press conference, Netanyahu ally and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demonically said Israeli forces are engaged in a campaign to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President [Donald] Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history—nothing less.”
Other than a tool to move the population southward as part of a brazen criminal displacement campaign, which Smotrich openly admits, the starvation of Gaza has another insidious deliberate objective—methodical, socially engineered atomization of the people in Gaza, designed to create extreme deprivation, societal chaos, and internal strife, particularly through food scarcity and lack of control, and subsequently as a pretext for further genocide, expulsion, theft, and domination.
Research in Chimpanzees
Renowned Primatologist Jane Goodall documented a prolonged conflict (1974–1978) between two chimpanzee groups, the Kasakela and the Kahama, in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. This “Gombe Chimpanzee War” saw the Kasakela community systematically attack and eliminate the Kahama group. Goodall’s findings were widely reported as support for the idea that warfare and territorial violence are natural elements of human behavior, inherited from our closest primate relatives.
Notably, reactionaries have co-opted these notions on so-called human nature to justify colonialism, falsely depicting Indigenous tribes as inherently violent “savages” to legitimize land theft and genocide.
AnthropologistBrian Ferguson has challenged Goodall’s interpretation. In a painstakingly thorough analysis of each case of documented aggression during the “Gombe Chimpanzee War,” he argues that the violence observed was not natural or inevitable. Rather, it was the result of external influences, primarily human interference by Goodall, her team, and others. Ferguson points to changes in provisioning (feeding) practices by these researchers, which disrupted social dynamics and led to unnatural group fragmentation. He also cites ecological pressures, such as resource scarcity due to nearby human activity, which may have exacerbated tensions.
Ferguson contends these factors, rather than innate aggression, better explain the conflict, emphasizing violence is context-dependent and can be negatively affected by human interference, and not a fixed part of primate and human nature. Drawing on primate studies, archaeology and anthropology, Ferguson argues war in human behavior is not innate—i.e.“human nature”—it emerged as a cultural construct when social inequalities were introduced with sedentary, agricultural life which enabled resource hoarding. Thus, he cautions against simplistic evolutionary (and reactionary) narratives which use such cases to justify human violence.
Where is the Palestinian Mandela?
The same dynamics are now unfolding in Gaza, where Israeli and American strategies of siege, blockade, and forced starvation create the very social fragmentation they later cite as proof of Palestinian dysfunction and innate barbarity.
The deliberate destruction of food systems, water infrastructure, medical systems, and communal cohesion is not incidental, it is an intentional form of warfare aimed at inducing despair, division, and eventual displacement.
Starvation is a tool of colonization, weaponized to weaken bodies, fracture bonds, undermine social cohesion, fuel internal aggression, weaken resistance, and turn survival into an isolating struggle. These conditions are neither natural nor inevitable; they are constructed and inflicted deliberately to serve a white supremacist goal—to manufacture potentially lethal chaos within Palestinian society and shift blame for genocide onto the victims themselves.
The cynical ploy by Israel and the United States to engineer conditions for forced displacement while blaming the Palestinian people they are starving should be rejected and serve as further impetus for boycott, divestment, and sanctions.
As internal conflict escalates, Zionist forces can portray Palestinians as irredeemably violent “savages,” justifying further domination under the guise of civilizing and evicting them “for their own good.” This was reflected by Trump in his immoral plan to turn Gaza into a resort.
This strategy mirrors decades of Zionist colonial tactics—assassination, imprisonment, torture, and psychological warfare—all deployed to reinforce the false narrative that Palestinian anti-colonial resistance is proof of inherent barbarism, rather than adefensive response to European invasion, oppression, and dispossession.
With classical colonial sleight of hand, liberal Zionists then ask, with feigned bewilderment: “Where is the Palestinian Mandela?” as if peace depends on the emergence of a more palatable victim. This notion ignores how many “Palestinian Mandelas” have emerged, only to be systematically assassinated and imprisoned by Zionist forces for embodying the possibility of peace and reconciliation through justice and decolonization. Likewise, the first Palestinian Intifada, a largely women-led uprising, and the “March of Return” were largely nonviolent—a strategy Zionists found more threatening than armed resistance and thus met with brutal, disproportionate force.
The deliberate starvation of Palestinian people in Gaza is an abominable nadir in an ongoing 77-year symphony of Israeli genocide and war crimes. However, it is possible to anticipate Zionist tactics and accompanying propaganda and to respond with foresight and strategy.
The cynical ploy by Israel and the United States to engineer conditions for forced displacement while blaming the Palestinian people they are starving should be rejected and serve as further impetus for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and other protests by all those opposing U.S.-led white supremacist colonialism, instead of allowing it to weaken, dishearten, and fracture resistance. This is the bare minimum for anyone who sees the predatory U.S.-led Zionist experiment in Palestine as a threat to the existence of the Palestinian people and to the rest of humanity.
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Pro-Israel Senators Show Their Hand By Opposing Free Speech Protections in Now-Delayed Antisemitism Bill
The Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.
May 06, 2025
When Senate Republicans brought the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act up for a committee vote last week, they were expecting an easy win. After all, the bill had the support of Senate Republican leaders, most Israel advocacy groups, and even some Democrats.
Yet the bill faced an unexpected problem that may ultimately doom its passage. During a markup hearing of the HELP Committee, two Republicans broke ranks, joining all Democrats in approving free speech amendments that undermined the true goal of the bill: requiring colleges and universities to conflate criticism of the Israeli government and Zionism with antisemitism.
The first amendment considered was HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-La.)manager amendment, which affirmed that “Nothing in this Act shall be constructed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
While that vague reassurance passed with bipartisan support, most Republicans refused to support substantive amendments that explicitly referenced Gaza as an example of free speech, laid out examples of protected student speech, and prohibited retaliation against dissent.
If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem.
At start of the hearing, ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned, “Unfortunately and unacceptably, the Antisemitism Awareness Act we are considering today would label speech that criticizes the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s horrific war in Gaza as antisemitic and a violation of civil rights laws, and that is an extremely dangerous precedent.”
Sanders then offered several amendments designed to reduce the risk that government agencies and educational institutions can use the bill as a new tool of censorship.
His first amendment clarified, "no person shall be considered antisemitic for using their rights of free speech or protest under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to ... oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60 percent of whom are women and children” and "oppose the Israeli government's devastation of Gaza..."
All Democrats voted in favor, which was itself a surprise given how many Democratic politicians have desperately avoided any criticism of the Israeli government. The bigger surprise came from Senator Rand Paul. He broke ranks with other Republicans and supported the amendment, ensuring its passage.
A second Sanders amendment declared that the federal government cannot force any school, college, or university to adopt a policy that a branch of the federal government may compel a school "to violate the rights of a student, faculty, or staff member under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
In a sane world, every Republican senator would have supported such a basic amendment. Yet all opposed it except for two: Sen. Paul and Sen. Susan Collins (D-Maine).
The third Sanders' amendment clarified that speech, such as distributing flyers, inviting guest speakers, or engaging in classroom discussions, is protected unless it involves true threats or incitement of violence. Again, Paul and Collins were the only Republicans to break with their colleagues to support it.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced an amendment prohibiting the federal government from detaining or deporting students based on protected political speech. That amendment passed by a single vote, thanks again to Senator Paul. Markey stated, “When a young person writes an op-ed in the student newspaper and get whisked off of the streets of Tuffs University to a prison in Louisiana with no charges that is what we are debating today.”
If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem. They should have received universal support, and their approval should not have derailed the bill.
Yet the fate of the legislation is now up in the air.
HELP Committee Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during the hearing that, “Supporting these amendments is an effort to kill this bill.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) responded the next day by telling Jewish Insider that “Rand Paul totally killed that bill.” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) also said, “These amendments are dealbreakers.”
Why? Because the Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.
The bill would require government agencies and schools to enforce federal civil rights law using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—a vague and widely disputed standard that poses a mortal threat to First Amendment freedoms.
Kenneth S. Stern, the original drafter of the IHRA definition, has testified to Congress that, "My fear is, if we similarly enshrine this definition into law, outside groups will try and suppress–rather than answer–political speech they don’t like. The academy, Jewish students, and faculty teaching about Jewish issues, will all suffer." Stern has repeatedly stated that the definition was never meant to be enforceable law and that doing so risks unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That is precisely what this legislation seeks to achieve.
The IHRA definition declares that any student describing the founding of Israel as a "racist endeavor" has engaged in antisemitism punishable by their school and the government of the United States—even though racist militias and terrorist groups like the Irgun subjected Palestinians to a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder during the founding of Israel.
IHRA also declares anyone “applying double standards” to Israel is antisemtiic. If someone criticizes the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza but hasn't made time to criticize the RSF's war crimes in Sudan, they must be antisemitic. Ditto for anyone “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” comparisons that--while controversial—have even been made by far-right supporters of the Israeli government.
As Sen. Paul noted during the hearing, these and other examples establish a dangerous double standard. No other foreign government is granted this level of immunity from criticism under U.S. civil rights law. If enforced through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, these vague and politically motivated examples would transform legitimate political critique into grounds for federal investigations, and dissent into a punishable offense.
If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws.
CAIR, like many other civil rights groups, has called on congress to not pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act into law, as it would give the Department of Education—under a Trump administration already targeting, arresting, detaining, and attempting to deport anti-genocide protesters—even more power to investigate, silence, and punish speech on campus critical of Israel. We are already seeing the consequences. More than 1,700 student visas have been revoked since January. Students like Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts’ Rumeysa Ozturk remain in ICE custody for nothing more than participating in peaceful, protected protest and speech. Others face deportation for daring to speak out. This is not theoretical. This is not speculative. It is happening now.
In its original form, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would have given the Trump administration even more power to escalate its attack on free speech for Palestine. Even with the addition of Sanders' amendments, the now-contradictory bill still threatens free speech protections by including the IHRA definition.
That's still not good enough for most Senate Republicans and pro-Israel groups pushing the bill. Now that the bill cannot be so easily weaponized to silence dissent against Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza or its founding ideology, at least some of its key backers are threatening to abandon it.
Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.
We must be absolutely clear about what is at stake. If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws. That is not only a betrayal of free speech. It is a threat to American sovereignty.
Americans must unequivocally oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and all forms of hate. But conflating antisemitism with opposition to Israel’s military occupation, apartheid policies, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza is not just dishonest. It is dangerous.
Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.
Silencing speech does not stop hate. It only deepens injustice. And we should not stand by while our government attempts to criminalize moral clarity.
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