Emaciated babies with bulging eyes. Skeletal children searching for food. Mothers cradling their dead. For the past week, these horrifying images of the Gaza genocide have filled the frontpages of the British press.
Enter ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer. On Tuesday night, in a televised address on Gaza, the UK Prime Minister announced his government’s intention to recognise Palestinian statehood. Ending his speech with a solemn pledge to “end the suffering”, Starmer almost appeared as if he had suddenly realised that Palestinians are human beings.
News of this announcement was met with fire and fury by Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu: “Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims.
A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW.
Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen.”
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 29, 2025
The US state department gave oxygen to this ridiculous claim, branding Britain’s decision a “slap in the face to the victims of October 7”.
Starmer will have welcomed these fiery rebuttals on two counts. It not only gave a sense of undue importance to his speech, but also created the appearance of him taking the moral highground. Two birds, one stone.
What Starmer most certainly did not anticipate was just how quickly the British public would see right through his deception.
In this all-too-obvious attempt to chime with the anger felt by the British public – the burning rage towards the war crimes that are being carried out in our name – Starmer has, once again, managed to draw the ire of everyone at once.
The devil was in the details. Read carefully his statement of intent:
“So today – as part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza…”
Unless. That is the key word. Recognition of Palestinian rights is being weaponised as a threat by Starmer against western imperialism’s longtime ally and friend: Netanyahu, the Butcher of Gaza.
By Keir Starmer’s own admission, the right of the Palestinians to statehood is not inviolable. We are sure that the two men can at least agree on that.
This changes nothing
Starmer has joined the growing chorus of world leaders that want to take action against Israel: not by enacting a comprehensive arms ban or a trade embargo, but through ‘recognition’ of a state that has no territorial integrity, and which is being bombed back into the Middle Ages.
David Lammy, Labour’s Foreign Secretary, rushed in to explain the significance of his master’s speech. Lammy argued that the recognition of Palestinian statehood in September will “affect the situation on the ground”.
But British imperialism is already impacting the situation on the ground. By backing Israel to the hilt militarily, economically, and diplomatically for almost two years, they have acted as accomplices in the genocide in Gaza.
British air forces have spied for Israel, from its base in Cyprus. British arms manufacturers still produce key components of F-35s, the fighter jets responsible for the erasure of all civilian infrastructure in Gaza. And the British armed forces have even trained up IDF personnel.
More words words words and NO action.
END ALL ARMS SALES TO ISRAEL!
END ALL military cooperation!
No training, no spy planes, no supply of weapons, no air defence!
No one is tricked by the soulless Starmer who has facilitated the death of 100,000 Palestinians! https://t.co/GZ0zETDjuE
— Fiona Lali (@fiona_lali) July 29, 2025
What Lammy means to say is that the Labour government is committed in everything but deeds to help the people of Palestine.
Even in words, ‘genocide’ is still a step too far for the Labour party. World leading genocide expert Amos Goldberg, alongside many others, have argued that the Israeli onslaught in Gaza is unquestionably a ‘genocide’…since “Gaza does not exist anymore”. That is pretty definitive.
Instead, the word of the week appears to be ‘hope’ in Westminster. Emily Thornberry, a veteran Labour MP, opined that this ‘historic’ change in British foreign policy is there to offer “some form of future and hope for the people of Palestine”.
The starving children of Gaza, Mrs Thornberry, cannot be housed, clothed, or fed on hope.
How much is a Palestinian life worth?
As these ladies and gentlemen prepare their notes for September, for their big moment to commit to a two-state ‘solution’ at the UN podium, the Zionist death squads are rapidly changing the facts on the ground.
The Israel Knesset has even voted in favour of annexing the entire West Bank, and plans to ‘repopulate Gaza’ with Jewish settlements are underway.
Despite repeated warnings of what Israel intended to do in the aftermath of October 7 – ‘cleanse’ and ‘conquer’ all of Palestine; ‘eliminate everything’ that stands in the way – the whole British establishment chose to ignore reality for as long as they could. They now feel the pressure from below, from the mass Palestine solidarity movement, like never before.
But we must stay vigilant. Though their words have changed, their imperialist interests in the region have remained the same.
It is prison sentences and terror charges for peaceful pro-Palestine protestors at home, and dewy-eyed speeches and handwringing for the cameras – for the war crimes they are complicit in – abroad.
So to the question: How much is a Palestinian life worth?
Keir Starmer has given his answer: no more than polished words, at a later date, to be heard in the United Nations General Assembly hall.
Starmer, Lammy, and co. belong not in Parliament, but behind bars. Our task is to make sure that those crying crocodile tears for the children of Gaza never again have the power to decide which child is able to live or die.
Too little too late.
You have facilitated all of it. https://t.co/XNEfr1MBAV
— Fiona Lali (@fiona_lali) July 25, 2025