Appalling mix of regurgitated and already-discredited lies with grotesque one-sidedness
Sir Keir Starmer’s statement today on the anniversary of the Hamas raid on southern Israel was a regurgitation of Israeli atrocity propaganda that has already been disproven, mixed with omissions of known facts about Israel’s killing of its own people during the raid and a one-sidedness that treats the mass murder of Palestinians by Israel as some kind of natural disaster.
Skwawkbox fact-checked it for him – we’re sure he’ll appreciate the help.
‘Over a thousand people were brutally murdered’
This is not actually true – the final civilian death toll was revised down last December to 695 – but Mr Starmer also omits the fact that an ‘immense’ number of those killed, especially at the Nova music festival, were brutally killed by their own military. This is a fact that has for many months been openly discussed by the media in Israel – with the frank admission in July that Israeli forces spent much of 7 October repeatedly attacking their own citizens – but which UK media and politicians stubbornly ignore because it wrecks the narrative used to justify Israel’s slaughter, maiming and starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
‘Men, women, children and babies’
A number of children were killed during the raid and this is a tragedy – though again it is not known how many of them were killed by Israel’s own forces, although it is known that at least some were, including a young girl used by Israel for propaganda purposes, who was killed along with her brother and older relatives by tank shelling ordered by an Israeli commander who knew they were in the house.
But Starmer’s language of brutality, mutilation and torture seems designed to invoke Israel’s claims of beheaded babies and sexually mutilated women – none of which happened. See the next item.
Mr Starmer also omits to mention the at least eight hundred babies murdered and many thousands maimed by Israel so far during its genocide in Gaza.
‘Rape, torture and brutality’.
The United Nations investigated Israel’s claims of rape by Hamas and its allies during the 7 October raid. It found that there was no claim that was supported by evidence and some that were provably false – all the claims were either ‘unfounded’ or ‘unverified’ and what little ‘evidence’ Israel claimed to present was demonstrably ‘inaccurate’ or at best ‘unreliable’. The UN’s investigators, both women, ‘could not verify any sexual violence:
Israeli women who were taken captive during the raid and later released have reported being treated like ‘queens’, while others have remarked on how they were treated well by, and often fed better than, their captors.
Similarly, investigations found that claims of mutilation were either entirely made up – as in the case of the ‘forty beheaded babies’, babies ripped from their mother’s womb, babies cooked in ovens and women’s breasts being severed – or else were the result of misinterpretation of the position and condition of burned bodies (who can only have been burned by IDF weaponry). The supposed photographic evidence of a dead woman with her ‘stomach ripped open, baby umbilical connected by umbilical cord’ turned out to be a fridge with its electrical cord trailing. ‘Witnesses’ who later came forward claiming to have seen the atrocities in question had earlier been interviewed in print and on camera without mentioning them – and one supposedly traumatised onlooker posted selfie videos on the day in which he looked cheerful and made no mention of them.
These complete falsehoods were, and continue to be, avidly repeated by politicians and media in the UK despite having been disproven. Keir Starmer did so again today. Mr Starmer did not mention the torture, rape and brutality that has provably taken place – that of Israeli occupying forces toward arbitrarily-detained Palestinian prisoners and hostages, including the rape and execution of women and families, the rape and maiming of men and the execution of bound captives.
Of UK media, only the Times, on a single occasion, has admitted that the ‘Hamas rape’ narrative is unfounded.
Starmer’s antisemitism
Starmer says we must ‘unequivocally stand with the Jewish community’, which seems to treat all Jews as if they hold the same opinion and to assume that they all support Israel. This is racist and palpably false – many Jews oppose and are appalled by Israel’s slaughter of as many as 200,000 Palestinians and its terrorism in Lebanon and are prominent in protests against them. The UK media have, of course, helped to sell the lie that all UK Jews have one opinion, for example the BBC notoriously removing a header image from an article about an anti-genocide protest that showed an anti-Zionist Jewish group’s banner.
Racist one-sidedness
While Starmer lists at length the supposed atrocities perpetrated on (but never by) Israelis, his language changes completely when he finally gives a small nod to Israel’s victims, in an omission of fact that is just as deeply vile and egregious as the repetition of the disproven falsehoods. These civilians, he says, are simply
bear[ing] the ongoing dire consequences of this conflict,
as if this is some kind of unavoidable natural disaster. In reality, the civilian victims of Israel’s genocide are dying, starving and being maimed because of the conscious, intentional and fully aware choices of Israel, the occupier and oppressor – and because of the complicity of national politicians like Keir Starmer, his Foreign Secretary David Lammy and countless others on his front bench and among US, German, French and other lawmakers.
Ceasefire
This is the most naked cynicism imaginable. Starmer calls for a ceasefire and the free flow of humanitarian aid – but omits that the violence is happening because Israel is committing it and the aid is not getting through – a clear war crime – because Israel is blocking it and western governments know it.
There you go, Mr Starmer. We fixed your statement for you, no charge. We hope you appreciate the effort, but somehow we doubt it.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyThanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
SIR Keith FreeGear SPONGER Freebies gobbler, NON prosecutor of SORDID pedophile and NECROPHILE chum of The Establishment JIMMY SAVILLE, is a VILE venal LIAR, who never was, is not now, nor will E V E R be one of us⛔️🔴⛔️🔴⛔️🔴
“The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.”
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths
Starmer is a compulsive liar, he even lies when it is easier to tell the truth. He is a Zionist and so he sees no wrong in what it does even when all right thinking people can see with their own eyes and are horrified by the unspeakable violence the Zionists are committing against the Palestinians. To Starmers eyes the Zionists are justified in what they do, George Orwell described Nationalism and how it was viewed by certain sections of society thus….
“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/“
Agree with the notion that too often sympathy or otherwise for the perpetrator is the means by which people come to view acts that one would think were barborous irrespective of who carried them out. Sadly this is at work in the current item. Starmer is rightly condemned for misdirection when confronted with acts of barbarity:
“These civilians, he says, are simply
‘bear[ing] the ongoing dire consequences of this conflict,’
as if this is some kind of unavoidable natural disaster.”
yet earlier in the piece the writer uses the same deflection:
“A number of children were killed during the raid and this is a tragedy”. It is not a sad or unfortunate turn of events, it is murder, as inexcusable if perpetrated by the IDF or Hamas.
Herr Starmer and those who stand with him in the Collective Worst’s Professional and Managerial Caste offers no future…..
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/things-dont-always-get-better
“It is perhaps emblematic that, unlike Harold Wilson sixty years ago, when Keir Starmer took over as Prime Minister after fourteen years of Tory rule, all he could offer was gloom, doom and more of the same. (I am increasingly wondering what the point of Starmer actually is.).
———————————————–
Not that the faux ‘progressive’ (woke) left, focused as they are on the individual over the collective and fixated on caricaturing the everyday concerns of ordinary people as ‘extreme right’ are offering anything radically different from the Liberalism represented by Starmer.
———————————————–
“I have thought for some time now that the genuine Left is standing in front of an open goal. All it has to do is kick the ball in. A Left that showed it was receptive to the concerns of ordinary people would be poised to sweep into power, but this would require a reconsideration of thirty years or more of anticipatory cringes. Parties of the Left were so befuddled by Recentist political ideas that they thought that their occasional victories were because they had adopted these ideas, not that the electorate had rejected the neoliberal policies that resulted from them. The predicament of Starmer in the UK is absolutely emblematic: elected as a result of widespread disgust with the Tories, his own party has no idea what to do other than imitate them while trying to look a little less nasty.
Demonising the concerns of ordinary people as being “extreme Right” cannot work in the longer term, and will simply increase populist feeling to the point where it becomes unmanageable. I have said before, and I repeat, that those who make populism of the Left impossible will make populism of the Right inevitable. I doubt one in a thousand of those currently finding the “extreme Right” under every stone have any idea what that would mean.”
“….our determination to bring those still captive home endures. I stand firm in our commitment to bring the hostages home, and we will not give up until they are returned.”
I must have somehow missed the UK’s “commitment to bring the hostages home”….
“One year on from these horrific attacks we must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community and unite as a country. We must never look the other way in the face of hate.”
“We must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community” Who is ‘”We” and who is to stand with the Palestinian community?
“We must never look the other way in the face of hate”. You could have fooled me Starmer, as you have spent the last twelve months trying to do just that.
Starmer continues to sink further and further below my already very, very low expectations. A vile excuse for a human being, and I am truly disgusted with his offerings today.
How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on October 7 2023:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216
“We can conclude that during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive:
– Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” – designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians.
– The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June.
-Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
– At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive began.
– By midday, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit” headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv) to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”
– This bombing of Israeli captives by Israel continues in Gaza even today.
– Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a December meeting with released captives and families of captives that they had been “under our bombardments” in Gaza.
– Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire.
– Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.”
Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/3/what-did-al-jazeeras-investigation-into-israeli-war-crimes-in-gaza-reveal
Why is Herr Starmer silent on these crimes?