When journalists speak to politicians, the last thing we expect is the truth; still less an admission that the politician has made a mistake.
So my hopes were not high when I rang Alistair Burt to say that I planned to lacerate him over his failure to censure Israel for the slaughter of Palestinians during the 2018 Great March of Return.
Burt, who back then served as Britain’s Middle East minister, did not respond as expected.
There was a slight pause. Then he replied: “I know exactly what I did. I know why I did it. And it’s grim. I have thought about this a lot.”
Burt then cited the case of Razan al-Najjar, the young paramedic shot dead by an Israeli sniper. He told me that she was “clearly targeted and murdered by the Israelis”.
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This was obvious at the time – but it had never before been said by Burt or any other British minister.
More remarkable still, Burt went on to accuse the Israelis of conducting a bogus inquiry into her death. He said that Israeli investigations “were effectively useless and used as a cover by the Israelis for the killing”.
To prove his point, Burt cited another killing by the Israeli army in the village of Nabi Salih in the occupied West Bank. In 2011, an Israeli soldier shot a tear gas canister directly into the face of Mustafa Tamimi while he was protesting against the theft of water by settlers.
Burt told me: “We called for an investigation. I was promised there would be a response. Nothing. I do not recall that there was any answer at all.”
False assurances
Readers of this column are entitled to respond that it’s long been obvious to any informed observer that Israeli inquiries into the deaths of Palestinians are worthless, and a way of avoiding international criticism and meaningful action.
It is nevertheless momentous that a former British minister, one held in high respect by former colleagues, has spelled this out in public.
Right from the start of the slaughter in Gaza, today regarded by most experts and human rights observers as a genocide, British ministers have taken cover behind false Israeli assurances.
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In December 2023, with Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians and razing of entire neighbourhoods on full display, Labour MP Richard Burgon urged the government to call for an immediate ceasefire. His evidence was powerful and damning.
“Human Rights Watch has warned that the Israeli government are using the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in Gaza,” he said. “Let us be clear: that is a war crime. Amnesty has similarly warned of war crimes, as has the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
Speaking for the Tory government, Andrew Mitchell (Burt’s successor) chose to dismiss these urgent messages from the world’s most respected human rights organisations, complacently reassuring MPs that the government had “heard the words of President [Isaac] Herzog that Israel will respect international humanitarian law” and expected Israel “to abide by the words of the president”.
This is part of a pattern of British complicity in Israeli atrocity denial. Again and again, Israeli assurances have turned out to be empty
Since then, the Israeli army has committed countless more war crimes and atrocities. It is as obvious today that Mitchell was gravely mistaken to rely on Herzog’s word as it was two years ago.
Yet there’s been no word of complaint from any British government minister that they have been misled. On the contrary, two months ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited Herzog into Downing Street. Incredibly, Starmer has never acknowledged that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, despite a mountain of evidence.
This is part of a pattern of British complicity in Israeli atrocity denial. Again and again, Israeli assurances have turned out to be empty.
Does anyone remember the horrific killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, along with several relatives, as they tried to flee fighting in Gaza City on 29 January 2024?
Israeli forces shot at their car hundreds of times. In an audio recording of a phone call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Hind’s cousin, Layan Hamada, described Israeli tanks approaching, before her screams were cut off by gunfire.
Shifting accounts
The Israeli army claimed that it had nothing to do with the killings, stating that none of its troops were in the vicinity at the time.
But investigations by Forensic Architecture and Al Jazeera, corroborated by the Washington Post, established that an Israeli tank was nearby at the time of the killings.
Gaza medic killings: How a voice from beyond the grave destroyed Israel’s lie
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Remember the Rafah massacre this past March? Some 15 aid workers, including eight paramedics, were shot dead by the Israeli army while responding to an attack in southern Rafah. The bodies were then buried in a mass grave, along with their bulldozed ambulances.
The Israeli military initially claimed the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” towards Israeli troops without headlights or emergency signals. They said they opened fire because the vehicles posed a threat, baselessly claiming that a Hamas operative and “eight other terrorists” had been among those killed.
A surviving paramedic gave an account confirming that the ambulances’ lights were on and that they were clearly identifiable. Video footage recovered from one of the killed medics’ phones also showed the clearly marked ambulances with flashing emergency lights when they came under fire.
Israel changed its account, admitting it had been “mistaken”.
Fabrications unchallenged
Remember the November 2023 raid on al-Shifa hospital? The Israeli army presented a graphic depicting a vast underground Hamas command-and-control centre, and alleged that it was connected to the hospital, making al-Shifa a legitimate military target.
The list of Israeli fabrications just goes on and on – and the British government chooses not to challenge them.
For the last two years, the mainstream media has gone out of its way to amplify Israeli denials. Even when it doesn’t lead with Israeli versions of events, the BBC almost always gives them considerable prominence.
At the same time, it tends to cast doubt on the Palestinian story; for example, by signalling scepticism over the level of Palestinian deaths, with references to the “Hamas-run” Gaza health ministry. (In reality, most experts think that the health authority figures are an underestimation, rather than an inflation of the death toll.)
This raises a devastating question: given Israel’s proven record of twisting or denying the truth, why should the British government trust its ministers – and why should media organisations like the BBC treat with respect statements from a source notorious for its dishonesty?
Abu Akleh killing
It’s not as if false Israeli denials are a new thing. On 11 May 2022, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Shireen Abu Akleh was executed to send a message to Palestinians
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In the immediate aftermath, Israeli officials shared an unverified video and said that Palestinian militants were likely responsible for Abu Akleh’s death. An Israeli probe later found that Abu Akleh had either been killed by Palestinian gunfire, or accidentally hit by Israeli crossfire.
The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem swiftly debunked the Israeli account, providing evidence that the location of the Palestinian gunfire depicted was nowhere near where Abu Akleh was killed.
There are so many comparable cases. If I had space, I would tell the stories of the slaughter of four children playing on a beach in Gaza; the Gaza Freedom Flotilla killings; Israel’s use of white phosphorus; the Israeli army’s killing of British filmmaker James Miller in May 2003; and the fatal shooting of activist Tom Hurndall as he tried to rescue Palestinian children coming under fire in Rafah.
All these cases involve Israeli deception – and there are so many others.
Smear campaign
I end by returning to Najjar, shot dead by the Israeli army while volunteering to help those injured at the 2018 Gaza border protests.
The Israeli army initially claimed that no shots were “deliberately or directly aimed” at her, and released a heavily edited video attempting to portray Najjar as a “human shield” for Hamas. The video appeared to show Najjar throwing a tear-gas canister, and an Israeli military spokesperson tweeted that she was “not the angel of mercy Hamas propaganda is making her out to be”.
These attacks were widely criticised for clipping and taking Najjar’s words out of context; in a previous interview, she had referenced acting as a “human shield of safety” to protect and rescue the injured, not to cover for militants.
Burt’s statement smashes the omerta among British ministers that has protected Israel for many years. He’s set an example that others need to follow
Forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts established that Najjar was hit by a single bullet to the chest that exited through her back. Multiple investigations found that she “did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to [Israeli forces] when she was shot”.
Najjar was murdered in cold blood by an Israeli sniper. Israel then produced a fake denial and spread a series of unspeakable lies about her. British ministers were taken in by Israeli assurances. Some critics say they have chosen to be taken in.
There’s been plenty of criticism of Alistair Burt since I published my interview in my book Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza.
One critic says he should never have believed Israel in the first place. Another asks why he didn’t speak out earlier.
There is force in these criticisms, but I also think that Burt showed moral courage in talking to me at all. He’s an intelligent man and would have been keenly aware that he would be pilloried. But he has thought deeply about his role; he’s not done the easy thing and walked away, and he’s admitted he was wrong. That takes guts.
More important by far, Burt’s statement smashes the omerta among British ministers that has protected Israel for many years. He’s set an example that others need to follow.
The murder of Najjar and the other examples I’ve cited above demonstrate a pattern.
Israel commits an atrocity. When journalists report it Israel falsely denies involvement, sometimes fabricating evidence to confuse the issue further. British ministers take these Israeli statements seriously and suspend criticism, while western media give them credibility.
This tactic takes the steam out of the story. Later on the Israel account turns out to be false, but by then the world has lost interest. This happens so regularly that it feels to me like it may be a standard operating procedure for Israeli officials.
Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer, who occupies the post Burt did during the Great March of Return, in addition to Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, all need to call out Israel’s atrocities for what they are.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
