The symbolism of the official photographs from Isaac Herzog’s meeting with Keir Starmer was unmistakable.
The Israeli president, who blamed all Palestinians in Gaza for the 7 October attacks, and has supported Israel’s two-year genocidal war, was welcomed by the UK prime minister to Downing Street.
Starmer shook hands with Herzog on the doorstep of Downing Street, and was pictured sitting at a table inside the prime minister’s residence, with the flags of each country behind them.
Outside protesters expressed the widespread revulsion and outrage felt by millions in the UK that our government continues to support a state committing a live-streamed genocide that has likely killed and injured at least 238,000.
According to Ipsos Mori polling, the UK public think, by 49 percent to 10 percent, that Starmer has done a bad job on the Palestinian issue. Excluding the “don’t knows”, three quarters of the UK general public say Israel’s military actions in Gaza have gone too far; 13 percent say it is about right; and 11 percent say not far enough, proof that genocide is fine with a hard core of right-wing voters.
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Standing with Israel
The message was clear.
Starmer is saying that Britain stands foursquare behind Israel, and that any disagreements and any actions by Israel will not affect the alliance.
Public revulsion at the slaughter, ethnic cleansing and starvation in Gaza be damned.
This extraordinary act of political support for a state facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice will not be forgotten
This extraordinary act of political support for a state facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice will not be forgotten.
It came in a week when Israel ordered one million people in Gaza City to evacuate when they have nowhere to go, while bombs rained down, and over 50 residential towers were destroyed by Israel. Tens of thousands face starvation under Israeli siege.
This is ethnic cleansing not seen in Palestine since the Nakba of 1948.
It came a day after Israel bombed UK ally Qatar, killing six people, including five Palestinian members of the Hamas negotiating team in Doha.
It came in a week in which Israel bombed six countries: Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Qatar and Tunisia (where a drone struck the lead ship in the Sumud Flotilla while in Tunisian waters on its way to Gaza). It is difficult to grasp the scale of this aggression, since there is no recent historical parallel.
These are the actions of a rogue terrorist state that is addicted to violence, and that now seeks to reorder the Middle East only through force, without recourse to negotiation.
Herzog supports all of this.
Last week Israel killed the prime minister and several cabinet ministers of the government in Sanaa while they sat at a meeting. The UK did not condemn this flagrant violation of international law.
Labour’s genocide denial
This week a letter from former foreign secretary David Lammy revealed the Labour government’s view, in defiance of hundreds of eminent genocide scholars, that Israel is not committing, or intending to commit, genocide in Gaza.
This judgement is disingenuous and clearly politically motivated. UK government lawyers must be squirming knowing that this letter puts them in the firing line of future war crimes court cases.
Herzog’s UK visit should lead straight to The Hague
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The meeting on Wednesday in Downing Street also destroys any impact from recent statements by Starmer and Lammy condemning Israeli actions in Gaza, and proves what many suspect: these were simply damage limitation exercises, to protect the UK government from accusations of supporting a genocide.
Wes Streeting, the favourite of the Labour right, put some water between himself and the prime minister when he told Times Radio that Herzog had to be held to account over Gaza. “I think he should explain that, if it is not the intent of the government of Israel to perpetrate genocide or ethnic cleansing, how on earth does he think his Israeli government is going to achieve its stated aim of clearing Palestinians out of Gaza without the war crimes, without ethnic cleansing, or even without genocide?”
Streeting has adopted some pro-Palestine talking points in what appears to be a calculated move to win Labour members’ support ahead of any leadership contest, should Starmer be forced from office as he stumbles from one crisis to the next. It’s a tactic that will not convince those who recall his public support for Israel during the first year of the genocide.
Herzog later spoke at a closed event hosted by the Chatham House think tank in London, as hundreds of anti-war protesters rallied outside. “We had a very frank and open discussion,” he said of his meeting with Starmer. “It was a meeting at which things were said that were tough and strong.”
The UK is due to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN later this month. Neither Herzog, nor the Israeli government, will countenance any Palestinian self government. But it is clear from the official genocide denial of the government, and Starmer’s meeting with Herzog, that this recognition will be close to meaningless.
Myth of moderation
Starmer and Lammy like to maintain the myth that Herzog and other Israeli politicians of the “centre left” are the sensible, moderate wing of Israeli leadership that can be distinguished from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right allies.
This conveniently ignores the fact that the likes of Herzog and Yair Lapid openly support Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, and its ongoing attacks on countries in the region.
David Lammy’s denial of genocide in Gaza is scandalous. He must retract it
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Herzog said of the Qatar attack that the decision “to strike at the top leadership of Hamas terrorism is important and correct”. There is in fact no difference between these leaders on Israel’s “right” to wage unilateral, pre-emptive, war and assassinations wherever and whenever it feels like it.
This is what Starmer is effectively legitimising by meeting Herzog in Downing Street. Starmer has always supported Israel’s so-called “right to defend itself” that is, to wage war against anyone, anywhere.
This includes Israel’s flagrant attack on Iran in June that killed close to 1,000 people and caused huge damage in the midst of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Starmer is known to be close to Herzog; he let slip to the media in February 2024 during an opposition motion on a ceasefire in Gaza that he had been on the phone to the Israeli president to discuss the spoiling motion that Labour put forward.
Starmer and Mandelson
Starmer was only elected to parliament in 2015, joining Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, before standing for leader in 2020 when Corbyn stood down. On his way up he was advised by the likes of Peter Mandelson and former prime minister Tony Blair. He has put his reputation on the line in support of Mandelson, who he appointed to ambassador in Washington, over new revelations of his close friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
When his political obituary is written, the meeting with Herzog, his support for Mandelson, and the state visit of Donald Trump will be on the tombstones
On Thursday, Mandelson was removed following a cascade of intimate letters and emails to his “best pal” Epstein revealed by Bloomberg. But the damage is done: it was hardly a secret that Mandelson was very close to Epstein long before Starmer appointed him to DC.
This is extremely damaging, and in a Westminster where Palestinian lives are not part of the political calculus of the major parties or the media, the Mandelson revelations are the more threatening to the PM.
Starmer appears to see friendship and loyalty to divisive figures such as Mandelson and Herzog as worth expending what remains of his fast-vanishing political capital, which has been draining away steadily over the first year of his troubled premiership.
The common factor in his loyalty to such figures is elite political impunity, thanks to their protected place in the halls of power. This is, after all, Mandelson’s third fall from grace. No doubt Starmer will need this impunity himself some day.
When his political obituary is written, the meeting with Herzog, his support for Mandelson, and the forthcoming official state visit of US President Donald Trump will be the tombstones of his political failure, overwritten by his total disregard for the lives of millions of Palestinians.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
