Channel 4 film sheds new light on UK complicity in Gaza genocide
Twenty-five years have passed since sociologist Stanley Cohen asked a question that remains just as urgent today as it was when he first posed it.
How is it that institutions, governments and ordinary people can know about atrocities, mass killing and human rights abuses, but simultaneously manage to put them out of their minds?
His brilliant study, States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, drew on Cohen’s own reporting of cover-ups, disappearances and torture in his native South Africa. Yet its examination of the ways in which we pretend to ourselves that terrible events are not taking place was broader, taking in Latin America, the Rwanda genocide, the Holocaust, the Middle East and other examples.
Cohen distinguished between the different ways in which politicians, journalists and others have suppressed knowledge of the truth. He identified what he called “literal denial” - the unblinking assertion that crimes are not taking place.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to the United Nations contained numerous examples of literal denial. He said that the ratio of civilian casualties to combatants in Gaza was exceptionally low, that Israel did not block aid to Gaza, and that Hamas should be blamed for shortages.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
He also made the nonsensical assertion that settler violence in the occupied West Bank was down to a “handful of young juvenile delinquents”.
A Palestinian proverb, Yaktheb Al kithbah wa yusadikaha, roughly translates as: “He tells a lie, and then he believes it.” It describes the mental state of someone who has repeated the same falsehood so many times that eventually he or she has come to regard it as fact.
This may explain not just Netanyahu but also the army of apologists who blindly repeat what he says.
Cohen also paid attention to a more sophisticated form of denial which does challenge basic facts, but instead sanitises them in ways that seem reasonable or acceptable. He called this phenomenon “interpretative denial”.
Export licences
Channel 4 recently published an hour-long documentary exploring how British ministers have employed the technique identified by Cohen as “interpretative denial”, to sanction Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
It is obvious to most people that Israel regularly commits crimes against humanity, with the newest Google Maps imagery showing total devastation across the enclave. Yet throughout this period, British ministers have denied Israeli war crimes. How have they managed this level of cognitive dissonance?
The Channel 4 film, Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed, went a long way to providing the answer. Over the past three years, British firms have exported millions of pounds worth of weaponry to Israel while it flattened Gaza and slaughtered civilians.
All those weapons need export licences. Under both domestic and international law, Britain is not allowed to export weapons to any country which it has reason to suspect commits war crimes.
This explains why, for the last three years, the Foreign Office unit that investigates potential breaches of humanitarian law has been busy assessing Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Channel 4 reporter Ramita Navai obtained internal Foreign Office assessments of Israel’s conduct during the early stages of the war, dealing with hundreds of notorious cases. Her investigation shows that again and again, the British Foreign Office failed to hold the Israeli army to account.
It’s not just the government that is guilty of Cohen’s interpretative denial when it comes to the annihilation of Gaza. Most of the British media is equally complicit
Take the case of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl trapped in a car with her dead family after they were shot by Israeli soldiers. She spent three hours on the telephone asking for help. Eventually, permission came for rescuers, but when they did, soldiers shot dead both the rescuers and Hind herself.
Unspeakable and hideous - but the Foreign Office assessors cited insufficient evidence to conclude that Israeli soldiers had breached international law.
Or take the air strike on al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia refugee camp in November 2023, which killed dozens of people, including women and children. The Foreign Office did not label this a war crime, even though the United Nations had clearly marked the school as a shelter for displaced civilians, and its coordinates had been given to the Israeli military.
British officials managed to reach the same conclusion after 48 members of the Elian family were slaughtered in Nuseirat, and after Israel targeted a Medical Aid for Palestinians compound housing four British doctors.
In only one case did the Foreign Office conclude that even a “possible” breach of international law had taken place. This was the Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen charity workers, including three British citizens.
Despatches revealed that even as Israel pledged an “full, urgent and transparent” enquiry into the World Kitchen tragedy, then Foreign Secretary David Cameron was signing off yet another batch of approvals for arms exports - without waiting for the Israeli investigation to be completed.
Convenient findings
There’s little question that these repeated Foreign Office judgments were convenient. Throughout this period, Britain was an enthusiastic ally of Israel, and unwilling to offend the United States.
So was the British legal process twisted in Israel’s favour? Channel 4 suggests it might have been. It secured an interview with Mark Smith, the only British official to have resigned over Gaza.
His comments were devastating: “We’ve all seen the aerial footage of entire neighbourhoods literally flattened to the ground. They’ve destroyed the vast majority of all residential buildings in Gaza. I’ve never seen anything like it in my career, in my life.”
Smith went on: “So, even without being on the team and having access to the assessments being made, I could see, on the news, in broad daylight, with the naked eye, the most appalling attacks taking place on a daily basis. I mean, almost every single school, and almost every single hospital, in Gaza, has been damaged, or destroyed.
“How are we justifying our arms exports? If there is even a question whether domestically or internationally that a state that you are selling arms to might be conducting a genocide, then the time to be discussing whether they might be in breach of IHL is way gone.”
Smith says he stepped down after witnessing “illegality and complicity with war crimes” at the heart of government.
Channel 4 asked William Schabas, a leading human rights expert who comes from a family of Holocaust survivors, to comment on the Foreign Office’s judgement in the Hind Rajab tragedy. He replied: “When a child is killed in this manner, I think there has to be a very strong presumption that normally there cannot be any military justification or explanation for it.”
Channel 4 also spoke to Dearbhla Minogue, a lawyer with the Global Legal Action Network, which alongside the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq, took the UK government to court over its weapons exports to Israel. The groups lost, but the case led to the disclosure of the Foreign Office assessments analysed by Channel 4.
Minogue says that the British government used a rigged methodology which made identifying Israeli violations almost impossible. According to her, the Foreign Office legal team created a Catch 22 situation. In order to prove that a strike violated international humanitarian law, it required exact information on Israeli intentions.
Since Israel refused to provide this information the Foreign Office was unable to reach a conclusion on any incident, meaning that arms sales could continue.
This brings me to a final point.
The Channel 4 investigation has brought into the public domain a mass of fresh information that helps us to understand British complicity in the destruction of Gaza.
Yet I have not found a single mainstream media outlet reporting its revelations. The explanation for this media omerta is simple: it’s not just the British government that is guilty of Cohen’s interpretative denial when it comes to the annihilation of Gaza. Most of the British media is equally complicit.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
