Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of the genocide — just as they earlier coordinated on their support for the slaughter

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, Western publics are now being served up a different — but equally deceitful — narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel’s programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West’s Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada — key US allies — erupted last week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

They called Israel’s plans to level the last fragments of Gaza still standing “disproportionate”, while Israel’s intensification of its months-long starvation of more than two million Palestinian civilians was “intolerable”.

The change of tone was preceded, as I noted in these pages earlier this month, by new, harsher language against Israel from the Western press corps.

The establishment media’s narrative had to shift first, so that the sudden outpouring of moral and political concern at Gaza’s suffering from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — after more than a year and a half of indifference — did not appear too abrupt, or too strange.

They are acting as if some corner has been turned in Israel’s genocide. But genocides don’t have corners. They just progress relentlessly until stopped.

Managing any cognitive dissonance
The media and politicians are carefully managing any cognitive dissonance for their publics.

But the deeper reality is that Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of Israel’s genocide in Gaza — just as they earlier coordinated their support for it.

As much was conceded by a senior Israeli official to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper. Referring to the sudden change of tone, he said: “The past 24 hours were all part of a planned ambush we knew about. This was a coordinated sequence of moves ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels, and thanks to joint efforts by our ambassadors and the foreign minister, we managed to moderate the outcome.”

The handwringing is just another bit of stagecraft, little different from the earlier mix of silence and talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. And it is to the same purpose: to buy Israel time to “finish the job” — that is, to complete its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Why the wall of silence on the Gaza genocide is finally starting to crack.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/F6cORhk5vN

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 16, 2025

The West is still promoting phoney “debates”, entirely confected by Israel, about whether Hamas is stealing aid, what constitutes sufficient aid, and how that aid should be delivered.

It is all meant as noise, to distract us from the only pertinent issue: that Israel is committing genocide by slaughtering and starving Gaza’s population, as the West has aided and abetted that genocide.

With stocks of food completely exhausted by Israel’s blockade, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC last Tuesday that some 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without immediate aid reaching them.

The longer-term prognosis is bleaker still.

A trickle of aid
Last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to let in a trickle of aid, releasing five trucks, some containing baby formula, from the thousands of vehicles Israel has held up at entry points for nearly three months. That was less than one percent of the number of trucks experts say must enter daily just to keep deadly starvation at bay.

Last Tuesday, as the clamour grew, the number of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza reportedly climbed to nearly 100 — or less than a fifth of the bare minimum. None of the aid was reported to have reached the enclave’s population by the time of writing.

Netanyahu was clear to the Israeli public — most of whom appear enthusiastic for the engineered starvation to continue — that he was not doing this out of any humanitarian impulse.

This was purely a public relations exercise to hold Western capitals in check, he said. The goal was to ease the demands on these leaders from their own publics to penalise Israel and stop the continuing slaughter of Gaza’s population.

Or as Netanyahu put it: “Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators [in the US] . . . they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger.”

Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was even clearer: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the [Gaza] Strip.” He also spoke of “cleansing” the enclave.

Western publics have been watching this destruction unfold for the past 19 months — or at least they’ve seen partial snapshots, when the West’s establishment media has bothered to report on the slaughter.

Systematically eradicated everything
Israel has systematically eradicated everything necessary for the survival of Gaza’s people: their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water systems and community kitchens.

Israel has finally implemented what it had been threatening for 20 years to do to the Palestinian people if they refused to be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. It has sent them “back to the Stone Age”.

A survey of the world’s leading genocide scholars published last week by the Dutch newspaper NRC found that all conclusively agreed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most think the genocide has reached its final stages.

This week, Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s main centrist party and a former deputy head of the Israeli military, expressed the same sentiments in more graphic form. He accused the government of “killing babies as a hobby”. Predictably, Netanyahu accused Golan of “antisemitism”.

The joint statement from Starmer, Macron and Carney was far tamer, of course — and was greeted by Netanyahu with a relatively muted response that the three leaders were giving Hamas a “huge prize”.

Their statement noted: “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable.” Presumably, until now, they have viewed the hellscape endured by Gaza’s Palestinians for a year and a half as “tolerable”.

David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary who in the midst of the genocide was happy to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu, opined in Parliament last week that Gaza was facing a “dark new phase”.

Convenient interpretation
That’s a convenient interpretation for him. In truth, it’s been midnight in Gaza for a very long time.

A senior European diplomatic source involved in the discussions between the three leaders told the BBC that their new tone reflected a “real sense of growing political anger at the humanitarian situation, of a line being crossed, and of this Israeli government appearing to act with impunity”.

This should serve as a reminder that until now, Western capitals were fine with all the other lines crossed by Israel, including its destruction of most of Gaza’s homes; its eradication of Gaza’s hospitals and other essential humanitarian infrastructure; its herding of Palestinian civilians into “safe” zones, only to bomb them there; its slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children; and its active starvation of a population of more than two million.

The three Western leaders are now threatening to take “further concrete actions” against Israel, including what they term “targeted sanctions”.

If that sounds positive, think again. The European Union and Britain have dithered for decades about whether and how to label goods imported from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The existence of these ever-expanding settlements, built on stolen Palestinian territory and blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, is a war crime; no country should be aiding them.

In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that it must be made clear to European consumers which products come from Israel and which from the settlements.

In all that time, European officials never considered a ban on products from the settlements, let alone “targeted sanctions” on Israel, even though the illegality of the settlements is unambiguous. In fact, officials have readily smeared those calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel as “Jew haters” and “antisemites”.

Playing us for fools
The truth is that Western leaders and establishment media are playing us for fools once again, just as they have been for the past 19 months.

“Further concrete actions” suggest that there are already concrete actions imposed on Israel. That’s the same Israel that recently finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest. Protesters who call for Israel to be excluded from the competition — as Russia has been for invading Ukraine — are smeared and denounced.

When Western leaders can’t even impose a meaningful symbolic penalty on Israel, why should we believe they are capable of taking substantive action against it?

Last Tuesday, it became clearer what the UK meant by “concrete actions”. The Israeli ambassador was called in for what we were told was a dressing down. She must be quaking.

And Britain suspended — that is, delayed — negotiations on a new free trade agreement, a proposed expansion of Britain’s already extensive trading ties with Israel. Those talks can doubtless wait a few months.

Meanwhile, 17 European Union members out of 27 voted to review the legal basis of the EU–Israel Association Agreement — providing Israel with special trading status — though a very unlikely consensus would be needed to actually revoke it.

Such a review to see if Israel is showing “respect for human rights and democratic principles” is simple time-wasting. Investigations last year showed it was committing widespread atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the British Parliament, Lammy said: “The Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary.”

More serious “concrete actions”
There are plenty of far more serious “concrete actions” that Britain and other western capitals could take, and could have taken many months ago.

A flavour was provided by Britain and the EU on Tuesday when they announced sweeping additional sanctions on Russia — not for committing a genocide, but for hesitating over a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ultimately, the West wants to punish Moscow for refusing to return the territories in Ukraine that it occupies — something Western powers have never meaningfully required of Israel, even though Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories for decades.

The new sanctions on Russia target entities supporting its military efforts and energy exports — on top of existing severe economic sanctions and an oil embargo. Nothing even vaguely comparable is being proposed for Israel.

The UK and Europe could have stopped providing Israel with the weapons to butcher Palestinian children in Gaza. Back in September, Starmer promised to cut arms sales to Israel by around eight percent — but his government actually sent more weapons to arm Israel’s genocide in the three months that followed than the Tories did in the entire period between 2020 and 2023.

Britain could also stop transporting other countries’ weapons and carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. Flight tracking information showed that on one night this week, the UK sent a military transport plane, which can carry weapons and soldiers, from a Royal Air Force base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv, and then dispatched a spy plane over Gaza to collect intelligence to assist Israel in its slaughter.

Britain could, of course, take the “concrete action” of recognising the state of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain have already done — and it could do so at a moment’s notice.

Turning Israel into a pariah state
The UK could impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers. It could declare its readiness to enforce Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, if he visits Britain. And it could deny Israel access to sporting events, turning it into a pariah state, as was done to Russia.

It could announce that any Britons returning from military service in Gaza risk arrest and prosecution for war crimes.

And of course, the UK could impose sweeping economic sanctions on Israel, again as was done to Russia.

All of these “concrete actions”, and more, could be easily implemented. The truth is there is no political will to do it. There is simply a desire for better public relations, for putting a better gloss on Britain’s complicity in a genocide that can no longer be hidden.

The problem for the West is that Israel now stands stripped of the lamb’s clothing in which it has been adorned by Western capitals for decades.

Israel is all too evidently a predatory wolf. Its brutal, colonial behaviours towards the Palestinian people are fully on show. There is no hiding place.

This is why Netanyahu and Western leaders are now engaged in an increasingly difficult tango. The colonial, apartheid, genocidal project of Israel — the West’s militarised client-bully in the oil-rich Middle East — needs to be protected.

Endless, mindless recitations
Until now, that had involved Western leaders like Starmer deflecting criticism of Israel’s crimes, as well as British complicity. It involved endlessly and mindlessly reciting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and the need to “eliminate Hamas”.

But the endgame of Israel’s genocide involves starving two million people to death — or forcing them out of Gaza, whichever comes first. Neither is compatible with the goals Western politicians have been selling us.

So the new narrative must accentuate Netanyahu’s personal responsibility for the carnage — as though the genocide is not the logical endpoint of everything Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for many decades.

Most Israelis are on board, too, with the genocide. The only meaningful voices of dissent are from the families of the Israeli hostages — and then chiefly because of the danger posed to their loved ones by Israel’s assault.

The aim of Starmer, Macron and Carney is to craft a new narrative, in which they claim to have only belatedly realised that Netanyahu has “gone too far” and that he needs to be reined in. They can then gradually up the noise against the Israeli prime minister, lobby Israel to change tack, and, when it resists or demurs, be seen to press Washington for “concrete action”.

The new narrative, unlike the worn-thin old one, can be spun out for yet more weeks or months — which may be just long enough to get the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza either over the finish line, or near enough as to make no difference.

That is the hope – yes, hope – in Western capitals.

New make-believe narrative
Starmer, Macron and Carney’s new make-believe narrative has several advantages. It washes Gaza’s blood from their hands. They were deceived. They were too charitable. Vital domestic struggles against antisemitism distracted them.

It lays the blame squarely at the feet of one man: Netanyahu.

Without him, a violent, highly militarised, apartheid state of Israel can continue as before, as though the genocide was an unfortunate misstep in Israel’s otherwise unblemished record.

New supposed “terror” threats — from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran — can be hyped to draw us back into cheerleading narratives about a plucky Western outpost of civilisation defending us from barbarians in the East.

The new narrative does not even require that Netanyahu face justice.

As news emerges of the true extent of the atrocities and death toll, a faux-remorseful Netanyahu can placate the West with revived talk of a two-state solution — a solution whose realisation has been avoided for decades and can continue to be avoided for decades more.

We will be subjected to yet more years of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” finally being about to turn a corner.

Other supremacist, genocidal monsters
Even were a chastened Netanyahu forced to step down, he would pass the baton to one of the other Jewish supremacist, genocidal monsters waiting in the wings.

After Gaza’s destruction, the crushing of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will simply have to return to an earlier, slower pace — one that has allowed it to be kept off the Western public’s radar for 58 years.

Will it really work out like this? Only in the imaginations of Western elites. In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swathes of Western publics will be a far trickier task.

Too many people in Europe and the US have had their eyes opened over the past 19 months. They cannot unsee what has been live-streamed to them, or ignore what it says about their own political and media classes.

Starmer and co will continue vigorously distancing themselves from the genocide in Gaza, but there will be no escape. Whatever they say or do, the trail of blood leads straight back to their door.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

The Israeli military changed its story many times about why its forces killed 15 medical workers and then buried them and their vehicles to hide the evidence. After their initial claim that the medical vehicles were approaching “suspiciously” without their emergency lights on was disproven by video evidence, they then called the whole thing a big mistake.

Sure, who among us has not accidentally massacred 15 medical workers and buried them and their vehicles in a shallow grave from time to time? We’re only human, mistakes happen.

Asked by the press about Israel’s latest war crime scandal, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes blamed the whole thing on Hamas, saying, “Hamas uses ambulances and more broadly human shields for terrorism.

A cellphone video has revealed that the IDF’s claim about ambulance lights being off was false after they shot and killed 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza.

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/shQRATG4kc

— AF Post (@AFpost) April 5, 2025

“President Trump understands the impossible situation this tactic creates for Israel and holds Hamas entirely responsible.”

Netanyahu could live stream himself eating a Palestinian baby and telling the camera “I am eating this baby because I love genocide,” and the next day Trump’s podium people would be responding to questions from the press by shrieking “HAMAS!” with their fingers in their ears.

Israeli’s ‘innocent mistake’    Video/Audio: Caitlin Johnstone

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To be helpful I have written some headlines the Western press can use to frame Israel executing 15 medical workers in the most positive light possible:

“Fifteen medical workers pause rescue duties following bullet-related incident”

“Rescue workers, vehicles found in shallow grave after perishing for mysterious and unknowable reasons”

“Israeli forces appear to be suspected of possibly accidentally firing on ambulance staff by mistake, perchance”

“Medical workers killed by IDF, says Hamas-affiliated United Nations”

“IDF assists medical workers in locating scene of latest massacre in Gaza”

“Jews in New York City feeling unsafe, unsupported in wake of latest Israel controversy”

“IDF to launch investigation into alleged IDF oopsie-poopsie in Gaza”

“The universe is an ineffable mystery; objectivity is a myth and our finite primate brains were not evolved to comprehend any ultimate truths about absolute reality in its naked form”

“Gunshots heard in the Middle East. A flashing siren. Innocence no more.”

“IDF hunted and slaughtered 15 healthcare workers and buried them and their vehicles to try to cover it up, please don’t fire me, that’s what happened, I’m just trying to do my job”

❖

Not taking a position on Gaza is taking a position on Gaza. One you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life.

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The mass media are giving so much more attention to this past weekend’s anti-Trump protests than they ever gave the anti-genocide protests because that is their job. It’s their job to amplify opposition between the two mainstream parties while marginalising those who oppose the crimes of both.

Movements which keep people plugged in to the two-party sock puppet show will always be amplified and encouraged, while movements which highlight the abusiveness of the US empire regardless of who happens to be in office will always be ignored at best and smeared at worst.

That’s why we’ve seen so much attention go into Trumpism and anti-Trumpism while genuine anti-war movements struggle to get off the ground, and while pro-Palestine demonstrators are slandered as anti-semitic terrorist supporters.

As long as people can be herded into supporting either of the two mainstream parties against the other, they are fully plugged in to the artificially manufactured worldview which protects the interests of oligarchy and empire. When people draw attention to the tyranny and abuse of the US empire itself without getting drawn in to the two-handed puppet show of party politics, they unplug their minds from this worldview the propagandists have worked so hard to plug them in to.

As long as enough people are either screaming “Trump!” or “Not Trump!”, the empire’s crimes can continue unimpeded. Only when people stop clapping along with the puppet show and start fighting against the empire itself will there be real change in a positive direction.

This means opposing the abuses that are advanced by both parties like war, genocide, militarism, imperialism, capitalism, Zionism, and authoritarianism. Until then their political energy will keep being steered in directions which pose no threat to the powerful, like we’re seeing with these anti-Trump protests.

❖

I’ve been seeing a lot of antiwar Trump supporters finally starting to admit that they were duped, and beginning to turn against him. I won’t join the voices slamming them for supporting Trump in the first place; I’ll only say welcome aboard, and congrats on being better people than everyone else who voted for Trump.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

A new narrative is being aggressively pushed by Israel and its apologists to justify resuming the Gaza genocide, conveniently just as an important deadline for ceasefire negotiations draws near.

The Israeli “Defence” Force (IDF) is now claiming that the Israeli children Kfir and Ariel Bibas “were both brutally murdered by terrorists while being held hostage in Gaza, no later than November 2023.”

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told the press on Friday that, “Contrary to Hamas’ lies, Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered by terrorists in cold blood.

“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys, they killed them with their bare hands. Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

Anyone who has been following the events in Gaza over the last year and a half will be unsurprised to learn that Israel provided no evidence to support these incendiary claims.

Benjamin Netanyahu released a video statement in his signature American English waving around an enlarged photograph of the children and talking about what savage monsters the Palestinians are.

“Hamas murdered them in cold blood,” Netanyahu says, while the camera zooms in on the adorable little redheads. “As the prime minister of Israel, I vow that I will not rest until the savages who executed our hostages are brought to justice. They do not deserve to walk this earth.

“Nothing will stop me. Nothing.”

Sabotaging ceasefire negotiations
This happens just as Netanyahu has been working to sabotage ceasefire negotiations by adding new non-starter demands that were not in the original agreement, just as sources in Israeli media predicted he would do upon his return from Washington earlier this month.

The six-week-long first stage of the ceasefire deal with Hamas is set to expire at the beginning of March next weekend

This is obvious babies-on-bayonets atrocity propaganda, being released at the most convenient of times. After Israel has been caught lying about beheaded babies and mass rapes and so much more, only an idiot would take any of these claims on faith.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Today is a tragic day. It’s a day of boundless sorrow, of indescribable pain.

Four-year-old Ariel Bibas, his baby brother one-year-old Kfir and 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz were brutally murdered by Hamas savages. pic.twitter.com/7TMchvOZ9E

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) February 21, 2025

But it’s doing the job. Now everywhere you look you’ll see Israel supporters calling to end the ceasefire and reignite the Gaza holocaust to avenge these innocent children. I just saw an article from Tablet Magazine titled “Their Time Is Up,” subtitled “The murder of the Bibas children caps off an 18-month catalog of horrors that has told us exactly who our Palestinian neighbors are.

“Backed by a friend in the White House, Israel must secure its future through strong unilateral action.”

Most likely cause of death
All this despite the fact that we know the most likely cause of the children’s death was the fact that their own government was raining military explosives on places where hostages were being held during that time.

Hamas reported back in November 2023 that the Bibas children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike along with their mother. In December 2023 it was reported in the mainstream press that Hamas had offered to return their bodies to Israel but Israel had refused, telling the press that “Israel will not address propaganda-based reports coming from Hamas”.

You don’t need to trust Hamas or anyone else to deduce that a woman and two children being killed by Israeli airstrikes in an area where many women and children were being killed by Israeli airstrikes every day is a much more likely scenario than Palestinian resistance fighters spontaneously deciding to murder children with their bare hands instead of using them as negotiating leverage as planned.

As journalist Muhammad Shehada recently noted on Twitter, Israel already has an established track record of lying about Hamas killing hostages who were actually killed in Israeli airstrikes.

In December 2023, Israel informed the families of three hostages that they had been murdered by Hamas. The mother of one of the hostages kept digging and eventually discovered that they had died of asphyxiation when IDF troops “gassed” the tunnel they were hiding in.

Last September, the IDF admitted that they had killed the hostages in an airstrike and lied about it.

Three weeks ago Shehada correctly predicted in an article with Zeteo that Israel was preparing to use the Bibas deaths as an excuse to terminate the ceasefire, long before any of this started.

Shehada noticed the way pro-Israel narrative managers had been pushing the line that great vengeance must be exacted upon Gaza if it turns out the Bibas children have been harmed, despite Hamas having announced their deaths more than a year ago.

They knew those children were dead, so after the ceasefire was announced in late January they began circulating the narrative that discovery of their demise would be a valid reason to end it.

🚨BREAKING | Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian children, ages 12 and 13, in the illegally occupied West Bank today. Both were reportedly shot in the back. https://t.co/6iqVf7Nasg

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 21, 2025

Israel forces shoot dead 2 Palestinian children
Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian children in the West Bank just yesterday  —  both of them shot in the back. You could be forgiven for not knowing that this happened, because the Western political/media class has been too focused on the deaths of two little white kids to pay attention to such trivialities.

Israel needs to keep “discovering” new Hamas atrocities from 2023 because otherwise it just looks like one-sided atrocities being committed by Israel this whole time. First it was beheaded babies, then later it was “We’ve discovered Hamas did mass rapes!”, and now it’s the Bibas kids.

They need to do this because the Hamas attack was the last time anything happened where Israel could frame itself as the victim, so they’ve been milking it and milking it and milking it for as long as possible while committing orders of magnitude worse abuse in Gaza.

It’s all designed to drum up outrage, and to draw sympathy toward Israel and away from the obvious victims who Israel has been abusing, displacing and mass murdering for a year and a half.

As calls to rain vengeance upon Gaza grow louder, remember this: the Bibas kids aren’t the reason, they’re the excuse. The excuse to advance pre-planned agendas against the Palestinians that have been in place since long before those children were born.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.