W.J. Astore

Genocide? What Genocide?

A fascinating interview, well worth watching.

Suella Braverman is a Tory MP in Britain. Here she debates a student about Gaza and the ongoing genocide there.

Watching this interview exposes the playbook of Western politicians and the media. It’s about accusing student protesters of antisemitism; of getting them to denounce Hamas; of asking them about Israel’s “right to exist”; of starting the debate with the Hamas attacks on October 7th. Those are the “facts” that matter to the Western media and politicians like Suella Braverman.

Fiona Lali, the student here, does a superb job of focusing on the facts that matter: the roughly 40,000 Palestinians already killed by Israel, the more than 100,000 wounded, the millions displaced from their homes, together with the Western policy of covering for Israel while sending them more weaponry to kill more Palestinians. Those facts don’t seem to matter to the mainstream media, and politicians are careful to ignore them or to dismiss them as “necessary” since Israel has “a right to defend itself.”

Apparently, Fiona Lali is associated with “the revolutionary communist party” and is a critic of capitalism. Perhaps the British establishment believed that she’d come across as a crazy radical. As you watch the interview, you realize Lali is the rational “conservative” in that she’s trying to conserve the lives of Palestinians while arguing for free speech and a system that doesn’t exploit the many for the benefit of a few.

I hope Lali is correct that the majority of Britons are against sending more weapons to Israel, though I doubt the Tories in Britain care here.

It’s rather incredible that this Tory MP argues there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza and that the real issue is antisemitism and Israel’s right to exist.