Outrage after Keir Starmer says Israelis were 'massacred' but Palestinians 'lost their lives'
Outrage after Keir Starmer says Israelis were 'massacred' but Palestinians 'lost their lives'
UK prime minister paid tribute to British nationals murdered by Hamas but did not acknowledge Israeli brutality
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been criticised after publishing a statement on Wednesday night which welcomed the ceasefire in Gaza but recalled the "massacre of Jewish people" while saying that Palestinians "lost their lives".
The contrasting language used to describe Israelis and Palestinians killed in the conflict has been a constant source of scrutiny with activists arguing that the deaths of Palestinians are downplayed by media outlets and government.
Points of contention have been not mentioning the perpetrators of Palestinian deaths, which is invariably Israel, and also using the passive voice when talking about those killed.
Middle East Eye has contacted Downing Street to ask how the prime minister believed the Palestinians he referred to had died. At the the time of publication, Downing Street had not responded.
Middle East Eye is being quite deceptive here. It's interesting they don't give Starmer's full quote, only snippets that they framed in a certain way.
Here's what was actually said by Starmer:
After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for. They have borne the brunt of this conflict – triggered by the brutal terrorists of Hamas, who committed the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023.
When he said "lives lost" he was talking about people from Israel and Palestine, not just Palestine, you can see that in the quote.
When he said "They" we was talking about the citizens of both Israel and Palestine. You can see that in the quote.
He said that Hamas committed a massacre on the 7th of October - which is literally and unambiguously correct. They attacked indiscriminately at a music festival. You can see that in the quote.
I'm so tired of people equating Hamas and Palestine. They are not the same thing no matter what Middle East Eye says. It's very possible to stand with the people of Palestine, as I do, while also hating a terrorist institution that is based there. Frankly I think the view that Hamas and Palestinian are the same thing is racist.
We don't automatically class Irish as being IRA, so why are some insistent that we do that with Hamas and Palestinians? It's perfectly reasonable to dislike Hamas, given that they are literally a terrorist group.
This entire article completely misrepresents what was actually said. No wonder they avoided showing his actual quote.
If your view is that Starmer should have called out Israel on war crimes then thats one thing, and completely fair IMO, but this? Publishing straight-up lies? That's not journalism, that's pedalling misinformation. I'd never expectMiddle East Eye to not have some bias, but falsifying quotes is disgusting.
Ok, but that doesn't address the key point. He referred to the death of Israelis as a "massacre", while referring to the far, far greater number of deaths caused by a far, far more organised and well-equipped army (in addition to the small number of Israeli deaths post–7th October) as merely "lives lost". Why is the most well-organised genocide of the 21st century not worthy of the "massacre" moniker? Or even better, why not call it what it is: targeted genocide.
Downplaying it by lumping it in with Israeli deaths (which works entirely against the argument you're trying to make, btw) and saying it's just "lives lost" is insulting to the tens of thousands of Gazans slaughtered by the Israeli genociders.
Also: using terrorist tactics doesn't make you the bad guys. Not when you're doing it to overthrow oppressors. We don't call the black South Africans during apartheid terrorists today, though there many many attacks that could deserve that moniker. The original Irish republicans from 1919 don't get called terrorists. Nor do American revolutionaries—and the oppression they were fighting against was orders of magnitude less than what Palestinians face today. I might wish Hamas used more carefully-targeted attacks, but no one who actually thinks it through and who has basic morals can in any way end up on the side of them being the bad guys here.
He referred to the death of Israelis as a "massacre",
No no no. Please read his quote.
He referred to the October the 7th killings as a massacre - and it objectively was. He didn't refer to anything else as a massacre. He referred to all deaths in the war as "lives lost" - be they Israeli or Palestinian.
Also: using terrorist tactics doesn't make you the bad guys.
I'm sorry, to me, if you go to a music festival with the intention of killing as many civilians as possible, you are a bad person.
Clearly you feel that in some situations that's fine, but I don't, and I will never deviate from that opinion. Purposely killing unarmed civilians is wrong no matter who does it, no matter how just they feel their cause is.
Yes, Israel is absolutely committing genocide, but that doesn't mean shooting people at a concert is ok, and I'm very concerned people think civilians are fair targets so long as they're Israelis.
People are so amped up that's it's impossible to discuss certain topics with being willfully misunderstood. All to assign people a side in the conflict.
I think you're exactly right.
It's impossible to discuss this in any reasonable sense because you'll just get dismissed as a pro-genocide Nazi by some people and as a Jew-hating Nazi by the other.
God forbid I have the opinion that mass-murdering civilians at a music festival is morally wrong and so is working to wipe out people in Gaza.
Apparently only one can be wrong and I have to celebrate the other! And if an extremely deceptive article get published, I have to ignore the lies and claim that it's 100% true, but only if they agree with my side.
Honestly this comment section is depressing. It's like seeing climate change deniers. Nobody seems to care about what actually happened, they care about whether the way it was falsely framed pushes their worldview or not.
What? Logic and reality? That's not allowed on Lemmy! Israel is literally Hitler but also the holocaust never happened!
/s for the idiots
Pull your tongue out of Netanyahu arse, Keir. Dogs do that.
Asshole.
Nobody ever lost a British election for supporting Israel.
They definitely lost one for being a terrorist Hamas sympathiser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbyn_wreath-laying_controversy
corbyn lost an election because he was the only leader to successfully improve membership and vote share among young people by coming out against inequality and the billionaire media felt threatened so they had to destroy him
Honestly, I voted for him, and I liked his domestic policies.
But it does seem he has tankie leanings, so with Russia on the warpath it's probably for the best he didn't get in.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine
The antisemitism thing (and there was plenty of it at the councillor level) has long been a stick for the media to hit Labour with, so I can see why Starmer would want to stay the fuck away from it even if I don't agree with it.
Sometimes, doing the right thing is more important than the politically convenient thing.
Genocide is one of those times.
As your link clearly explains, he was accused of "terrorist" sympathies because he lay a wreath at the graves of members of PLO (unaffiliated with Hamas) killed in Israeli airstrikes, in a cemetery that also contains the graves of some members of Black September, an freedom fighting organisation also unaffiliated with Hamas.
Unfortunately, racist wastes of copulation like yourself are allowed to vote despite being too fucking stupid to read.
I'm sure the corporate plutocracy and conservative propaganda had nothing to do with it... them boots taste like shit yet?