Dispatches: Children of Gaza

The following comment was posted by me on the C4 website following the broadcast of Jezza Neumann’s documentary Dispatches: Children of Gaza.

Congratulations to Jezza Neumann for making this unusually honest film about the realities of Israel’s criminal war against the Palestinian people. To find a programme like this on mainstream British television is exceptionally unusual, given the British state’s backing of Israel.

The British government and British corporations fund and arm Israel; they give it preferential trade treatment and they give it diplomatic and propaganda support, which normalises and apologises for Israel’s crimes.

We in Britain are all complicit if we don’t stand up against the war criminals. We should refuse to make or move the arms that are sold to Israel; refuse to write or broadcast propaganda that portrays Israel as justified in its behaviour. We should join the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions by refusing to buy Israeli goods and by cutting all links with Israel. Make links with Palestinian communities instead and break down the walls of isolation that Israel is attempting to impose.

The Viva Palestina convoy in December was a massive story all over the world, but the press in the USA and Britain totally ignored it. This is no accident; it’s a deliberate blackout policy. Britain needs Israel to help intimidate the oil-producing governments of the Middle East. This means our government and the corporate and media moguls don’t care what crimes Israel commits; and they don’t want us to know about them.

Hence the media blackout. Hence the BBC trying to pretend that showing the DEC appeal for Gaza was ‘political’. Hence the outrageous criminalisation of young people who protested against the war crimes being committed when Israel was bombarding Gaza last year. Hence the plans to change the law so that Israeli war criminals can travel to Britain with impunity.

This makes it all the more welcome to find a programme like tonight’s Dispatches on Channel 4. Thank you.

And now it’s time to start telling the truth on the news, too. Talk about the illegal occupation when you talk about Palestine. Talk about the ethnic cleansing. Talk about ‘occupied Palestine’, not ‘southern Israel’. Explain that the Palestinians’ right to resist the illegal occupation of their country by a colonial power is enshrined in international law (just as the French had the right to resist Nazi occupation). Talk about Israel’s war crimes. Talk about the deliberate targeting of unarmed civilians by the fourth-largest army in the world. Talk about the destruction of schools and hospitals, the demolition of houses, the bulldozing of farmland, the shooting of fishermen, and the pollution of the land. Talk about babies and children dying due to lack of medical equipment. Talk about babies miscarrying or being born with deformities because of the pollution caused by Israel’s illegal chemical weapons. Talk about the slow strangulation of a people by the illegal and barbaric siege!

Broadcasting pro-Israeli propaganda is a war crime; it’s time we held our media to account for its role in these crimes. Channel 4: you’ve shown that you can broadcast truthful information about Palestine when you want to; please now have the courage to take this further and stop broadcasting lies that help Israel to continue with its dirty work.