Israel is a state that has proved time and time again that it can quite literally get away with murder

Martin Shipton

Like everyone else, those people who profess little interest in politics or world affairs will find themselves having to pay 13% extra on their energy bills from July.

If they take the trouble to engage in some joined-up thinking, they will follow a trail that leads to some dark truths about how our democracy has been subverted.

The cause of the energy price rises is described blandly by many news outlets as “the war in the Middle East”. In reality, of course, the specific reason for the price increases is the interruption of supply caused by the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a 104-mile stretch of water connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and LNG exports pass.

The Strait was closed in response to the joint attack on Iran by the United States and Israel – an attack that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, had been trying to orchestrate for years.

Netanyahu has relentlessly pushed the line that Iran harbours an ambition to develop nuclear weapons that it would use to destroy Israel.

Iran has always denied wishing to develop nuclear weapons, and in 2015 signed an agreement with the US, the UK, Russia, China, Germany and the EU in which it committed not to do so. It would be allowed to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes in return for inspection by international observers and an easing of sanctions.

It was working well, but Trump was elected president in November 2016 and tore up the agreement. This year, in his second term, he was persuaded by Netanyahu to jointly attack Iran with Israel. So, with Trump as the enabler, we have Israel to thank for the latest increase in energy costs.

If we go on to analyse what Israel now represents, we are drawn to some extremely unpalatable conclusions.

On May 28 2026 the running death toll in Gaza stood at 72,851, of whom 20,179 were children, 12,500 were women, 1,701 were medical personnel, 463 had starved to death and 262 were journalists. The number wounded stood at 172,894.

Whenever a guest on a TV news programme in the UK mentions the word “genocide”, they are interrupted by the presenter and told that Israel rejects the notion that it is engaging in genocide.

And yet in addition to the sheer numbers involved, the clear evidence of residential properties being targeted, the footage of people being shot dead as they queue for food, there is compelling testimony from witnesses who have been in Gaza in a professional capacity.

Professor Nick Maynard, a volunteer surgeon from Oxford who was working in a Gaza hospital, told Middle East Eye: “I was called to the operating theatre by one of my guards and surgical colleagues who had a 12 year-old boy on the operating table, and he’d been shot. It had gone through his aorta. He was dying. They couldn’t stop the bleeding, so they asked for my help. I couldn’t stop it either. He died on the operating table under our hands. Awful.

“His family told us he’d come with them – they were all starving and all very weak. So the young teenage boys are sent out, because they’re the strongest, to get the food. And he’d been shot by an Israeli soldier there. They’d witnessed this. There was a similar story from all the victims’ families, from those that survived, from the victims themselves, from guards and health care workers who went to these food sites in order to get food for their families. They all described the same things – how these young teenage boys were being shot by Israeli soldiers.

“They had noticed how there were different body parts being targeted on different days at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution points. Other emergency room doctors and nurses I knew corroborated that 19 young teenage boys had all come in one day, all of whom had been shot in the head and neck. Nowhere else, just the head and neck. Another day they came in predominantly with chest injuries. Another day they came in predominately with abdominal gunshot wounds. And we noticed this. I started speaking to my fellow surgeons in the operating theatres and we all noticed this pattern as well.

“On one day, the Saturday before I left to come home to England, four young teenage boys were brought in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles, nowhere else. The pattern of injuries that we all witnessed was so striking that it was clearly beyond coincidental. And it seemed to us that there was a game of target practice.”

War crimes

Monstrous war crimes like this have been documented and will be used in evidence at The Hague if a trial of Israeli leaders ever goes ahead. Meanwhile the United States has vindictively sanctioned judges from the International Criminal Court who have issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others, somehow persuading banks to nullify their credit and debit cards, thus making it very difficult for them to live their normal lives.

Recently dozens of pro-Palestine activists on a flotilla of boats taking aid to Gaza were hijacked in international waters by the Israeli military, forcibly removed to Israel and humiliated in front of cameras by the extremist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a snarling sadist who regards Palestinians as sub-human. After their release the activist hostages spoke of how they had been tortured by Israeli soldiers, threatened with being shot and sexually assaulted.

‘Appalled’

Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said she was “truly appalled” by a video proudly released by Ben-Gvir, adding: “It violates the most basic standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated.

“We have demanded an explanation from the Israeli authorities and made clear their obligations to protect the rights of our citizens and all those involved.”

Even Netanyahu issued a statement saying Ben-Gvir had gone too far, but clearly his transgression wasn’t seen as too egregious, because he remains the National Security Minister and the UK continues to supply weapons to Israel. So far as I am aware, none of the dozens of Labour MPs who are members of Labour Friends of Israel have resigned from the group in protest against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Sadly, opinion polling in Israel shows that the great majority of its citizens have little sympathy for Palestinians, whose land continues to be stolen by colonial settlers. Vox pop interviews show Israelis saying that all Palestinians should be killed and there is footage of Israelis visiting a viewpoint to gloat as they survey the destruction that has been wrought on Gaza.

The ongoing war did not start on October 7 2023, when Hamas militants crossed the border into Israel and massacred more than 1,000 civilians. It began in 1948 when troops from the newly declared state of Israel stole the homes and land of many thousands of Palestinians.

Propagandists

Pro-Israel propagandists wield huge influence in Britain, as they do in the US. It’s their pressure that resulted in Palestine Action being proscribed as a terrorist organisation, with the consequence that severely disabled and very elderly protesters have been arrested for peacefully displaying placards that oppose genocide.

Meanwhile no action has been taken against the estimated 2,000 British citizens who went to participate in Israel’s genocidal invasion of Gaza.

The energy price rises that await us in July will have a knock-on effect on other spending too, adding to the continuing cost-of-living crisis. It’s no comfort to know that at the root of the increases lies Israeli impunity.

It’s a state that has proved time and time again that it can, quite literally, get away with murder.