AS THE Prime Minister, the mainstream British media and pro-Israel groups claimed to be horrified at comments by musicians Bob Vylan and Kneecap during the Glastonbury music festival last weekend, hundreds more Palestinian civilians were killed and wounded by Israel in Gaza, to little notice from the legacy media and little comment from politicians.

Many of the victims of the past few days were killed or wounded at the so-called “aid stations” run by the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) as they tried to find food amid Israel’s four-month blockade of aid.

Just one day before the manufactured moral panic over the Glastonbury chants, Israeli newspaper Haaretz carried admissions from whistleblowing Israeli soldiers at the GHF stations that their superior officers routinely order them to shoot civilians, including families with young children, coming to the stations for food even though the troops know that they pose no threat.

While the anger of pro-Israel groups over Glastonbury have been in every media outlet, it is hard to find a single mention of the soldiers’ confessions on the BBC or any other British mainstream news site or channel. 

As independent MP Adnan Hussain said: “Personally, I find genocide way more offensive than how an artist chooses to express their anger over said genocide,” but it would be hard to discern any hint of such a priority in the media coverage.

With the exception of a single World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) convoy that managed to get past the blockade last week, the only aid available in Gaza since the beginning of March is through the handful of GHF stations. These stations are run by US mercenary groups (or, as the US government calls them, “military contractors”) on behalf of Israel, guarded by Israeli troops.

Arguably we are talking about the weaponisation of starvation and turning food aid into a death sentence.

Israeli forces, under the banner of “crowd control,” have transformed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food distribution sites into killing fields. The orders were clear: “You use gunfire to direct people from one location to another,” as an Israeli soldier confessed to Haaretz

Thus, these stations are, according to human rights groups, strategically positioned to force the people of Gaza to abandon most of the areas they still cling to if they want any hope of food, forcing starving people to make long marches and concentrating them into even smaller areas, acting as a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing” and a “dangerous, politicised sham” that “entrenches and legitimises the very structures of control that are responsible for cutting Gaza off from food, fuel, and medicine.”

The “aid” distributed by these stations is, according to media reports, doled out during a single hour each day, creating panic and chaos as people scramble for food for themselves and their starving families, often under fire as they try to leave carrying whatever they have been able to grab.

Almost 600 people have been killed by Israeli troops at GHF stations and almost 4,200 wounded, with others unaccounted for. The dangers are exacerbated by the presence, according to Israeli opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman, of Israeli-armed and sponsored armed gangs, reportedly Isis-linked, which have also attacked civilians and stolen food.

So grave is the situation and so consistent are Israel’s attacks that the UN humanitarian affairs chief called any attempt to obtain food a “death sentence” for refugees: “The attempt to survive is being met with a death sentence. What we are seeing is carnage. It is weaponised hunger. It is forced displacement. It’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive. All combined, it appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life from Gaza.”

The atrocities have been so extreme that GHF founder Jake Wood, a former US marine, quit as chief executive in May, saying that the organisation’s objectives were incompatible with “the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, which I will not abandon.” After Swiss humanitarian organisations asked the Swiss government to investigate GHF for breaches of international law, the organisation — at the time registered in Switzerland — moved all its operations to the US. However, the calls for action did not end with the move. The US Centre for Constitutional Rights has sent GHF a formal legal notice of its likely liability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Despite this, US President Donald Trump then allocated $30 million in government funding to GHF and publicly called on other governments to provide their own financial support directly to the group. Reuters has reported that the US may increase its funding to $500m.

As noted, a single World Food Programme convoy made it into Gaza last week, reaching the WFP warehouse. Angered by this breach of its monopoly on food, the Israeli government attacked the WFP move, claiming falsely that Hamas was stealing the aid despite statements from the WFP and footage confirming that the convoy reached its warehouse intact. The Netanyahu government quickly announced that it would allow no further convoys, supposedly because of this “risk,” reimposing Israel’s absolute stranglehold on food and the “death sentence” forcing desperate Palestinians to keep approaching GHF facilities despite the deadly danger.

Exploiting this, the Israeli occupation forces announced new forced displacement orders. The surviving population of Gaza was already confined to just 18 per cent of the Gaza Strip, with almost 700,000 displaced again since March. That tiny territory, divided into three enclaves, has now shrunk even further while the Israeli military occupied the rest and continues to bomb the tiny so-called “safe zones” into which the Palestinians have been concentrated.

Keir Starmer has described Israel’s actions as “intolerable,” but continues to take little meaningful action to prevent them, while the UK maintains its existing relationship with Israel. Even the recent sanctions imposed on far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, announced in response to their incitement of violence, are limited in scope, consisting mainly of travel bans and asset freezes.

There is no indication that these measures will affect broader UK-Israel trade or the ongoing arms relationship between the two countries. The Israeli Ministry of Defence remains a major investor in and contractor with Israeli weapons companies such as Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Elbit Systems, all of which have received substantial contracts from the ministry during the current conflict. Despite this, Britain continues to license and export military components and technology to these same companies, sustaining the flow of arms and military co-operation between the UK and Israel

The time for words and hand-wringing was over the moment Israel launched its genocide on the people of Gaza, but while the people of Gaza have suffered and been starved, maimed and murdered for almost two years, most Western governments — including Britain’s — continue to take no meaningful action even when their citizens, or in the UK’s case a British-registered ship, are attacked and pirated by Israeli forces.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla has said it is organising another ship and a Malaysian group is reportedly organising a massive fleet of a thousand vessels to sail to Gaza to break the siege, but intervention in the extermination of Gaza cannot be left to unarmed civilian groups, no matter how resolute and brave.

Our rally cry is clear — Britain must immediately demand the lifting of Israel’s blockade on Gaza to allow unrestricted humanitarian aid, suspend all arms exports and military co-operation with Israel, and impose targeted sanctions on officials responsible for violence against Palestinian civilians.

The UK should recognise Palestinian statehood alongside international partners, support independent investigations into war crimes at Gaza’s aid sites, and lead diplomatic efforts for a just, negotiated settlement that guarantees security and rights for both Palestinians and Israelis. Anything less perpetuates ongoing genocide, complicity in collective punishment and mass civilian suffering.

If the British government can find its voice to condemn a chant at Glastonbury, it can find its voice to order the navy to intervene and secure a humanitarian sea corridor to Gaza and to defend itself against any Israeli aggression — and can call on other governments to join it. The UK and all signatories to the Genocide Convention are legally obliged to do nothing less, to do everything in their power to prevent or end genocide. This has always been clear and Israel’s cynical exploitation of its stranglehold on food and other essentials for life in Gaza only makes it even clearer.

Claudia Webbe was MP for Leicester East (2019–2024). You can follow her at  https://www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE/ and https://x.com/claudiawebbe