Document:Dear Mr Starmer, we fact-checked your 7 Oct statement. You’re welcome
| "Appalling mix of regurgitated and already-discredited lies with grotesque one-sidedness" |
blog post by Editor dated 7 October 2024Subjects: Keir Starmer, 10-7, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, IDF, Hamas, Hannibal Directive
Source: SKWAWKBOX (Link)
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Dear Mr Starmer, we fact-checked your 7 Oct statement. You’re welcome
Sir Keir Starmer’s statement today on the anniversary of the Hamas raid on southern Israel was a regurgitation of Israeli atrocity propaganda that has already been disproven, mixed with omissions of known facts about Israel’s killing of its own people during the raid and a one-sidedness that treats the mass murder of Palestinians by Israel as some kind of natural disaster.
Skwawkbox fact-checked it for him – we’re sure he’ll appreciate the help.
Contents
‘Over a thousand people were brutally murdered’
This is not actually true – the final death toll was revised down last December to 695[1] – but Mr Starmer also omits the fact that an ‘immense’ number of those killed, especially at the Nova music festival, were brutally killed by their own military. This is a fact that has for many months been openly discussed by the media in Israel – with the frank admission in July that Israeli forces spent much of 7 October repeatedly attacking their own citizens – but which UK media and politicians stubbornly ignore because it wrecks the narrative used to justify Israel’s slaughter, maiming and starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
‘Men, women, children and babies’
A number of children were killed during the raid and this is a tragedy – though again it is not known how many of them were killed by Israel’s own forces, although it is known that at least some were, including a young girl used by Israel for propaganda purposes, who was killed along with her brother and older relatives by tank shelling ordered by an Israeli commander who knew they were in the house.
But Starmer’s language of brutality, mutilation and torture seems designed to invoke Israel’s claims of beheaded babies and sexually mutilated women – none of which happened. See the next item.
Mr Starmer also omits to mention the at least eight hundred children murdered and many thousands maimed by Israel so far during its genocide in Gaza.
‘Rape, torture and brutality’
The United Nations investigated Israel’s claims of rape by Hamas and its allies during the 7 October raid. It found that there was no claim that was supported by evidence and some that were provably false – all the claims were either ‘unfounded’ or ‘unverified’ and what little ‘evidence’ Israel claimed to present was demonstrably ‘inaccurate’ or at best ‘unreliable’. The UN’s investigators, both women, ‘could not verify any sexual violence:
Israeli women who were taken captive during the raid and later released have reported being treated like ‘queens’, while others have remarked on how they were treated well by, and often fed better than, their captors.
Similarly, investigations found that claims of mutilation were either entirely made up – as in the case of the ‘forty beheaded babies’, babies ripped from their mother’s womb, babies cooked in ovens and women’s breasts being severed – or else were the result of misinterpretation of the position and condition of burned bodies (who can only have been burned by IDF weaponry). The supposed photographic evidence of a dead woman with her ‘stomach ripped open, baby umbilical connected by umbilical cord’ turned out to be a fridge with its electrical cord trailing. ‘Witnesses’ who later came forward claiming to have seen the atrocities in question had earlier been interviewed in print and on camera without mentioning them – and one supposedly traumatised onlooker posted selfie videos on the day in which he looked cheerful and made no mention of them.
These complete falsehoods were, and continue to be, avidly repeated by politicians and media in the UK despite having been disproven. Keir Starmer did so again today. Mr Starmer did not mention the torture, rape and brutality that has provably taken place – that of Israeli occupying forces toward arbitrarily-detained Palestinian prisoners and hostages, including the rape and execution of women and families, the rape and maiming of men and the execution of bound captives.
Of UK media, only the Times, on a single occasion, has admitted that the ‘Hamas rape’ narrative is unfounded.
Starmer’s antisemitism
Starmer says we must ‘unequivocally stand with the Jewish community’, which seems to treat all Jews as if they hold the same opinion and to assume that they all support Israel. This is racist and palpably false – many Jews oppose and are appalled by Israel’s slaughter of as many as 200,000 Palestinians and its terrorism in Lebanon and are prominent in protests against them. The UK media have, of course, helped to sell the lie that all UK Jews have one opinion, for example the BBC notoriously removing a header image from an article about an anti-genocide protest that showed an anti-Zionist Jewish group’s banner.
Racist one-sidedness
While Starmer lists at length the supposed atrocities perpetrated on (but never by) Israelis, his language changes completely when he finally gives a small nod to Israel’s victims, in an omission of fact that is just as deeply vile and egregious as the repetition of the disproven falsehoods. These civilians, he says, are simply:
- bear[ing] the ongoing dire consequences of this conflict,
as if this is some kind of unavoidable natural disaster. In reality, the civilian victims of Israel’s genocide are dying, starving and being maimed because of the conscious, intentional and fully aware choices of Israel, the occupier and oppressor – and because of the complicity of national politicians like Keir Starmer, his Foreign Secretary David Lammy and countless others on his front bench and among US, German, French and other lawmakers.
Ceasefire
This is the most naked cynicism imaginable. Starmer calls for a ceasefire and the free flow of humanitarian aid – but omits that the violence is happening because Israel is committing it and the aid is not getting through – a clear war crime – because Israel is blocking it and western governments know it.
There you go, Mr Starmer. We fixed your statement for you, no charge. We hope you appreciate the effort, but somehow we doubt it.
