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Tom London

@TomLondon6

May 4

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OPEN LETTER TO THOSE IN THE UK WHO ARE SILENT ON GAZA

Chapter one - INTRODUCTION

This is the first of ten chapters examining what is happening in Gaza and why we must speak up. The situation in Gaza is an abomination and the UK Government is supporting and enabling it. The fate of two million people – around half of whom are children - trapped in Gaza and being starved and bombed to death is obviously a moral issue of the first order. In addition, as I argue later (in chapter 9), there will inevitably be extremely grave consequences for us all and it is absolutely in our self-interest to speak up now.

The further chapters (each a maximum of 1,000 words) will be: -

2. I am Jewish and for almost fifty years I was a Zionist
3. It is correct to call this a genocide and doing so has significant consequences
4. The role of Hamas and the war crimes it committed on 7 October
5. How Israel seeks to justify its actions in Gaza
6. Israeli propaganda now and over decades
7. How UK media has manufactured consent for genocide. Or, at least, manufactured silence
8. Why are so many decent people in the UK silent?
9. Why we should not be silent, not only morally but in our own self-interest
10. What can we actually do about it?

Two million of our fellow human beings are living and dying in Hell on earth in Gaza. Whilst continuing to bomb Gaza’s civilians, Israel has imposed a total siege of drinking water, food, medical supplies, electricity. Everything.

Huge bombs, designed to cause maximum deaths indiscriminately, rain down on the besieged, dehydrated and starving people. An expert in the field has said that the Israeli bombing of Gaza is “equivalent to six Hiroshimas”.

Gaza has been pulverised. The UN estimates that nine out of ten homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombs or bulldozers. At least a million and a half people have been driven from their homes to one bombarded tent camp after another, only to be bombarded again. Almost all medical facilities and infrastructure have been destroyed.

No one knows the numbers of the dead and injured to date, but experts agree that the current figures issued by the Gaza Health Ministry are an underestimate. In mid-April 2025 their figures were over 51,000 deaths and over 116,000 serious injuries.

Some 70% of those certified dead were women and children. Israel has killed more than 20,000 children in Gaza. On average, a child has been killed by Israel every 30 minutes since October 2023. Approaching 1,000 of the dead were babies killed before reaching their first birthdays.

Amongst the still living are more than a thousand child amputees. Like all patients in Gaza, including women having Caesareans, many have been operated on without anaesthetic. Israel blocked anaesthetics entering Gaza.

Thousands and thousands of children in Gaza have terrible life-long injuries: spinal injuries, brain injuries and profound psychiatric injuries.

Israel has targeted medical staff and journalists. Over 1,000 medical staff have been killed. No international journalists are allowed into Gaza. Israel has killed 211 Palestinian journalists.

A genocide is taking place in Gaza. Not a war. The term “genocide” is legally defined in the Genocide Convention 1948. I explain (in chapter 3) why what is happening in Gaza fits the legal definition. This matters because under the Genocide Convention, once a genocide has been identified, states have a duty to do everything they can to stop it. Instead, states like the UK are actively enabling it.

Israel’s actions in Gaza have been described as the world’s first “live-streamed genocide”. Those who follow events online see babies and children starving and the aftermaths of terrible massacres. On and on and on. These images of unimaginable horror are corroborated by eyewitness testimonies and in the sober reports of bodies such as the UN, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Israeli and Palestinian human rights NGOs.

Israel denies it is committing a genocide or is doing anything wrong. It claims it is acting in legitimate self-defence and is targeting Hamas. I examine these claims in chapter 5.

The genocide in Gaza has coincided with commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of survivors from Nazi death camps in the Holocaust. The juxtaposition of Western politicians and media declaring “Never Again” at Holocaust events while they are supporting and enabling the genocide in Gaza has been troubling and revelatory.

No genocide can ever take place without the perpetrators dehumanising their victims. The dehumanising rhetoric used by the Israelis against the Palestinians is shockingly similar to that used by the Nazis against the Jews.

I never thought I would see a genocide, carried out in plain sight, backed by the UK Government. I could not imagine that the British public would allow it. However, those at the top of the major parties in England – Labour, Tory and Reform – all resolutely support the genocide (although obviously they would not put it in those words). None of the institutions of civil society are publicly opposing it.

I am Jewish. A large number of Jews in the UK and worldwide strongly oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. I look at Judaism and Zionism (in chapter 2).

If enough people demand it, then the hope is that our government can be forced to stop supporting and enabling the genocide in Gaza and to apply the necessary pressure to Israel and/or the US to stop the genocide. Obviously, this might well not work but I hope to persuade you that it is necessary to try.

Please consider forwarding this and subsequent chapters to people you know and more widely. Please send to your MP. I am sure a properly informed electorate would not support this abomination.

Chapter two of OPEN LETTER TO THOSE IN THE UK WHO ARE SILENT ON GAZA

SOME ESSENTIAL BACKGROUND AND A LITTLE ABOUT ME

I am a 63 year old British Jew. I am secular. I am proud of being Jewish.

Judaism was an important part of my childhood. It was full of family, stories, and rituals which I loved. The weeks and months were marked by Friday Night family meals and so many festivals. At Seder Night, for years as the “youngest capable”, I recited Ma Nishtana. At 13, I was Bar Mitzvahed. A huge event for me.

I knew about Israel from a very young age. My father told me about the miracle that the Jews has returned to live in Israel after 2,000 years. I remember being ecstatic when “we” won the Six Day War. I have been to Israel five times.

I was a Zionist for some years after my childhood. I supported whatever Israel did, right or wrong, like people support their own countries or their football team.

What follows is some essential background to understand what is happening in Gaza now.

In 1948, in the war that broke out after the withdrawal of the British mandate, the state of Israel established its independence whereas the Palestinians suffered their first Nakba (Catastrophe) with hundreds of their villages and towns erased and resettled by Israelis, while over 750,000 Palestinian refugees were driven from their land.

Many escaped to Gaza, where they mostly lived in crowded refugee camps. They or their descendants are now facing a second Nakba.

Israel/Palestine in 2025 is divided into four parts: “Israel proper”, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

“Israel proper” is the land within the 1948 to 1967 borders. In 1967, Israel conquered the other three parts: East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel, illegally under international law.

The West Bank has been under military occupation since 1967, again illegally under international law. Palestinians in the West Bank have no civil rights, no freedom of movement or speech. Their lands and water sources are taken over by Israeli settlements and they suffer constant violence at the hands of settlers, army and police.

The situation in Gaza was similar to that in the West Bank until 2005 when Israel withdrew its soldiers from Gaza. What followed was a brutal blockade by land, air and sea, amounting to the continuation of occupation through harsh control of water, power, entry and exit of people and goods. In 2010, David Cameron, then UK prime minister, called Gaza the world’s largest open air prison.

Jews are defined in Israeli law and privileged above non-Jews in many ways. There is an apartheid system in Israel – see the Amnesty Report or Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Judaism is some 4,000 years old whereas Zionism is a nationalist movement and is some 150 years old.

Many Jews are not Zionists. Marek Edelman was a Polish Jew and the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He opposed Zionism. His definition of a Jew was: “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed, never with the oppressors.”

Many of the strongest supporters of Zionism are not Jewish. Many are Christian Zionists in the US and elsewhere or far right Islamophobes in Europe and in India.

Opposing Israel’s violence has become detrimental to holding a position of power in the West. The most important reason for this is that Israel is seen by the US as an essential military ally. American elites see the interests of Israel as identical with the US’s own interests.

Western elites’ support of Zionism has long been motivated by Holocaust guilt (Germany and others for perpetrating it and US & UK and others for not doing enough to save Jews). It is also constantly reinforced by powerful Israel Lobbies.

Israel decided very early as a matter of policy to insist that criticising Israel should be equated with Antisemitism. They sought to make Israel above criticism and have succeeded to an extraordinary degree.

Noam Chomsky, a Jewish American academic, described the advice given by highly influential Israeli statesman Abba Eban to the American Jewish community in the 1950’s. Eban told them that they had two crucial tasks to perform:

1. To label anyone who is anti-Zionist as an anti-Semite.
(Eban meant by “anti-Zionist”, anyone criticising the policies of Israel.)

2. If the person who is criticising Israel’s policy is Jewish, then they should be labelled as suffering from neurotic self-hatred, needing psychiatric treatment.

Criticising the actions of Israel is not antisemitic, but Israel and its allies will constantly insist it is. This tactic is effective in making decent people stay silent.

It was only 10 years ago that I became certain that I was not a Zionist. I could not be one, as I want the same human and civil rights for Israeli Jews and for Palestinians in all four parts of Israel/Palestine.

I support Israel’s right to exist but not in its current form as an apartheid state. Just as Nelson Mandela said apartheid South Africa had no right to exist.

10 years ago, I met an elderly Palestinian woman who told me how, when she was seven, her family were forced out of their home in Jerusalem. The house was stolen. They were forced out of the country and can never return. By contrast, any Jew has the right to go to Israel and to be granted immediate citizenship.

I also met a Palestinian man then who told me about planned protests in Gaza. They would be non-violent like Mahatma Gandhi. I followed those protests online when they happened. They were called the Great March of Return. Week after week in 2018 and 2019, unarmed Palestinians marched to the perimeter fence around Gaza, protesting. Israeli soldiers shot them through the fence. Over two hundred were killed. Many thousands suffered life-changing injuries.

Shooting unarmed protestors. In a foretaste of the UK media coverage of the genocide now, these shocking events were ignored or downplayed in the UK media.

Chapter three of OPEN LETTER TO THOSE IN THE UK WHO ARE SILENT ON GAZA

IT IS CORRECT TO CALL THIS A GENOCIDE AND DOING SO HAS SIGNIFICANT CONSEQUENCES

It matters whether what Israel is doing in Gaza is recognised to be a genocide. This is not an academic debate. The label “genocide” has significant real world consequences, or it should have, depending on the strength of international law after it has been treated with such contempt by Israel, the US and others.

Once genocide is established, the British government would have a duty in international law not only to stop all military and other assistance to Israel but also to take actual positive steps to stop the genocide.

Genocide is defined in the Genocide Convention 1948.

DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE

Genocide means any of the following acts, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Note the word “any” in the first sentence. The perpetrator only needs to carry out one of the five acts listed. Israel has, in fact, carried out four of the five, the only exception being the last act listed (e).

To prove genocide, you have to prove intent. This is usually the hardest element to prove. After all, who is going to say out loud that they have genocidal intent? The answer in this case is the Israelis. Netanyahu and others in authority have publicly expressed genocidal intent.

The intent does not need to be to destroy every member of a group. The definition refers to “in whole or in part”. In 1995, Bosnian Serbs massacred between 8,000 and 9,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. This horrific event meets the definition under the Genocide Convention and is accordingly classified as the Srebrenica Genocide,

Raphael Lemkin was a Jewish Polish lawyer who coined the word “genocide” in 1944, as set out in Philippe Sands’ acclaimed book East West Street. In a genocide, people are killed not because of any individual characteristics but because they belong to a particular group.

The culmination of Lemkin’s work to establish the crime of genocide was the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by the UN in 1948. This is often referred to as The Genocide Convention, which obscures a crucial word in the full title, “Prevention”.

Lemkin wanted to prevent genocides. The Genocide Convention was specifically intended to do that. States are not expected to wait for a court to rule whether there is a genocide (by when everyone may be dead) but to make that assessment themselves. If they decide that a genocide is under way, then they have a positive duty to prevent it.

States are obligated to “prevent and to punish” genocides and those committing them.

Currently South Africa is bringing a case at the world’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), against Israel alleging that they are carrying out a genocide.

It is significant that it is post-apartheid South Africa doing so. Nelson Mandela recognised that the apartheid imposed on Palestinians was worse than that imposed on the Black population in South Africa. He said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

The ICJ was not asked to make a judgement on whether Israel was carrying out a genocide. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and the court’s final decision is not expected for years. However, the court did find that there was a prima facie case that Israel was committing genocide. This has generally been reported as a “plausible case of genocide”.

The evidence that Israel is committing a genocide is overwhelming. See the reports of Amnesty, United Nations Special Committee, numerous leading lawyers and human rights experts, and many experts in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Josep Borrell was the EU foreign policy chief between 2019 and 2024. He has now labelled Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.

Below, I quote at some length from an online post by Israeli Professor Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He says that a genocide is taking place in Gaza and that there is “mass denial” of what is in plain sight.

“I have researched the Holocaust and genocides for nearly 30 years.

I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

October 7th… was a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Within weeks of Israel’s response thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes… I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin … what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide.

[There needs to be intent] and indeed there are clear indications of intent: the prime minister, the defence minister, many high-ranking soldiers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open …

A radical atmosphere of dehumanisation of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society.

This is exactly what a genocide looks like.

We don’t teach about genocides in order to realise it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

So yes, this is a genocide. And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

Read 8 tweets

Tom London

@TomLondon6

Jan 7

EXTRACTS from
WHY SOCIALISM? by Albert Einstein, an article published in the US magazine May 1949

1/

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

2/

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society

3/

Read 15 tweets

Tom London

@TomLondon6

Dec 30, 2024

Extracts from "Exterminate All the Brutes" by Sven Lindqvist

The title comes from "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Book is about genocides carried out by European colonialists who (despite their high-flown rhetoric) considered indigenous peoples inferior or non-human
1/

Hannah Arendt showed how racism is central to imperialism, colonialism, occupation

#Gaza #WestBank

2/

Arendt: "wild murderings" & "terrible massacres" of European imperialists were responsible for "the triumphant introduction of such means of pacification into ordinary, respectable foreign policy"

Lindquist: "European shameless defence of extermination"

#GazaGenocide

3/

Read 69 tweets

Tom London

@TomLondon6

Nov 26, 2024

"When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds.
When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n____ so there won't be any more like him"
- James Baldwin

"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world"
- James Baldwin

"It's no credit to this enormously rich country that there are more oppressive, less decent governments elsewhere. We claim superiority of our institutions. We ought to live up to our own standards, not use misery elsewhere as an endless source of self-gratification and justification. Of course, people tell me all the time in the West that they are trying, they are trying hard. Some have tears in their eyes and let me know how awful they feel about the way our poor live, our blacks, or those in dozens of other countries. People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street"
- James Baldwin

Read 7 tweets

Tom London

@TomLondon6

Apr 24, 2024

Extracts from "Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims" by Edward Said (1979)

Very little is said about what Zionism entailed for non-Jews who happened to have encountered it; for that matter, nothing is said about where (outside Jewish history) it took place, and from what in the historical context of nineteenth-century Europe Zionism drew its force. To the Palestinian, for whom Zionism was somebody else's idea imported into Palestine and for which in a very concrete way he or she was made to pay and suffer, these forgotten things about Zionism are the very things that are centrally important.

Edward Said (continued)

Present political and cultural actualities make...an examination extraordinarily difficult, as much because Zionism in the postindustrial West has acquired for itself an almost unchallenged hegemony in liberal "establishment" discourse, as because in keeping with one of its central ideological characteristics, Zionism has hidden, or caused to disappear, the literal historical ground of its growth, its political cost to the native inhabitants of Palestine, and its militantly oppressive discriminations between Jews and non-Jews.

Edward Said (continued)

The special, one might even call it the privileged, place in this discussion of the US is impressive, for all sorts of reasons. In no other country, except Israel, is Zionism enshrined as an unquestioned good, and in no other country is there so strong a conjuncture of powerful institutions and interests-the press, the liberal intelligentsia, the military-industrial complex, the academic community, labor unions-for whom [...] uncritical support of Israel and Zionism enhances their domestic as well as international standing

Read 8 tweets

Tom London

@TomLondon6

Mar 12, 2024

“It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“...we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. ... the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

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