Gaza
Killing the Witnesses
Israel killed Anas al-Sharif because it feared what he could still show the world.
The rest of the blog
Israel killed Anas al-Sharif because it feared what he could still show the world.
Jenrick’s “medieval attitudes” line isn’t about protecting women — it’s about importing the far right’s script into the Tory mainstream. From Powell to Farage, the cast has changed but the grammar is the same: the outsider as danger, the nation as victim, the politician as saviour.
Keir Starmer’s proscription of Palestine Action marks a new stage in Britain’s authoritarian turn, retooling counter-terrorism laws to criminalise dissent, define solidarity as “terrorism”, and dress up political repression as public safety.
Gilbert Achcar’s The Gaza Catastrophe is not a plea for sympathy. It is a political weapon. Written in the midst of genocide, it strips away the euphemisms, the diplomatic theatre, and the moral fog. This war, he argues, is a settler-colonial project. Accelerated to its most brutal form, with the full backing of the Western powers who claim to uphold human rights. Achcar names the system, maps its historical scaffolding, and indicts not only Israel but the global order that enables it. This is not a book of mourning. It is a call to act.
Right to Buy was never just a housing policy. It was a weapon. It stripped councils of their power, turned tenants into property owners, and recast collective provision as individual gain. The result wasn’t freedom but fragmentation: social housing gutted, rents soaring, and the right to strike undermined by the threat of eviction. Thatcher didn’t just sell homes. She sold a new class alignment, and we’re still living in its ruins.
In 1984, we built a nuclear bunker out of cardboard boxes in the corner of our classroom. Each of us brought something for survival—Look-In mags, tins of beans, but no tin opener. Even as kids, we knew it was useless. That was the point. You couldn’t market nuclear war as survivable. Forty years on, the language has changed but the logic remains. The bomb hasn’t gone away, it’s just become background noise. The treaties are gone. The madmen are in charge. And the system that built the bomb still holds it, not to use necessarily, but to remind us who gets to decide if we live.
The modern-day barons don’t run trade unions, they sail £100 million yachts and bankroll governments. Yet it’s the rail cleaner or the guard who’s cast as the threat. What’s truly appalling is not that Eddie Dempsey wants to strike fast, but that workers can’t strike in solidarity with Palestinians, can’t refuse to load weapons bound for Gaza, can’t use their collective strength to win better conditions across sectors. The right fears not chaos—but class power.
The Labour government has not criminalised violence, it has criminalised resistance. Holding a flag, wearing a slogan, even whispering “Palestine” is now suspect. But dropping bombs on children? That’s fine. If that sounds like justice to you, you’re already lost.
While Israel levels Gaza, the Labour government arrests pensioners in Liverpool for carrying a leaflet. Yvette Cooper calls it national security. But what we are witnessing is the suppression of solidarity, the silencing of dissent, and the transformation of protest into a punishable offence. A government that will not name a genocide is quick to jail those who do.
The LA deployment is not a policing measure. It is a political theatre of domination designed to send a message: the state belongs to Trump, the military answers to Trump, and those who oppose him—activists, migrants, dissenters—will be met with force.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is not just an attack on one activist, it is a chilling demonstration of how the state can manufacture criminality in real time, silencing dissent without justification or consequence.
The UK government’s attack on dissent and protest rights echoes a long history of state suppression, revealing a deep fear of the power of a mobilised working class.
From silencing dissent to expanding state powers, the Conservative government is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian agenda that should deeply concern all who value human rights and democracy, argues Simon Pearson. Their inflammatory rhetoric and restrictions on protests, speech, and accountability mechanisms reflect a dangerous slide towards illiberalism.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas has sparked heated debate globally, with some accusing critics of Israel’s actions of being antisemitic. This argues for nuance in understanding the crisis, differentiating between legitimate critiques of state policies and bigotry, and calling for ethical consistency in advocating for human rights on both sides.
On a seemingly ordinary Thursday, at the time-honoured Glyndebourne opera festival, an unexpected interlude of protest emerged. In the sanctuary of the arts, amid the melody of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, a dissenting chorus brought the opera to a standstill. Sparked by the cause of Just Stop Oil, the interruption blended a traditional form of high culture with the pressing concerns of our era. This is the narrative of that day, a symphony of dissent resounding from the grand opera house to the streets of London.
In the vanguard of dissent, demanding justice, a new breed of rebels is rising, and their fight is our fight. Their actions carry the echoes of a movement that stood firm in the face of oppression more than a century ago—the Suffragettes. Today, we draw parallels between these trailblazers and the Just Stop Oil protestors, not to dilute the significance of either struggle but to highlight the enduring power of civil disobedience in the quest for justice.
Amidst the relentless hum of an oppressive state, the silenced voices emerge, defiant whispers cutting through the smoke of the Molotov, a testament to the indomitable spirit of resistance.
