Hypocrisy can't stop condemnation of Israeli offensive

Israeli supporters and officials have condemned numerous statements against the slaughter in Gaza as hypocrisy on the part of British politicians.

Drawing comparisons to Britain and America's invasion of Iraq in 2003 several senior Israeli politicians have called on current and former MP's to retract their comments opposing the blood shed.

Earlier this week former deputy Prime Minister John Prescott brought Israeli anger after accusing the country of war crimes in its ongoing bombardment of the beleaguered region.

Writing in the Mirror Mr Prescott said: "Imagine a country claiming the lives of nearly three times as many as were lost in the MH17 plane tragedy in less than three weeks.

A nation which blasted a hospital, shelled and killed children from a gunboat as they played football on the beach and was responsible for 1,000 deaths, at least 165 of them children, in just two weeks.

Surely it would be branded a pariah state, condemned by the United Nations, the US and the UK. The calls for regime change would be deafening."

Mr Prescott continues by acknowledging the part which the Palestinian authority Hamas has played in the conflict with its rocket attacks on Israeli territory before saying: 

"But who is to say some of the other 20 per cent weren’t innocent too? Israel brands them terrorists but it is acting as judge, jury and executioner in the concentration camp that is Gaza."

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has been among those to call on Israel to stop its attacks, which have hit UN buildings where people were sheltering, amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

 "It is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment. It is leading to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is just unacceptable," he said.

"I really would now call on the Israeli government to stop. They have proved their point. Israel of course retains the right to react. But you cannot see the humanitarian suffering in Gaza now and the very great number of deaths in Gaza without concluding that there is not much more going to be served in Israel's own interests … to see this festering humanitarian crisis get worse. It incubates the next generation of violent extremists who want to do harm to Israel."

Despite the majority of casualties in the conflict being innocent civilians the Israeli government has refused to back down, claiming that Operation Protective Edge is a responsible and proportionate defence of is people, going as far as to say that they "have a policy - we don't target civilians".

The figures tell a different story though. More than 1360 Palestinians, mostly civilian, have been killed since the attacks started on the 8th of July compared to 58 Israeli's, two of whom were civilian. Earlier this week Israeli fire hit a United Nations school, not the first UN building to be attacked, something which Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said they would investigate and possibly "apologise" if they felt it was needed.

On Wednesday the IDF also breached a further ceasefire, claiming that truces only were in place where Israeli forces were not operating, by targeting a market where women and children were trying to gather supplies while they believed they may be safe.

Israel's argument that Britain is being hypocritical in its coverage of the abuse seems to warrant further attention, however. For the claim to be proven then it must by rights acknowledge that it has no legal justification for the level of armed intervention which it is currently engaged in, as many experts have stated was the case with former Prime Minister Tony Blair's engagement in Iraq. Even if this were the case though hypocrisy is no reason not to condemn an act of slaughter. In 1290 the English King Edward I instigated the expulsion of all Jews, leading to the "great Jewish expulsions" of the Middle Ages. Hypocrisy would not allow us, or many other countries, to have done all they could to intervene in a holocaust happening again. Hypocrisy cannot stop us from taking the right action now and calling for the senseless killings of innocent Palestinians to end and end now.