Britain’s Labour government has denied Israel’s genocide in Gaza, approved more arms sales to the apartheid state in just three months than Tories did in three whole years before the genocide, and preferred to go to court rather than ending its complicity. But a UN chief has shared an “utterly chilling” statistic, warning that Israel’s ongoing blockage of aid into Gaza could kill 14,000 babies within 48 hours. And even Keir Starmer’s regime has struggled to ignore that.
Israel could kill 14,000 babies in 48 hours
77 years after the settler-colonial ethnic cleansing of Palestinians marked the establishment of Israel, the apartheid state’s ongoing dispossession has become a genocide in Gaza. And Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs, has revealed the severity of the situation. As he told the BBC on 20 May, thousands of aid trucks were outside Gaza waiting to take “baby food and nutrition” into the occupied Palestinian territory, and:
there are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them… We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished
Israel had already blockaded Gaza for many years before the genocide began in 2023, isolating its highly concentrated population and turning it into “the world’s largest open-air prison”. But its blockade since just before it unilaterally destroyed the early 2025 ceasefire deal has been callous and extreme, lasting 11 weeks.
The apartheid state is now facing more and more pressure from its allies, which are struggling to keep defending its atrocities. And it is now starting to allow a tiny amount of aid into Gaza, but nowhere near what is necessary or what has entered Gaza previously. Fletcher criticised Israel’s “dodgy modality” of getting aid across and said supporting it would be “to support the objectives of the military offensive and to further dehumanize and humiliate those civilians who badly need that aid”. He added, regarding the term genocide:
I’m very conscious that, with previous war crimes – Srebrenica, Rwanda etc, we didn’t move fast enough to call on the world to prevent it [genocide] and I’m doing everything I can to raise my voice and encourage others to raise their voice to prevent that.
He also highlighted that “very prominent ministers” in Israel have been “clear that they want to use starvation as a weapon of war and that they will do everything possible to prevent us getting that aid in to save lives”. But he clarified that his aim is “to get thousands and thousands of trucks through”, adding:
I want to save as many of these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours
UK action welcome, but too little and too late
UK foreign secretary David Lammy has previously denied the Gaza genocide while continuing to meet with Israeli officials. But it seems the widespread pressure on the government from many different angles is forcing some small changes. He has now announced the suspension of free-trade-deal negotiations, summoned highly controversial Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely to the Foreign Office, and criticised the “dark new phase” of the genocide.
France, Canada, and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, have jointly condemned “the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza”, the “intolerable… level of human suffering”, and the “wholly disproportionate” escalation since the apartheid state destroyed the ceasefire.
European Council president António Costa also spoke out. He described the genocide as “a tragedy where international law is being systematically violated, and an entire population is being subjected to disproportionate military force”.
Words alone are unlikely to have an impact. Because Israel’s foreign affairs spokesperson Oren Marmorstein propagandised Britain’s suspension of trade talks as part of an “anti-Israel obsession” and said:
External pressure will not divert Israel from its path
