Latest news with #DavidLammy
Irish Examiner
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Séamas O'Reilly: Once proud defenders of Israel are beginning to backtrack — why now?
You may have noticed it recently. Once proud defenders of Israel's war on Gaza beginning to backtrack a little. A column here, a radio segment there. A sense that sensible, moderate opinion has shifted slightly in every direction you care to look. A dozen or more articles in Britain's broadsheet press, statements from its foreign secretary David Lammy, and Tory MP Mark Pritchard, all expressing their strongest criticism yet of Israel's attacks on the Palestinian people. These, alongside increasingly assertive mentions from both French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, the latter the most public break from Israel by a German leader in many years. In most of the above cases, their change in tone is not entirely full-throated, couched in enough waffle and caveats that we must deduce the overall effect is intended as 'it's been fine up until now, but this is suddenly too much'. In the case of those political leaders finding their voice anew, their statements uniformly lack the legislative penalties or sanctions that are in their power to bring to bear, nor even strong proposals that such actions are in the post. Given all that has happened for the past 19 months, it's natural to feel a sense of underwhelm, or even anger, when reading these oddly abrupt tip-toeings toward common sense; there is a temptation to dismiss these statements as extremely cynical people arriving much, much too late at one of the easiest moral conclusions any of us could face in our entire lives. For now, I will resist that urge, since anyone invested in justice for the Palestinian people should welcome any institutional shift which makes that justice more likely, no matter how venal or steeped in self-interest it might seem. But, if we are witnessing some small sea change, we are within our rights to ponder how it has come about. And to ask a question I haven't seen examined too closely anywhere else: why now? Certainly, the situation in Palestine is dire. At least 54,000 Palestinians are confirmed dead, with another 120,000 wounded. These are, we must remind ourselves, conservative estimates, the exact numbers likely unknowable. More than 70% of Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, including not just homes, places of worship, hospitals, schools, universities, essential services, and engineering projects, but the offices of the very civic bodies that might catalogue and record the genocide unfolding around them. A situation only worsened by the unparalleled killing of journalists, media workers, doctors, and medics, who could report on, or ameliorate the death and destruction being meted out to an entire population. In January, The Lancet estimated that, given these handicaps, the Gaza Health Ministry has likely underestimated traumatic death injuries by over 40% and the correct figure is likely to be closer to 80,000. This does not account for killings in the five months since that report was published, nor do any of the above figures include death by malnutrition and disease. On that latter front, things are especially bleak. Israel has bottlenecked aid going into Gaza throughout their offensive, and blocked it entirely since March, effectively instating famine in the territory. Last week, Palestinian Authority Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said that 29 children and elderly people had died of 'starvation-related deaths' in just the past few days. A report by the IPC earlier this month said that '71,000 children under the age of five in Gaza are expected to experience acute malnourishment from April 2025 to March 2026'. Gazans have sought refuge in cramped and unsanitary tent camps. There, too, they are not safe from violent death, with the UN reporting last Thursday that, of the 629 Palestinians killed in the previous week, 'at least 358 were killed because of attacks targeting houses and tents for displaced people, with children and women comprising at least 148 of the victims'. Everything mentioned above — the bombing of schools, hospitals and civic infrastructure, the murder of journalists and medics, the blocking of aid and direct targeting of refugee camps — is a war crime. And all of it has been going on for almost the entirety of this conflict, in full view of the global community, with near-total impunity from the US, UK and EU authorities, and a sizeable section of those nations' media classes. So, it is fair to ask, what has changed in the past few weeks? Most of these latecomers to criticism of Israel have centred on its government's recent vow to permanently occupy and resettle Gaza, as part of Operation Gideon's Chariot. Certainly, these plans are horrifying, and the glee with which they have been pronounced provides little room for nuance. 'We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed,' said Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich last week. 'We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it in ruins with unprecedented destruction, and the world still hasn't stopped us.' One might ask how such statements now merit such close attention when they have been consistent and ubiquitous from senior Israeli ministers since 2024 and, in fact, many decades before. Or how this, the permanent forced displacement of Gaza's two million inhabitants, differs so drastically from the wanton murder and starvation that's been meted out to them up to this point, or the fact that almost the entire population of the region has been displaced for the past year or more. But I'll stop asking 'why now?', since it's unlikely we'll find any answer that makes sense, and there is a more pressing ask on the horizon. If this is a sea change in moral clarity among those who've lacked it for so long, and a recognition of the horror that has been done with their full complicity for the past year and a half, we should welcome it with just one further question: 'what are you willing to do about it?'. Read More Séamas O'Reilly: We have elevated AI that almost never works as well as what it replaces
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken "deadly seriously," David Lammy has warned. Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary. We travelled to Svalbard - a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole. It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change. Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken "deadly seriously" due to climate change and "the threats we're seeing from Russia". We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard's coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past. The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing more freedom to manoeuvre. "We do see Russia's shadow fleet using these waters," Mr Lammy said. "We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time." In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders. Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit. "Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security," he said. But it's not just Vladimir Putin they're worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump's strange relationship with the Russian leader too. Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: "If he's too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn't be surprised. "I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans." Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance - including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia. More from Sky News: In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary. There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security. "Let's be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security." This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future. Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
Sky News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken "deadly seriously," David Lammy is warning. Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary. We travelled to Svalbard - a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole. It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change. Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken "deadly seriously" due to climate change and "the threats we're seeing from Russia". We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard's coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past. The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre. "We do see Russia's shadow fleet using these waters," Mr Lammy said. "We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time." In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders. Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit. "Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security," he said. But it's not just Vladimir Putin they're worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump's strange relationship with the Russian leader too. Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: "If he's too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn't be surprised. "I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans." Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance - including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia. In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary. There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security. "Let's be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security." This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Sky News
2 days ago
- General
- Sky News
UK will 'seek to do more if it can' for Gaza's injured children, foreign secretary David Lammy says
Why you can trust Sky News The foreign secretary has said the UK will do more to help injured children in Gaza if it can, following Sky News' reporting on their plight. David Lammy was on a whistlestop tour of the Arctic when we asked him about our story on a charity calling for the UK to offer children in Gaza life-saving treatment. He said: "The scale of the medical catastrophe for children and the population of Gaza is horrendous, and that's why we increased our aid. "What will end this suffering is a ceasefire but if there is more that we can do to end the suffering, of course, we will seek to do that." We read the foreign secretary the words of Doctor Victoria Rose, a British plastic surgeon working in Gaza. Dr Rose had said: "Every time I come in, I say it's bad, but this is on a completely different scale. It's carnage… we really are on our knees now." 3:18 Mr Lammy was speaking as reports broke that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a ceasefire brokered by the Trump administration. Hamas said on Thursday night that it was still discussing the deal, while an official warned that the Israeli response to the proposal failed to meet the group's demands. The foreign secretary said he hopes "we're about to see a breakthrough that is not just a ceasefire for a few days, but is a sustained ceasefire that brings an end to some of the horrors that we are seeing out of Gaza and sees the return of the hostages". He was also sharply critical of the worsening situation in Gaza. "The scenes of children dying, the horrors of people not being able to get aid are unacceptable, it's horrendous," he said. But Mr Lammy stopped short of saying Israel was guilty of a genocide - saying that was a decision for judges in international tribunals. "We have always been clear that this is a decision for the international courts," he said. "I have to stand by our law, and I determined that there was a clear risk of a breach of international humanitarian law." The British government this month suspended trade talks
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 days ago
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
UK Slams New Israeli Settlements as an Obstacle to Palestinian Statehood
The UK slammed on Thursday Israel's latest settlement expansion plans in the occupied West Bank. 'The UK condemns these actions,' Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said on the X social media platform. 'Settlements are illegal under international law, further imperil the two-state solution, and do not protect Israel.' The British government last week imposed new sanctions on three people, two illegal settler outposts and two organizations that they said were supporting violence against the Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the time that the illegal settlements were spreading across the West Bank with support of the Israeli government. Israel authorized 22 more Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts already built without government authorization. Defense Minister Israel Katz called the settlement decision 'a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.' The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said the announcement was the most extensive move of its kind since the 1993 Oslo accords that launched the now-defunct peace process. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to be the main part of their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict. Israel has already built well over 100 settlements across the territory that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with apartment blocks, shopping malls, factories and parks. The West Bank is home to 3 million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule.
