The United Kingdom will not halt arms sales to Israel by British companies after reviewing the latest legal advice on the matter, Foreign Minister David Cameron has said.
Some opposition political parties in Britain have called for the government to recall Parliament from its current holiday and revoke the export licences, and also to publish the legal advice the government has used to reach its position.
“This was yet another missed opportunity from David Cameron to move himself and other UK officials away from their current complicity in Israeli war crimes, apartheid and possible genocide,” said Amnesty International UK’s crisis response manager, Kristyan Benedict.
Israel denies it has committed war crimes or genocide in its assault on Gaza, and has rejected the use of the term “apartheid” to describe its treatment of Palestinians.
Our western society thinks like a Capitalist in how all decisions are made.
Either directly, or indirectly (usually both), our governments are run by - and for the primary benefit of - Capitalists.
So, look again at this situation. Not from a moral standpoint, as Capitalism doesn’t concern itself with morality one way or another. Look at it from the position of “How can we make the most money and assert the most market dominance?”.
Sometimes our Capitalist government’s goals happen to align with our morals, such as supporting Ukraine against the Russian genociders. Russia are hurting Western economies, and threatening future financial prosperity, and thus must be opposed.
The fact that it’s the right thing to do never factors in - a happy coincidence that’ll help governments garner voter support.
But the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating? The one that we’re directly benefiting from via weapons sales, the placation and strengthening of an ally in that region’s Market?
What would our government take the path of less money? That goes against the very core of Capitalism, which says that all actions must be towards the goal of making more money.
Everything has to be weighed and balanced of course. Let’s say you have a great way of making money, say, prisoner organ harvesting, but you know that doing so would lose you the support of your voters, and possibly start mass protests and riots (aka lost/damaged revenue streams).
Well, you can’t make the maximum amount of money if you’re no longer in a high position of power, can you? So, it makes sense to not harvest prisoner organs. Sure, you lose out on that revenue stream, but you can find 10 others that wouldn’t otherwise be available, and milk those instead.
So yes, “the people” can sway government decisions by taking action that threaten their bottom line, their profits, and we could stop them from supporting Israel’s current genocide, but that would take a huge effort, and that doesn’t seem to have materialised.
The Capitalist government have taken the temperature of the market, seen that it will tolerate these business deals, and concluded that the best way to maximise profits is to continue.
Capitalism is a force of nature, it doesn’t follow morals, superstitions, beliefs, it doesn’t feel fear or anger. It simply follows the most profitable path to the maximum amount of money.
With that in mind, our government’s behaviour sadly becomes quite plain and predictable.
Whilst I don’t disagree about your point for most cases, Racism would be a far simpler explanation for this specific instance.
They’re quite open about it too - just listen to how the German Power Elites are all about their “unwavering support” for “the Jewish Nation”, pretty much a dictionary-definition racial descrimination (if a different etnicity was the majority or in government there, they would treat them differently)
Also notice the sudden criticism of Israel from their unwavering supporters only when Israel killed Westerners. Apparently wounding and killing 1 in 50 Palestinian children was absolutelly fine, it’s the killing of Westerners that’s a problem.
You’ll also notice that pretty much all “unwavering supporters” of Israel are nations with a history of heavy racism, most of which having commited genocide along racial lines themselves, such as Germany, the UK, the US and Australia.
If you consider the possibility that following WWII Jews became “another kind of white” and consider how racists would see those situations, a lot of things make sense, such as how there was massive outrage for the Russian invasion of Ukraine (since it’s whites attacking other whites) but none at all for mass murder being perpetrated in Gaza by Israel (as that’s whites killing muslims) and with even military support being provided to the aggressor “whites”, even though in the latter more civilians were killed in 1 months that in 2 years of the former.
Whilst I’m sure greed is also a powerful motivator, IMHO it’s racism that explains all manner of double standards being applied both to different events in the Israeli Genocide and between it and other situations of states mass murder civilians.
Not much has changed since 1939.