British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been criticised after publishing a statement on Wednesday night which welcomed the ceasefire in Gaza but recalled the “massacre of Jewish people” while saying that Palestinians “lost their lives”.
The contrasting language used to describe Israelis and Palestinians killed in the conflict has been a constant source of scrutiny with activists arguing that the deaths of Palestinians are downplayed by media outlets and government.
Points of contention have been not mentioning the perpetrators of Palestinian deaths, which is invariably Israel, and also using the passive voice when talking about those killed.
Middle East Eye has contacted Downing Street to ask how the prime minister believed the Palestinians he referred to had died. At the the time of publication, Downing Street had not responded.
No no no. Please read his quote.
He referred to the October the 7th killings as a massacre - and it objectively was. He didn’t refer to anything else as a massacre. He referred to all deaths in the war as “lives lost” - be they Israeli or Palestinian.
I’m sorry, to me, if you go to a music festival with the intention of killing as many civilians as possible, you are a bad person.
Clearly you feel that in some situations that’s fine, but I don’t, and I will never deviate from that opinion. Purposely killing unarmed civilians is wrong no matter who does it, no matter how just they feel their cause is.
Yes, Israel is absolutely committing genocide, but that doesn’t mean shooting people at a concert is ok, and I’m very concerned people think civilians are fair targets so long as they’re Israelis.
That’s the problem. He selectively chose to take Israel’s side by only using the term “massacre” for an action taken by Hamas, and being very circumspect in his language when talking about the tens of thousands of Gazans slaughtered.
You must be missing the part of my comment where I said it’s fair to criticise Israel for their war crimes, but not to literally lie about the words he said and what he was referring to.
You’re arguing with me but you aren’t disagreeing with me.
But the title isn’t a lie. It correctly points out that Starmer used the word “massacre” for the killing of Israelis but used passive language for the ongoing genocide.
Which assertion, specifically, are you saying is a “literal lie”?
He used the word massacre specifically for the Israeli civilians killed by Hamas at the music festival on the 7th of October. Not Israelis as a whole - he used the same language for those as he did for Palestinians who died.
The article did not state this. Middle East Eye said he used “massacre” for Israelis in general and “lost their lives” for Palestinians in general, which isn’t true, hence being literally a lie.
The article also states that he put the 7th of October terror attack on Palestinians. He didn’t. He specifically said Hamas. Being a member of Hamas is not the same as simply being Palestinian.
If the article had said “Starmer is right to call for a ceasefire and two state solution, but we feel he has been more ready to highlight attrocities from Hamas than he has for Israel” then I’d think that’s a completely fair assessment. They didn’t need to doctor his quotes into completely different viewpoints. That’s shitty journalism.
No it didn’t. To suggest that it did requires either a bad faith interpretation of the article, or a level of illiteracy that is frankly shocking for someone so confident in their ability to interpret the text.
I don’t know which I’m dealing with here.
To be clear: it said the word massacre was used for Israelis. That is true. It didn’t provide any qualifiers on that like “all” or “in general”.
Yes it did. Did you even read the article?
I’m beginning to think you’re the one who can’t read properly. You’re definitely arguing in bad faith.