“Nelson Mandela should be shot.”
– Sir Edward Taylor, Member of Parliament, 1980s
“The ANC [African National Congress] is a typical terrorist organisation […] Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land”.
– Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, 1987
“How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?”
– Terry Dicks, Member of Parliament, 1980s
Those following the news in the past week will have noticed a remarkable about-face being made by a number of politicians, journalists, and talking heads, all at once, as if synchronised, altering overnight their long-held positions on Gaza.
Ursula von der Leyen, who in 2023 declared “Europe stands with Israel,” decided last Tuesday that “the images from Gaza are unbearable.”
Kier Starmer, who in 2023 defended Israel’s “right” to withhold water from Gaza, went to Twitter last Thursday to claim that “the suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible.”
Hilary Clinton, who in 2024 proudly jeered that anti-Israel protestors “don’t know very much,” observed, again last Thursday, that “thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of starvation while trucks full of food sit waiting across the border.”
These admissions have come too late.
And there remains within them an ardent refusal to connect the dots. Clinton makes no mention of who is preventing these “trucks full of food” from crossing the border, and she is not alone. Whilst these politicians wring their hands and complain about how terrible they’re finding watching the situation from afar, they continue to tip-toe around the cause, continue to sell arms to Israel, continue to make overtures to a state committing genocide.
Even Starmer’s promise, made yesterday, to recognise Palestinian statehood is too little too late. It is nothing more, as put by ActionAid UK, than a “bargaining chip” being dangled before Israel, ready to be revoked if Netanyahu returns to a form of genocide that can be more easily ignored.
The purpose of this article is not to catalogue the cases of politicians and media outlets who, after years of defending, downplaying, and outright denying genocide, have started to slowly sanitise their stance. There would be too many to count, for one.
Instead, as the siege of Gaza grinds on, and images of children bombed in the streets are joined with images of children starving in their homes, and as the leaders of Europe and the leaders of the press gather to repair and protect their reputations, I ask: what is to be done with those who dragged their feet?
When the British establishment of the 1980s declared The ANC a terrorist organisation, and called for its leader, Nelson Mandela, to be shot, perhaps the nation’s citizens could feign ignorance. They believed the stories in the papers were complete. They trusted their politicians to tell the truth. They had faith in the status quo.
When the political establishment of Europe, the US, and the press apparatus that serves them declared Israel to be engaged in a just war, we could see immediately that this was not the case. We did not learn too late that we were being lied to, the truth was available from the first day.
In fact, it was available earlier.
Some people have been defending the Palestinian cause for decades, a cause so widely maligned that speaking up in favour of it would earn one the label of a political radical, and could cost a politician their job.
Yet whilst the wider public, even those self proclaimed ‘non-politically-engaged’ came around to see what was happening, what had been happening, to the Palestinians, the establishment dragged their feet.
But now, they seem to be edging back from the precipice. After carrying water for genocide for so long, they have begun to temper their tones, to agree with reason, to dare to say something so obvious that it is infuriating, unbelievable, that we have waited years to hear only this tepid admission: it is bad that children are starving to death.
So easy would it be to sink in to despair upon realising that the people elected to rule over us are misaligned from our ethics so dramatically that it as if they are navigating the world with their eyes closed.
We must eschew this despair.
As the title of Omar El Akkad’s book states: “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”. It will be our choice how to navigate personal lives that might include individuals who only too late realised, or spoke against, what was being done to Palestine. I have no business telling you if these people should be forgiven or condemned. But our leaders must be held to higher standards. Our press must be held to higher standards. Among them are people who actively supported genocide, and in their complicity, allowed it to continue.
To expect to see Starmer, Trump, von der Leyen, Merz, Scholz, Macron, and anyone else who banged the drum for genocide in the Hague before the ICC seems unlikely, especially given it seems the US is poised to never reassess its position. If the leaders of Europe and the US faced no repercussions for their work in Baghdad, Belgrade, Pristina, Tripoli, Mosul, Phnom Penh, Hanoi (the list goes on), then to expect it now might be wishful thinking.
But that needn’t mean we forget. We know which governments sent police to batter those who peacefully raised their voices. We know which states deported those who dared speak up against the status quo. We know which politicians condemned our protests against genocide – and in so doing, supported that same genocide.
The careers of these sabre-rattlers relies upon us forgetting what they have done. Their power rests on us looking past their ignorance, their wilful refusal to act. But we must not. We cannot continue to accept politicians who so abjectly refuse to separate right from wrong, who fail to consider the ethics of their actions until it is far too late, until the damage is done.
There is a price on von der Leyen’s late admission, on Starmer’s delayed offer, on Clinton’s overdue observation: it is 80,000 extinguished lives.
It can be hard to see what we as individuals can do in the face of such an immense loss. I have written before on the small actions that can be taken, but even I must admit that often these small actions feel like spitting against the wind. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing at all. Now, more than ever, as those in power attempt to wash the blood from their hands, likely soon to insist that they were with us all along, we must be vocal in our opposition, and united in our belief.
One day these politicians will run for re-election. The talking heads will seek out our ears. The news networks will request our trust. Then, as now, we must remember on which side they stood as the bombs fell, as cities burned, and children starved. We must not let them forget their complicity.
We must remember the crimes committed in our names, ostensibly on our behalf, allegedly for peace.
But even then, we will remain citizens of nations who had the means, power, and opportunity to stop a genocide, but chose not to do so.
Telling Time 
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