Keir Starmer invites a war criminal to dinner
Protest against Herzog's visit to London, 7pm outside Downing Street, Wednesday 10 September
10 September 2025
This evening at 7:00pm at Downing Street Keir Starmer will shake hands, clink glasses and drink red wine or perhaps champagne with Israel President Haim Herzog before they sit down to a fine meal followed by liquors.
They’ll do this the day after the country Herzog represents attempted to assassinate Hamas leaders lured to Qatar under the false pretence of participating in “peace negotiations” that turned out to be a deadly boobytrap.
They’ll do this as Israel continues to systematically starve the Palestinians of Gaza in a policy that is reminiscent of the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
Placard at yesterday’s protest against Herzog’s arrival in the UK. There were hundreds and hundreds of us in attendance, maybe even a couple of thousand. The protest continues this evening, Wednesday 10 September, outside Downing Street, where Starmer will dine with Herzog, 7:00pm.
They’ll do this the day after deputy prime minister, recently foreign secretary, David Larry said that the UK government isn’t yet ready to conclude that Israel is perpetrating a genocide because it can’t yet demonstrate “intent”.
They’ll do this even though scores of expert academics, lawyers, human rights organisations and UN bodies along with the South African government have demonstrated intent, outlined in thousands of pages of evidence.
They’ll do this even though members of the Israeli government have announced time and time again they intend to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza.
They’ll do this without Starmer and his team ever indicating what Israel would have to do for them to be convinced that they are acting with intent, and knowing full well that other countries that have perpetrated genocides, including Nazi Germany, didn’t announce their intent.
They'll do this as Lammy, Starmer, Herzog and company demonstrate what intent means as they intentionally put food into their mouths--intent isn't complicated.
They’ll do this while Starmer and Lammy claim there’s no evidence that ties UK-enabled F35s and spying missions to the death of Palestinian civilians even though copious evidence of ties has been gathered and there can be no doubt that F35s and UK-led spying missions are central to the genocide.
They’ll do this knowing that the disingenuous argument of “intent” will enable the UK to continue to sell weapons to Israel so that UK-based weapons manufacturers (including the Israeli weapons company Elbit) can make money out of blood and Israel can continue its rampage.
They’ll do this while the Starmer government continues to defend its proscription of Palestine Action, a civil disobedience organisation that has never threatened a civilian whose most visible supporters are pensioners, and support an ally that has murdered 61,709 people, including 17,492 children, since 7/10, the vast majority of them obviously civilians, the real figures obviously far higher.
They’ll do this knowing full well that since its formation in 1948 Israel has carried out scores of massacres against the indigenous Palestinian people, that history did not begin on 7/10, and that, as reported in Ha’aretz, Israel’s Hannibal Directive enabled the IDF to murder very probably hundreds of Israeli-Jewish civilians that day--an act the corporate media in the UK and the US has yet to acknowledge because it doesn't cohere with Zionism's colonialist and racist narrative.
(NB Zionism is supported by non-Jews and Jews alike. Christian evangelists are among Zionism's most ardent, maniacal advocates.)
They’ll do this presumably in the presence of attorney general Richard Hermer, a longstanding mate of Starmer’s from their time together in chambers, someone who donated £5,000 to Starmer’s campaign to become leader of the Labour party and smear Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite, someone who is a product of the same Zionist youth movement that I became involved with as a teenager, someone who provides the government with legal advice about approach to Israel/Palestine/protest, and someone who in the last conversations we exchanged repeatedly refused acknowledge that Israel might be perpetrating a genocide.
They’ll do this just two days after Banksy created a mural (below) on a wall of the Royal Court of Justice that depicts a judge beating a protestor with a gavel, understood by all to be a reference to the UK government’s repression of the Palestine solidarity campaign, and just one day after guards hastily covered up the mural (and in so doing perfectly captured how dissent is being repressed).
Banksy’s mural at the Royal Court of Justice, a tribute to the Palestine Solidarity movement. Within hours official boarded up the mural and have now removed it, perfectly capturing the repression the mural depicted and via social media will now memorialise.
They’ll do this knowing that as a member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2018 Herzog has long discredited the rights of indigenous Palestinians and since 7/10 has made numerous statements that have been included in the documents that demonstrate that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians (see the below post).
They’ll do this unable to ignore the fact that the colour of the dark red wine they will be drinking echoes the blood of the minimally 61,709 dead and the 111,588 injured that has drenched the land of Gaza.
Clink, clink, cheers.
The protest against Starmer’s quite frankly disgusting decision to play host to a politician who is evidently linked to a genocide and war crimes, and who is an apologist for both, as is Starmer and everyone in his government, continues today, 7:00pm on Whitehall, in front of Downing Street, around the time they will sit down to do the very thing they won't allow the Palestinians to do.
The protest movement and the resistance of the Palestinians is unstoppable, Starmer and Herzog know this, free, free Palestine!
https://palestinecampaign.org/
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/
https://bdsmovement.net/
https://www.foa.org.uk/
https://events.pfbuk.com/
https://cnduk.org/
https://www.yourparty.uk/
https://greenparty.org.uk/