Skip to main content
Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Gaza: what did you do in the war?
As the slaughter in Palestine continues and the solidarity movement’s calls for accountability and a shift in international policy grow, political leaders must realise they face a reckoning for their silence, writes HUGH LANNING
RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY: Thousands march for Palestine in London calling for a ceasefire, November 25 2023

“IT is exhausting living in a population where people don’t speak up if what they witness doesn’t directly threaten them.” So said the US painter and Aids activist David Wojnarowicz when Western governments were told that “silence = death” during that epidemic.

And just as the Western world was rightly charged with remaining silent during the Holocaust, Israel’s war on Gaza will haunt today’s generation of political leaders in Britain and across the globe.

They will be judged by what they did and didn’t do: failure to call for an immediate ceasefire, continuing to supply arms and supporting the industrial carnage in Gaza in the name of self-defence.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Gaza
War on Gaza / 23 May 2025
23 May 2025

Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING

MARCHING ALONE IS INSUFFICIENT: A pro-Palestine march in cen
Features / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Mohammad Naser, sits by a fire as he takes cover from the ra
Features / 7 February 2025
7 February 2025
Starmer is going to go down in Labour history as as much a warmonger as Tony Blair – and the issue will prove his nemesis, says HUGH LANNING
Delegates wave Palestinian flags at the Labour Party’s 201
Features / 19 September 2024
19 September 2024
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING
Similar stories
Palestinians ride on a truck loaded with food and humanitarian aid from the World Food Programme, after it arrived in the northern Gaza Strip en route to Gaza City, June 16, 2025
Solidarity / 19 June 2025
19 June 2025

MICAELA TRACEY-RAMOS explains how Britain’s largest union is putting pressure on the British government to recognise the Palestinian state and end its complicity with Israel’s murderous actions

Gaza
War on Gaza / 23 May 2025
23 May 2025

Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING

MARCHING ALONE IS INSUFFICIENT: A pro-Palestine march in cen
Features / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Delegates wave Palestinian flags at the Labour Party’s 201
Features / 19 September 2024
19 September 2024
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING