When the IDF bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons, Margaret Thatcher was criticised for criticising Israel. «Without international law, where would we be?», she retorted. It was 1981. And it was already clear that Israel’s war was not just against the Palestinians, but against shared rules: against the international order. Against all of us. And yet, today, in Gaza, we are complicit.

The first book on Europe and the Gaza war, specifically, Britain and the Gaza War, comes from Peter Oborne. And probably, it is no coincidence. A columnist and documentary maker, he works for Byline Times, Declassified UK, and Middle East Eye. But he was for a long time the star writer of the Spectator, the Tory bible, and later, of the Telegraph. He resigned in 2015, accusing the editor of covering up an investigation into the Swiss bank HSBC, and others into other advertisers and funders of the newspaper. And he left the mainstream media. He is the author of The Assault on Truth.

Because Peter Oborne, a practising Anglican, embraces a conservatism of another era. Now, both left and right no longer have experts and advisors: they have lobbyists. And the result is what he calls ‘a cross-party cartel’, which says the same things about Gaza. And not only about Gaza.

After October 7th, Rishi Sunak, then prime minister, immediately goes to Tel Aviv. And despite that, the death toll has already reached 5,000, and President Herzog has already said that in Gaza, everyone is guilty, that in Gaza no one is innocent. Gallant, the Minister of Defence, has already called the Palestinians ‘human animals’, ordering a total siege, cutting off water, food, medicine, fuel, despite Netanyahu having already promised revenge, citing Amalek, which in Judaism is the symbol of evil; he says nothing. Instead, it is his Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Cameron, who speaks. When the International Court of Justice warns that the war might turn into genocide, he attacks the judges and says the trial should not exist. And the next day, he stops funding to UNRWA. But the most disconcerting is Labour’s Keir Starmer. The current prime minister. Because he is a lawyer, and in The Hague, he was in Croatia’s legal team in the genocide case against Serbia. On Gaza, the arguments in favour of the genocide thesis are the same as those against Milosevic. But on Gaza, he keeps silent.

The Tories are no longer Margaret Thatcher’s. In 1982, after Sabra and Shatila, she told Reagan that unlimited support for Israel would be a disaster: for the Palestinians, but also for Israel. Now, the special relationship with the United States has been replaced by Atlanticism. Which is much simpler: because it is not a form of loyalty, but of fidelity. Atlanticism requires not reasoning, but obedience. And to gain votes, Labour, from Tony Blair onward, followed the Tories. There is no significant disagreement anymore.

Atlanticism requires not reasoning, but obedience.

And this ‘cross-party cartel’ is backed by ‘a two-tier reporting’: the double standards of the media. Which reports on Palestinians and Israelis in a completely different way. The examples would not fill a book, but an encyclopedia. The verbs, the actions, always in the passive form, with no subject, no accountability, the total lack of context, the imbalanced ratio of two Israelis interviewed for every Palestinian, and sometimes, actually, most of the times, sheer ignorance: on Sky, a journalist explains that the West Bank is occupied Palestinian territory, yes, but in the sense that it is Israeli territory occupied by Palestinians. And yet, it is also what Peter Oborne calls ‘two-side-ism’. The idea, in other words, that the truth lies in the middle. While the truth, simply, lies where it lies. It is not a matter of geometry, but of facts.

It is not a matter of geometry, but of facts.

So far, all the main investigations on Gaza have come from small media outlets. On the Dahiyeh Doctrine, which recommends the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure; on the so-called Where’s Daddy, the software for selecting military targets with AI; on the Hannibal Directive, which authorises the IDF to thwart the kidnapping of its soldiers by resorting to any force necessary. But in the end, the Pulitzers go to others.

And Peter Oborne knows all this better than anyone: because on October 7th, he was already in Palestine. He lived in Nablus. And even though all the attention was on Ukraine, and no one cared about Palestine, Nablus was already the epicentre of settler violence. The day after yet another rampage, he goes to Turmusaya, near Ramallah. And it is the same day the Jerusalem Post runs a front-page interview with Neil Wigan, the UK ambassador to Tel Aviv. The headline says: «Ties with Israel strongest they’ve ever been.»

To understand Gaza, read books. In newspapers, you will read that Hind Rajab, killed at age 6 while fleeing south, while fleeing toward Rafah, with her uncles and four cousins, along a supposedly safe road, «was found dead».

The car, recovered two weeks later, was riddled with 335 bullets. And the bodies, inside, were now just bones scattered among the rubble and wreckage. And they were 8. The IDF also shot at the ambulance sent to the rescue.