Peter Oborne

Published date: 17 April 2025 20:35 BST | Last update:2 days 22 hours ago

The British government wanted to keep this visit quiet, and journalists in the country were only too keen to comply

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is pictured in London on 26 March 2025 (Benjamin Cremel/AFP)

In theory, the role of the media is to tell the truth and hold power to account. British newspapers and broadcasters have not fulfilled this function when it comes to Israel and the Gaza war.

On the contrary, British journalists have repeated the lies promoted by Israeli and British politicians. Some have produced fresh lies of their own, effectively acting as the propaganda arm of the Israeli state. 

The latest case in point concerns this week’s visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar with his British counterpart, David Lammy. There’s no question this was major news. 

Saar was meeting the British foreign secretary just days after Israeli authorities detained and deported two Labour MPs – a month after Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas, opening the way to a fresh round of atrocities; and almost two months into Israel’s latest illegal blockade of Gaza. 

All this amid growing speculation that Israel is pressing for a new war on Iran.

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At the same time, Saar is one of the most senior members of a government on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The International Criminal Court has also put out an arrest warrant for his boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Saar himself recently attempted to justify Israel’s decision to cut off aid to Gaza, which is an act of collective punishment and a war crime.

No follow-up

Most people would expect such an individual to be treated as a pariah by a British government that regularly waxes lyrical on the “rules-based international order”. Instead, Britain rolled out the red carpet, with one difference: Saar’s visit was kept secret, unannounced by either the Israeli or British governments. 

On Tuesday, Middle East Eye revealed that Saar was due to visit the country imminently, thus making the trip public knowledge. No mainstream British newspaper followed up on the story. 

It only emerged that Saar had met Lammy in London after the Israeli government confirmed later on Tuesday that the two had discussed Iran’s nuclear programme and ongoing negotiations to free Israeli captives in Gaza. 

Israeli foreign minister meets David Lammy in London in unannounced trip

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MEE reported on the meeting, as did the Scottish paper, The National. The story also appeared in Israeli media.

It would be reasonable to expect the British Foreign Office to release a statement on the meeting, as is normally the case, and especially because Israel had done so. But there was no formal statement on Tuesday, and the Foreign Office declined to comment on the record in response to multiple requests by MEE.

One might have expected the meeting between Saar and Lammy to be of interest to British journalists. A visit by the foreign minister of a state that is at war and on trial for genocide was surely massive news.

One would have thought that any decent reporter would have been keen to put questions to Saar and Lammy. But that was not so. Our mainstream media joined forces with the Foreign Office and treated the Saar visit as a state secret.

Not a single mainstream British newspaper or channel covered the meeting, other than a belated Guardian story on Wednesday.

‘Utterly disgraceful’

Let’s try a mental experiment and suppose that Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, had been quietly smuggled into Britain to meet our foreign secretary. It would have made front-page news everywhere.

The day after the meeting between Saar and Lammy, MEE published interviews with two independent MPs, Iqbal Mohamed and Ayoub Khan, and Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski, in which they expressed concern over the affair.

Mohamed said Saar should not have been welcomed while Israel “continues its onslaught on the Palestinian people”. Khan described the meeting as “utterly disgraceful”. Polanski said it “shows more contempt for the huge concerns of a vast majority of people in the UK who want the killing to stop”.

The secrecy surrounding Saar’s visit … required the collaboration of the mainstream British media

On Wednesday evening, MEE reported that two legal groups had formally submitted a request to the UK’s attorney general and director of public prosecutions, seeking their consent to apply for an arrest warrant targeting the Israeli foreign minister.

The UK-based Global Legal Action Network and the Hind Rajab Foundation alleged that Saar had aided and abetted torture and grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza, and that he was implicated in the detention and torture of Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, who was taken captive in late 2024.

But these serious allegations against a man who had just met the British foreign secretary were apparently of no interest to the ever-so-respectable British media.

Eventually, The Guardian published a story reporting on the visit, quoting the Foreign Office – which had finally gone on the record to describe Saar’s trip as “private”.

Whatever the purpose of Saar’s visit, which encompassed a long discussion with Lammy about a range of Middle Eastern issues, it was not to visit friends and family. 

Deep unease

At the time of writing, the Foreign Office had still not published a news release about the trip. Apart from The Guardian, no major British paper – including the Telegraph, Times, Mail and Sun – had reported on Saar’s visit.

The BBC, which had not reported on the visit either, has instead suggested Saar was in Israel: an article on Thursday said the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews “visited Israel on Thursday, where he met” Saar. In fact, that meeting appears to have taken place in London.

Arrest warrant sought for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on visit to UK

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It’s long past time that the BBC learned that behaving as the official state stenographer does huge damage to its once-glorious reputation.

It’s obvious why the Starmer government wanted the Saar visit kept quiet. There is deep unease inside the Labour Party about British complicity in what many experts view as an Israeli genocide in Gaza. 

It’s much more helpful for Saar to be hustled in and out of Britain quietly, without any official word of his visit. No awkward questions, no news conferences – no need for Lammy to explain why Britain continues to provide arms and diplomatic support to Israel. 

The secrecy surrounding Saar’s visit, which has conveniently come during Parliament’s Easter recess, required the collaboration of the mainstream British media. As so often during the murderous Gaza war, they cheerfully obliged. 

Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’ on Tuesday killed five displaced children who were sheltering in tents

by Dave DeCamp , Antiwar. com, January 8, 2025

US-backed Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least 74 children in just the first week of 2025, according to the UN’s child relief agency, UNICEF.

“Children have reportedly been killed in several mass casualty events, including nighttime attacks in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and al-Mawasi, a unilaterally designated ‘safe zone’ in the south,” UNICEF said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike on al-Mawasi in south Gaza killed five displaced children who were sheltering in tents. The IDF has repeatedly bombed al-Mawasi despite designating it as a so-called “humanitarian safe zone.”

Palestinian children are also dying due to the conditions caused by the Israeli siege and relentless bombing campaign. UNICEF said that since December 26, “eight infants and newborns have reportedly died from hypothermia – a major threat to young children who are unable to regulate their body temperature.”

Gaza health officials said in December 2023 that 17,000 children had been killed in the genocidal war, a number that does not include those missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the siege.

Newborn babies are especially vulnerable since many have been born prematurely due to the health conditions of their mothers. Palestinian mothers in Gaza also struggle to make milk, and there have been shortages of formula and other baby products.

In October, The New York Times published accounts from American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza, including many who worked with babies. “I worked in a neonatal ICU. Several infants died every day due to lack of medical supplies and appropriate nutrition,” said Dr. Amen Odeh, a pediatrician from Texas.

“We had to make tough decisions about which very sick baby would be on the ventilator due to lack of equipment. I saw a family bringing in their dead 3-day-old infant who had been living in a tent,” Odeh added.

Despite the slaughter of children and death of so many newborns under the siege, the Biden administration has continued to provide military aid and political support to Israel. President Biden is reportedly planning to approve one more major arms deal worth $8 billion before he leaves office.