Bloody Profits: UK’s Shameless Arms Sales Amid Gaza Genocide

Profits before Peace

When Death Comes Knocking, Profits Take Precedence

This week, as the world’s spotlight fixated on the inanity of a Eurovision song contest, Joe Biden upended a cornerstone of American foreign policy by warning that the US would withhold arms from Israel should it proceed with its planned invasion of Rafah – the besieged Gazan city where 1.4 million souls currently take shelter amidst the rubble.

The UN reports over 80,000 Palestinians have already fled Rafah since Monday, with Israeli tanks massing ominously at the edges of the densely populated urban centre. Yet Netanyahu remains undeterred, pledging to “eliminate Hamas battalions” he claims are operating within the city limits.

If Netanyahu’s claims of Hamas battalions in Rafah are indeed true, one can’t help but wonder how the vaunted IDF plans to surgically extract these fighters from the densely populated city without perpetrating yet another bloody massacre of innocent civilians. Does anyone genuinely believe that, if backed into a corner, Hamas operatives would opt to make a final stand amidst a civilian population? No, far more likely they would slip away undetected, blending into the streams of thousands of other desperate Gazans fleeing to preserve their lives and limbs. But such inconvenient details are readily discarded when genocide itself is cynically repackaged as a noble crusade against the spectre of terrorism.

As an all-out ground offensive looms, the US finds itself in the unaccustomed role of restraining its closest ally in the region. A startling shift that has left the UK government scrambling to maintain its cosy relations with the Israeli war machine.

Rafah Invasion Looms as UK Protects Its Merchants of Death

Enter Lord Cameron, that bastion of British realpolitik, dismissing US objections as the misguided whims of “a massive state supplier of weaponry.”  For the UK merely enables the slaughter through a complex web of private arms dealers – a mere 1% culpability that somehow absolves it of any moral taint.

With all the nonchalance of a golfing buddy, Cameron casually rebuffs calls to curtail arms sales, citing the risk of empowering Hamas while jeopardising “hostage deals” – a grim reminder that innocent lives are little more than bargaining chips to be callously traded on the battlefield of geopolitical calculus.

Lest we forget, this is the same man who, when three British aid workers perished in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, responded by…doubling down on arms exports. An “Iranian attack” provided a conveniently distracting pretext, never mind that it came only after Israel’s provocative strike on Iranian diplomats in Beirut.

No, far better to “hammer away” at securing humanitarian aid corridors than to disrupt the lucrative arms pipeline greasing the wheels of perpetual conflict. As Rafah’s invasion looms, Britain’s overriding interest remains to ensure “the smooth running of the industrial arms complex and the conveyor belts of war.”

Profit, it seems, will always take precedence over peace when it comes to the merchants of death peddling their bloody wares to the highest bidder. Humanitarian catastrophes be damned – there is money to be made, even if it requires aiding and abetting war crimes on an industrial scale.

As Israeli forces tighten the noose around Rafah, extinguishing any remnants of hope with each artillery barrage, the hallowed principle of “legitimate self-defence” will be invoked ad nauseam to justify the unjustifiable. All while the “Establishment” politicians meekly avert their eyes, offering meaningless platitudes about securing future “hostage deals” instead of demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Sadly, the human toll and war crimes mounting in Gaza are simply collateral damage – unfortunate but necessary consequences in service of protecting the profitability of Britain’s murderous arms trade. For what is the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians compared to a few more lucrative defence contracts?

In the wretched calculus governing Western foreign policy, peace will always be sacrificed at the altar of profits. As the bombs fall and Gaza burns, our leaders have made their priorities resoundingly clear.

But what of the opposition, what of Labour that bastion of human rights?

‘Aiding War Crimes’

Labour MP Zarah Sultana accusingly points out that the government is violating its own Strategic Export Licensing Criteria by supplying weapons when “there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

Ms Sultana minced no words: “We are aiding and abetting what are war crimes happening on a daily basis,” she told the BBC. Yet her righteous condemnation rings hollow in light of her own party’s egregious compromises on the issue.

Labour’s position on Gaza underwent a dizzying reversal in the aftermath of the 7 October Hamas attacks that left 252 people kidnapped and 1,200 killed, sparking Israel’s full-blown military operation. Since then, the disproportionate response has claimed over 35,000 innocent Gazan lives and left 78,000 more wounded, leaving the world reeling in shock and inciting intense divisions – from university campuses to the main thoroughfares of every Western city and public square. This unrestrained brutality against a trapped civilian population has created unprecedented ruptures within the global public conscience.

The division was shown on the political stage of parliament when 10 Labour frontbenchers honourably resigned last year over the party’s refusal to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, instead meekly backing a mere “humanitarian pause”, their principled stand proved all too fleeting.

By February, Labour capitulated entirely, calling for an “immediate ceasefire” only after the situation “evolved” to such an unconscionable extent that Starmer could no longer ignore the hammering blows to his party’s credibility and the growing loss of public support.

All because their leader had been vigorously cheerleading Israel’s murderous onslaught from the outset, defending it as justifiable “self-defence” while sanctioning the unconscionable collective punishment of cutting off water and energy to besieged Palestinian civilians.

An alleged genocide unfolding before the eyes of the world’s highest court, yet Sir Keir found no compunction in acting as an apologist for such crimes against humanity – so long as it shored up his credentials as an “electable” politician uncompromised by principles.

In the aftermath of such moral bankruptcy from the Opposition, one can only lament that for the rest of the human race, religious or not, we are left to collectively pray for the beleaguered Gazans and any hostages still held, both utterly innocent of the crimes enacted so ruthlessly in their name.

For when death comes knocking on the doors of the dispossessed, Britain’s ruling elite have made their stance unambiguous: profit will take precedence over even the most basic considerations of peace, human rights, and human decency. All in service of protecting the profitability of their murderous arms trade.

The conveyor belts of the industrial arms complex will keep rolling. The forever wars need feeding…

Paul Knaggs