I’ve just been reviewing my articles about Gaza in Splice Today. I’ve written about it around 16 times. The earliest piece was called Jimmy Savile, Israel, and the BBC. It was published on October 16th, 2023, nine days after the tragic events of October 7th. It’s muddled writing. I’d been considering writing about Savile for a while. It’s a very British subject and I thought that my perspective, as a British person writing for an American audience, would be interesting.
Meanwhile there was a BBC docudrama series about him, starring Steve Coogan. The first episode was broadcast on October 9th, 2023, just two days after October 7th, when the media was still overwhelmingly awash with the news from Israel. The two stories got muddled in my head. I thought up the phrase “Israel is the Jimmy Savile of nations.” I was going to put that on a banner and carry it at the first London march in support of the Palestinian people. I’ve been a keen observer of the situation in Palestine for many years, so I knew what was about to happen. The piece is a combination of a review of the Steve Coogan series, and a reflection on what was just beginning to take place in Gaza. The basic theme is that, just as the BBC covered for Savile over the years, so it will continue to cover for Israel.
I’d been writing for Splice Today for four years at this point, and, as far as I knew, hardly anyone had noticed I was there. I was surprised by the reaction. (Naively I now realize.)
I made one factual error. I described the IDF as the fourth largest army in the world. This is untrue. It is the fourth most powerful army in the world. Much of the debate in the comments focuses around this mistake, which I corrected. It’s worth reading the comments. The tone is abusive from the start.
Here’s one example: “Maybe you were writing this for the many who’d love to see all Jews dead.” (I’m being called an antisemite, in case you haven’t figured that out.)
And here’s another comment, from the same pen: “Isn’t it odd that not one other Muslim nation in the Middle East wants any Gazans within their boundaries. But, really, how clueless do you have to be to think that men who have been in a ‘concentration camp’ for so many years would break out of it, and the first thing on their mind was to rape and kill women?”
The implication here is that other Muslim nations in the Middle East don’t want any Gazans within their boundaries because they’re inherently—what?—violent, uncivilized, barbaric, monstrous, deviant. They want to rape and kill women. That’s the first thing they do when they escape from their prison. It also fails to deal with the fact that the Gazan people are, to a very large degree, made up of the descendants of refugees, ethnically cleansed in 1948, who may not want to be forcibly removed from their homes again.
These were early days in the conflict. There was a slew of propaganda. You’ll remember it. The 40 beheaded babies. The babies in ovens. The pregnant woman whose fetus had been cut out. The severed breast used as a football. Much of it was fake. Even the stories of systematic rape, as told by The New York Times in December 2023, have been largely debunked. In all the tens of thousands of hours of video footage, from CCTV cameras, body cams, and doorbell cameras, in that most surveilled part of the world, not a single scene of rape has been shown. Not one.
It’s not surprising that feelings were running high, with this sort of fevered propaganda circulating around the airwaves, but there’s a high degree of racism in the comments. Take this, as an example, from my second piece about Gaza: “Let’s say a Jew from Chicago somehow finds himself in Gaza and gets discovered as a Jew. What happens to him? He gets murdered for being a Jew, even though he has no connection to Israel.”
Jews talk about blood libel with reference to accusations like this applied to them. If this isn’t a form of the same libel I don’t know what is. Many anti-Zionist Jews have visited Gaza over the years and have not only not been murdered, but feted for their courage. Many of the most consistent voices in support of the Palestinian cause have been Jews. To name a few: Norman Finkelstein, Medea Benjamin, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Tony Greenstein, Gabor Maté, Alexei Sayle, Benjamin Moser and Max Blumenthal. I could go on.
In the comment section of that same piece I made this observation: “This is not a war on Hamas, it’s a war on the Palestinian people, who are dying in unprecedented numbers. These are a verifiable facts. There is a genocide about to take place, if it’s not already underway.”
We now know that there was, in fact, a genocide taking place. We know more. That Netanyahu was warned that Hamas was preparing an attack. That the army, usually on high alert in that part of the country, close to the Gaza border, was mysteriously absent. That the Nova music festival was supposed to have ended the day before, but was given leave to continue, despite knowing that an attack was imminent. That a significant number of the deaths were caused by Israeli fire. That the Hannibal Directive was implemented, and that helicopter gunships were firing indiscriminately on cars fleeing the scene, despite not knowing who was in them. That Hamas had offered to return the hostages, but their offer was rejected. And while many of the horror stories from October 7th turned out to be concocted fantasies, much real horror has taken place since, in Israeli prisons, and on the ground in Gaza.
In May 2026 Tucker Carlson interviewed a British surgeon, Dr. Nick Maynard, who gave detailed accounts of Palestinian healthcare workers tortured and killed in Israeli detention. Maynard, a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon from Oxford University Hospitals, had worked in Gaza since 2010. He said that hundreds of medical staff have been detained without charge and he recounted testimonies of torture inside Israeli facilities. He referenced one Palestinian surgeon in particular, identified as orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who he said was tortured and raped to death while in Israeli custody.
It’s worth repeating that, so that it doesn’t pass you by: Raped to death while in Israeli custody.
So who exactly are the barbarians? Here’s the interview.
One surprising statement occurs early on. “Palestinians have been so thoroughly maligned by our media for so long that people think of them as violent and primitive. What did you like about the Palestinians?” asks Carlson.
“They’re the kindest people I’ve met. They’re profoundly resilient, particularly in Gaza, but they’re generous, they’re kind, very welcoming. I’ve always been treated wonderfully by them. And when you go to Gaza, I mean, you see that even on a different level yet again. They are incredibly resilient, incredibly resourceful, but they are the kindest, most generous-hearted, most beautiful people I’ve ever met in the world.”
I urge you to watch the interview and judge for yourself whether you think Maynard is a credible witness or not. Regardless of what you think about Carlson (I have mixed feelings) it’s difficult to understand why Maynard would want to lie about this.
One of the accusations I kept getting as I was writing these articles was that I was repeating Hamas propaganda. That’s a propaganda trick in its own right. Belittle any information that doesn’t back up what you’ve already made your mind up about. I’m sure that Hamas does deploy propaganda, but, just like its weaponry, it’s minimal when compared to the propaganda resources that the Israelis have at their disposal.
Most of my information comes from independent platforms such as The Grayzone, The Electronic Intifada, Double Down News, Middle East Eye and The Young Turks. You might argue these sources are biased, and I’d agree: but the difference between my critics and me is that I already know what the other side of the argument is. I watch the BBC, CNN and all the other legacy media outlets. But I also know what the dissenting voices are saying. You can’t claim to be properly informed until you’ve paid attention to both.
I’ve called this article “The War at the End of the World.” That’s not a reference to Gaza. Gaza isn’t, and never has been, a war. Wars are acts that take place between competing armies on the battlefield. There’s no army in Gaza, aside from the IDF. There may be a few remaining guerilla fighters, holed up in tunnels waiting to blow up stray Israeli tanks. Some of them are barely children who’ve lost their entire families and are burning for revenge. What else would you expect? But there’s no army. Hamas doesn’t have tanks, aircraft or advanced communication equipment. They don’t have guided missiles, suicide drones or sophisticated AI programs which help them decide which buildings to target. They don’t have satellite imagery or 2000lb bombs which can obliterate entire neighborhoods. Much of their armoury consists of repurposed Israeli ordnance, little more: maybe a dwindling reserve of antiquated Iranian rockets smuggled in through tunnels in the days when that was still possible.
The war I’m referring to is the war on your mind. It’s the war where everything is inverted: where the victims are portrayed as perpetrators, and the criminals are portrayed as innocent. Where the might of empire is directed at a poor, broken, isolated people, forced to live in tents amidst the rat-infested rubble of their homes: a people with the highest volume of child amputees in the world, who’ve undergone more trauma that any of us could imagine. And still we’re not allowed to intervene to help. Where the crime of genocide is covered up, while pundits quibble over the meaning of words.
It’s a war of example. The Empire is telling us something. Look, it’s saying, we can do this. Not only do we have the capacity, but we have the resolve. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks, we do it anyway. Let the population cry out in revulsion at what you’ve witnessed. It makes no difference. We have the power. We have the money. We have the intent. Let this be a warning. Step out of line, and you could be next.
