David Lammy's denial of genocide in Gaza is scandalous. He must retract it

By saying that using the word genocide about Gaza 'undermines the seriousness of that term', the foreign secretary leaves the impression the UK would not support any ICJ ruling 

Peter Oborne

On 28 October, with Israel’s atrocities in north Gaza escalating to an ever more horrifying level, South Africa submitted a massive document, known as a "memorial", to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

For legal reasons, the contents cannot at this stage be published. However, the accompanying press release states that the 750-page document, with a further 4,000-page annex, sets out the evidence that Israel has "violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction”.

The South African document additionally accuses Israel of "defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians".

The press release concludes that the "international community cannot stand idly by while innocent civilians - including women, children, hospital workers, humanitarian aid workers and journalists, are killed for simply being".

Meanwhile, back in London, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy was delivering his own verdict on whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Nick Timothy, a Conservative MP, asked Lammy to clarify that "there is not a genocide occurring in the Middle East", adding that words like "genocide" in connection with Gaza were "not appropriate" and "repeated by protesters and lawbreakers".

Lammy’s answer began well: "These are, quite properly, legal terms that must be determined by international courts."

Thereafter, it all went downhill.

He should have shot Timothy down in flames by pointing out that his inference that those using the term were "protesters and lawbreakers" was outrageous. 

Ill-informed remarks

Lammy might have noted that experts, such as the Israeli scholar Omer Bartov and the Lemkin Institute, founded by Raphael Lemkin, who in 1942 invented the term genocide, have already described Israel’s action in Gaza as exactly that. Neither can remotely be described as protesters or lawbreakers.

Instead, Lammy got chummy with Timothy. This should not come as a surprise since Keir Starmer's Labour has a habit of siding with Tories rather than its own MPs over Gaza.

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"I do agree with the honourable gentleman," said Lammy, before redefining the term genocide in a way that no expert would recognise, let alone accept.

The word, the foreign secretary told the House of Commons, was "largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term".

This is an assertion that would baffle Lammy’s own Foreign Office. Britain acknowledges that genocides occurred at Srebrenica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (where 8,372 Muslims are known to have been killed in 1995), and against the Yazidis in Iraq in 2014, where more than 5,000 were massacred by the Islamic State group.

The British government is currently supporting the case before the ICJ that there is an ongoing genocide against Rohingya Muslims at the hands of Myanmar - a series of atrocities that has claimed up to 40,000 victims to date.

Britain would presumably not be taking this action if we thought that, by doing so, we diminished the seriousness of the term genocide. 

To sum up, Lammy appears to have been freelancing, and it is not the first time that the foreign secretary has done so.

Last summer, he referred to Azerbaijan’s bloody conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the exodus of a terrified Armenian population, as "liberation".

Britain has important oil and other interests in Azerbaijan, where his remarks were gratefully received, but the term liberation is a callous misrepresentation of what actually happened, and a dark insult to the Armenians who were driven from their homes. 

Just as with Azerbaijan, Lammy’s ill-informed remarks about Gaza fit like a glove with his government’s policy. Ever since South Africa brought Israel’s atrocities before the ICJ at the start of this year, Britain has trashed the South African case, and also the ICJ itself. 

Tory Foreign Secretary David Cameron did this repeatedly, and now Lammy has followed suit with his surprise announcement in parliament that using the word genocide in connection to Gaza "undermines the seriousness of that term".

Reassure parliament

Israel will be pleased, and understandably so was Nick Timothy. But the status of Lammy’s remarks on 28 October is unclear. Was he simply freelancing, as happened over Azerbaijan, or has he just redefined the British government's position on genocide? 

I am inclined to give Lammy the benefit of the doubt. I doubt that he was deliberately misleading MPs. He was nevertheless talking nonsense about the gravest of all crimes: genocide. If I am right, it is essential that he comes back to parliament and corrects the record. 

The British foreign secretary has left behind an impression that Britain disagrees with the Genocide Convention

The ministerial code explains what needs to happen: “It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to parliament, correcting an inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the prime minister.”

Having set the matter straight, Lammy would also need to reassure parliament and the British people that he accepts the authority of the ICJ.

He should also make clear that when (and if) the ICJ rules that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, the British government will accept that judgment and punish the perpetrators accordingly, as happened with Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. 

In the wake of his comments, the British foreign secretary has left behind an impression that Britain disagrees with the Genocide Convention, regards the South African case against Israel as trivial, and would not support any ruling by the ICJ.

The scale of the atrocities being carried out as I write by Israeli forces in Gaza mean that Lammy’s clumsy and scandalous remarks cannot be allowed to stand and need urgent clarification.

Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in both 2022 and 2017, and was also named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Drum Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was also named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His latest book is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam, published in May by Simon & Schuster. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism.