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In the opening moments of the film ‘Muganga: The One Who Treats’, a middle-class French family is sitting down to lunch. A mother, father, and their young children gather around a dining table, light streaming in. The doorbell rings, and the mother gets up, thinking it’s a friend or a neighbour. Instead, French soldiers force their way in and rape her in front of her family.

It’s a hard scene to watch, and I almost feel apologetic for sharing it. But there is nothing gratuitous about this scene; nor is it the most distressing thing about this film. ‘Muganga’ is about the ongoing war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the focus soon switches from the suburbs of Paris to a Congolese woman in Bukavu. In the latter’s case, her family members lie murdered around her as her attack continues, and the white French woman’s ordeal fades away.

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Championing his decision to impose sanctions on Israeli settlement activities, Prime Minister Andy Burnham declared last week, “Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice … we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them. That is leadership on the world stage.” First Secretary Louise Haigh echoed this on Tuesday, saying, “We will stand against injustice. We will stand up for peace … And remind the world who we are”.

One area where Britain could show leadership is by ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

New analysis from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) shows that the Labour government approved nearly half a billion pounds worth of arms exports to the Saudi kingdom in the first three months of this year alone, most of which is likely accounted for by air-to-surface missiles. This matters because of how such arms have been used in the recent past and might now be used again.

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Between 2015 and 2022, a Saudi-led coalition waged a military campaign in Yemen, which, in some key aspects, resembled Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza. British-built military jets played a central role as the Saudi Air Force bombed Yemen indiscriminately, helping to create what was described by the UN at the time as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Major hostilities have now broken out again in Yemen, as a fragile truce between the Houthis and the Saudi kingdom collapses, and Saudi airstrikes resume. The Houthis’ attempt to blockade Saudi oil exports out of the Red Sea, exacerbating the effect of the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, has led the Saudi regime to call on its allies, including the UK, for diplomatic and military assistance. Britain has reportedly agreed to send military advisers to assist the Saudis, with Burnham considering providing additional support.

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Given past Saudi conduct, he should not do this. Instead, Britain should halt all arms sales to the Saudi regime and pay reparations for its own role in the devastation visited on the Yemeni people. If the Burnham government becomes embroiled in anything like the 2015-22 Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, it could do to his premiership what complicity in the Gaza genocide did to Keir Starmer’s.

Into the quagmire

In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemeni civil war. Their goal was to restore to power a government that had been overthrown by an insurgent group known as the Houthis. What they hoped for was a brief, decisive intervention. What they got was a quagmire.

The Saudi-aligned Yemeni government, with its thin social base, was quickly eclipsed by a disunited, dysfunctional constellation of anti-Houthi factions who between them failed to prevent the Houthis from creating a proto-state in north and west Yemen, where most of the population live.

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The Saudi-led coalition’s campaign was characterised by the indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian targets, including the apparently systematic destruction of agriculture, water and other civilian infrastructure, coupled with the imposition of an air-and-sea blockade on a desperately impoverished and largely import-dependent country.

This bore all the hallmarks of a collective punishment campaign, not unlike that later witnessed in Gaza. The governments of the richest countries in the Middle East were apparently conspiring to pulverise and strangle the population of the poorest nation in the region. Between this and the Houthis’ own severe violations of international law, the conflict claimed an estimated 377,000 lives, 60% of them indirectly from causes such as hunger and disease, and 70% of them children under the age of five. The Saudi-led coalition stood credibly accused of using starvation as a war tactic, with international human rights groups and aid agencies uniting to urge an end to Western arms supplies.

Britain’s complicity

Many of the Saudi coalition’s air raids were conducted with British-built aircraft and bombs. At the start of the war, then-Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond declared that the UK would support the Saudi military “in every practical way short of engaging in combat”, including the resupply of spare parts and ammunition. The British state and its arms industry lived up to this promise: more than 6,000 government and contractor personnel worked throughout the war to support and maintain the Saudi Air Force, enabling it to continue operating. As one BAE Systems contractor disclosed, the fighter jets in question would have been rapidly grounded without the maintenance provided by Britain. Today, BAE Systems has around 7,000 employees in Saudi Arabia.

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Despite there having been no meaningful accountability for Saudi atrocities in the 2015-22 conflict, the British government approved arms exports worth £464.8 million to Riyadh in the first quarter of this year, most of which is likely accounted for by the very air-to-surface missiles used in that earlier conflict. In approving the transfer of these arms, the Keir Starmer administration showed a striking lack of concern for their past and possible future use by the Saudi regime. Indeed, the de facto impunity conferred by this continuation of arms supplies only increases the likelihood of further war crimes as the conflict resumes.

Stop arms sales, start reparations

Plainly, Britain must stop these weapons transfers immediately.

But there is more it must do to honour the ethical principles invoked by the prime minister last week. Britain must take responsibility for its role in the 2015-22 devastation of Yemen by paying meaningful reparations to the Yemeni people.

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In a new report I have co-authored with colleagues at CAAT and Transition Security Project, we set out how an appropriate sum for such reparations can be raised. According to our estimates, a windfall tax on profits made by two leading British arms companies (BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce) from weapons they sold to the Saudis for likely use in Yemen between 2015 and 2022 could raise up to £3.9 billion. The British state could match this sum by restoring the UK aid budget to 0.7% of gross national income and drawing its portion of the reparation payments from these funds. A total reparations payment of £7.8 billion, targeted at urgent humanitarian, reconstruction and development needs, would go a long way to building a better future for Yemen – especially if it were matched by similar arms export bans and reparations payments by other culpable states, not least the United States.

As our political class unites around the supposed need to double the military budget, Yemen offers us an opportunity to think about the true nature of British militarism. We are often told that we must sacrifice public services and social security to fund a military response to an undoubtedly more dangerous world. But the cases of Yemen and Gaza point to a hard reality that Britain’s militarists are less keen to grapple with: namely that in this dangerous world Britain and its allies are often, themselves, the danger.

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David Wearing is an assistant professor in International Relations at the University of Sussex, an expert in UK foreign relations in the Middle East and the author of ‘AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters To Britain’.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo UK.

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The war in Gaza unleashed by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel is ongoing, but it has already spawned a large number of books, covering the conflict from many different angles. One book that has deservedly received considerable critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic is Omer Bartov’s Israel: What Went Wrong?

Bartov, who is from a liberal Zionist family and is now a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, seeks to explain how Israel, once a beacon of hope for a persecuted minority, became a genocidal state and an international pariah. In his account, things began to go wrong from the start: Israel’s founding fathers never settled how a state which is home to multiple ethnic groups could remain at once Jewish and democratic – they left unresolved the tension between ethno-nationalism and pluralism.

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A written constitution, with a bill of rights that enshrined the rights and freedoms of all individuals, could have set the new country on a different course, he argues: “the creeping racism of Israeli society might have been tempered, and the astonishing indifference to the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza and the daily crimes and pogroms on the West Bank might have elicited a greater sense of scandal”. In short, the Israeli state’s moral and political degeneration could have been averted.

We can never know, of course. But there is good reason to doubt it.

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The only path from here is up, and as we grow bigger, better, and brighter, we will look to you to fuel the journey. If you’re a free subscriber, consider upgrading to a paid subscription, and if you’re a paid subscriber, gift a loved one the greatest present of all: bold and unfiltered journalism in a world desperate for honesty and integrity.

Thank you all for being part of Zeteo’s journey of growth across continents. Onwards and upwards.

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In an interview on ‘The Real Question, with Shehab Khan’ - conducted the day after the UK announced sanctions on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Husam Zomlot said he was expecting further measures to follow soon. He said: “I’ve heard directly from the foreign secretary and from the ministers in the foreign office, and from several counterparts, that there will be a new regime for the arms trade, much tighter… much tighter.”

Zomlot, who was previously the Palestinian Envoy to the United States, said he believed there had been a shift in priorities since Andy Burnham had replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister.

Here are some other topics Shehab discussed with Ambassador Zomlot:

• Israel’s reaction to the new sanctions

• The UK’s involvement with the Board of Peace

• Britain’s unique role in Palestine’s history

• His personal experience of the genocide.

Paid subscribers can watch the interview above in full, without a paywall. Free subscribers can watch a three-minute preview.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to unlock content like this from Shehab Khan, and a lot more else from Zeteo UK!

Note: This interview was conducted on 9th September.

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Shortly before the last election the then-Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner hatched a plan for an outright ban on the foreign money that is poisoning British politics.

Sir Keir Starmer agreed. Former Labour leader Gordon Brown agreed to come down from Scotland to join the press conference where the plan would be announced.

Prestigious foreign policy hub Chatham House was booked to host the event. Gordon Brown had even arranged where to stay the night.

At the last moment, Starmer called it off.

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According to journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire in Get In, a revelatory study of the Starmer project, the Labour leader allowed his fundraiser Lord Alli to veto the idea.

This was a catastrophic moment for Britain. Starmer’s eleventh-hour change of mind gave offshore billionaires a chance to purchase British politics.

They seized it with both hands.

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But when she started speaking out for Palestine after Israel launched its war against Gaza in the wake of the October 7 attacks, Nadia tells Zeteo UK’s Sangita Myska she was, without warning, taken off air. Her bosses, she says, told her “it’s a bit noisy out there.”

“I took it to mean… your beliefs, your passion, your anti-genocide, all of that… it’s creating noise we don’t want. It’s uncomfortable for us,” Nadia says.

Now, in this exclusive, inaugural “Sangita Meets…” interview – Nadia’s first with independent media since launching legal action against one of the UK’s top broadcasters – Nadia says she hopes her case will set a precedent. “We must make it more difficult to treat people unfairly, individuals unfairly, that are following their absolute moral compass.”

In this wide-ranging and fascinating podcast conversation, Sangita also asks Nadia about her Jordanian roots, fighting back against accusations of antisemitism, how it felt to receive a formal apology and libel damages from the Daily Mail after a defamation lawsuit, and why Nadia believes that legal proceedings against ITV will mean the end of her career as an actress.

Zeteo UK has contacted ITV for comment, but as of publication, the company has not responded.

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Paid subscribers can watch the full interview, while free subscribers get a four-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to get first access to who Sangita is meeting next, along with all of Zeteo UK’s content.

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In his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, Andy Burnham stated his intention to end 40 years of neoliberalism. He identified the centralisation of political power, the privatisation of economic power, deindustrialisation and austerity as “wrong turns” the country has taken since the 1980s. Political power had been used to defend vested interests, while economic power had been stripped away from working people. We have become, he said, “A country run in the private rather than public interest.”

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The speech sounded radical. Previous prime ministers have tended to praise Thatcher for tackling inflation and unleashing the country’s economic dynamism by deregulating the City and privatising sclerotic state-owned industries. But Burnham knows this interpretation of history is no longer tenable. The UK has been hollowed out by neoliberal rule. Before the financial crisis, this decline was concealed by a financial and property bubble. But since 2008, the failures of neoliberalism have been unmasked.

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When considering the apocalyptic warnings that artificial intelligence may kill all humans, the Fermi paradox came to mind. Given the unimaginably large size of the universe, so goes the paradox, surely there are many extraterrestrial civilisations: so why have we detected no sign of them?

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There are various theories: that aliens are quarantining us until we become less primitive, that interplanetary space travel is impossible, that aliens communicate in ways we cannot detect. But one theory is simply that technologically advanced civilisations destroy themselves. They blow up their climates, they wipe themselves out with deadly weapons – or they create a superintelligence which makes them go extinct.

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This is Sawalha’s first independent media interview since she launched legal action against one of the UK’s top broadcasters, ITV, the network which took her off the air as a founding panelist on the popular daytime talk show “Loose Women” after she began speaking publicly in support of Palestine.

”Why is everybody bloody whispering about an atrocity, an absolute atrocity that we can watch live?” Sawalha tells Myska.

Similarly, Myska was removed from her role at LBC after challenging an Israel government spokesman in a live interview over the genocide in Gaza. The two speak candidly about the backlash they’ve received for criticizing Israel, jeopardising their careers to stand against injustice.

But this is just the first episode of ‘Sangita Meets…’. Each episode will bring you unfiltered, wide-ranging interviews with cultural and political figures, and conversations that take you beyond the soundbite, freely and without bias.

So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to Zeteo UK to be the first to watch ‘Sangita Meets…’ and receive hard-hitting, fearless journalism, direct to your inbox.

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Paid subscribers will get to watch Mehdi take the stage with an A-list roster of guests, including Zeteo UK journalists and contributors Shehab Khan, Sangita Myska and Peter Oborne, as well as Green Party leader Zack Polanski. It’s not a celebration unless we have all of our subscribers who got us to where we are today.

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Add our livestream to your calendar and watch the launch at Zeteo.com or Zeteo.UK by clicking here.

If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade to a paid subscription to access the livestream and watch the launch live.

Check out more from Zeteo UK:

In a wide-ranging Zeteo UK interview - the first for ‘The Real Question, with Shehab Khan’ - Sir Ed, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said he would enforce the ICC arrest warrant if he was Prime Minister and was critical of the government for not sanctioning illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank much earlier.

Sir Ed, who in 2024 delivered the Liberal Democrats their best result in a century, had previously served as a cabinet minister during the Tory/Lib Dem coalition years and said he hopes to get the Liberal Democrats back in government.

Here are some other topics Shehab pressed Sir Ed on:

• The UK’s future relationship with the European Union.

• The Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action.

• Future coalition agreements that the Liberal Democrats are - and are not - considering.

• His personal experiences of the UK’s social care system.

Paid subscribers can watch the interview above in full, without a paywall. Free subscribers can watch a four-minute preview.

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to unlock content like this from Shehab Khan, and a lot more else from Zeteo UK!

More from Zeteo UK:

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Today’s the day. The soft launch period is over.

Zeteo UK is officially here.

And, frankly, it couldn’t come soon enough.

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Trust in the British media has been collapsing. And can you blame the British people?

On some of the biggest moral and political questions of our time – racism, the rise of the far right and fascism, genocide in Gaza, the climate crisis – too much of our media has failed to hold power to account.

More often than not, they have looked away. Amplified the talking points of the rich and powerful. Given a platform to hatemongers and extremists. Treated politics as a game, a performance, a horse race, while real people pay the price.

That is why independent media matters. That’s why we are launching Zeteo UK.

We’re not here to join the British media establishment. We’re here to disrupt it.

And I couldn’t be more excited about the very special team of writers, reporters and columnists we’ve brought together for this launch.

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We have brand-new shows from Shehab Khan (‘The Real Question’) and Sangita Myska (‘Sangita Meets…’) – two brilliant, high-profile broadcasters who know how to ask the questions others won’t.

And we have an extraordinary roster of thought-provoking columnists: Owen Jones, Afua Hirsch, Grace Blakeley and Peter Oborne.

Different voices. Different perspectives. But one shared determination: to challenge power rather than cozy up to it.

When we launched Zeteo in the United States, we wanted to prove that independent journalism could be fearless and unapologetic – but also have a real impact on the people in power and on the public at large. We have done that, and then some, winning multiple media awards along the way!

Now we want to bring that same energy, ambition, and, above all else, impact to the UK.

Because the British media desperately needs disrupting.

And the good news is: it already is being disrupted.

People are ignoring the old gatekeepers. They’re challenging the lazy narratives they’ve been fed for so long. And they’re looking for journalists they can actually trust – journalists willing to speak truth to power and call out racism, authoritarianism, war crimes, climate denial and hypocrisy without fear or favour.

Zeteo UK is ready to be part of that change.

But here’s the thing: independent media is only truly independent if it is supported by you.

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We need our subscribers. We need you.

Your financial support allows us to take risks. It enables us to challenge powerful people and institutions. It emboldens us to commission deep-dive investigations and risky reporting and give outspoken journalists the platform they deserve. Our goal is to build something genuinely different from a mainstream media that has let so many of us down for so long.

So today, I’m asking you to join us on this journey.

Watch our new shows, yes. Read our new columnists, please. But above all else, share Zeteo UK with your friends and family; tell people about what we’re building; and support us as paid subscribers. (Our annual plan works out to just £5 a month! A great deal, right?)

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Tonight we kick off with a massive launch event at the Barbican in London, where Shehab and I will be interviewing Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, onstage in front of a live audience of over 1,000 people. If you’d like to watch the video livestream of our launch from 7pm BST this evening, make sure you’re a paid subscriber and head to zeteo.uk for access.

But this is only day one. We’ve already shown what Zeteo can do in the United States. Now it’s time to make our mark in the United Kingdom.

The British media needs disrupting. Together, we can disrupt it – and create something new, innovative and honest.

I am so excited to share the launch of Zeteo UK with you all.

Let’s get to work.

Mehdi

P.S. If you’re currently a Zeteo UK subscriber but want to get content from Zeteo in the United States too, consider upgrading to our bundle option.

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But I was ready for something new because I knew we needed a media outlet that would take on the right-wing press and wouldn’t be afraid to call out injustice and inequality, racism and fascism.

That outlet is Zeteo UK, which officially launches on Monday.

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In the last few months I’ve been touring news studios to showcase Zeteo UK’s approach to journalism. You might have seen me on BBC Newsnight, Sky News, LBC, Al Jazeera and Channel 5. But now I am launching my very own show on Zeteo UK – ‘The Real Question, with Shehab Khan’.

It does exactly what it says on the tin. I’ll be asking politicians the real questions, the ones that never seem to get asked. We’ve got some brilliant guests lined up, some awesome segments planned and we’re going to have a lot of fun doing it.

It’s new, it’s exciting and it’s on Zeteo UK, in full, without a paywall, for paid subscribers only.

If you like the sound of that, if you’re frustrated by the media coverage in this country, and if you’re bored of watching the same old Sunday political shows, please support us.

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A free press isn’t free. Truly independent journalism costs time and money, but for just £5 a month on our annual plan, you can help make all of this happen.

We cannot do this without your support, so if you’ve already subscribed, thank you. If you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for?

Take out a paid subscription to Zeteo UK – we’re reshaping the media landscape.

I, for one, look forward to getting started. Keep an eye on your inboxes on Monday for our first big interview!

Shehab

P.S. If you’re currently a Zeteo UK paid subscriber but want to get content from Zeteo in the United States too, consider upgrading to our bundle option.

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School started this week in Gaza. Israel allowed 8-year-old Wafaa Akila to attend class for one day before killing her and her father.

It’s a cruelty that’s hard to comprehend. Two photos shared online are gutting: The first shows Wafaa in her blue uniform giving a thumbs up, happy to be going to school – a brief escape from the genocide that defined her childhood. The second shows her school books in the mangled vehicle in which she was killed.

It was another week defined by Israel’s killing of kids. On the same day Wafaa was murdered, Israel killed another child, Saadi Ghalia, while he slept in a school serving as a shelter for forcibly displaced people. Three days later, Israel killed a mother and father, and their two young daughters, while they too slept.

Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published two bombshell reports on Gaza.

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Here’s more on all of that and other stories from another troubling week in Palestine:

Saturday, Sept. 5 – Huckabee Calls West Bank a ‘Nebulous Term’ While Visiting the West Bank

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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are in soft-launch mode until Monday, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we have been publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis. We’re offering this piece with no paywall, but please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without ever hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in Britain. - Mehdi Hasan

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During the 10 years I was director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, we worked with a clear theory of change. It was rooted in the recognition that the problem that required change was Israel’s imposition of a system of colonialist racist domination over all Palestinians – those living on any part of the territory of historic Palestine, between the river and the sea, as well as those forced to live in exile and denied their right of return. Dismantling that system would require ongoing Palestinian resistance within the framework of international law, supported by a global solidarity movement that could mobilise popular pressure to compel action from governments, public bodies, companies and corporations which would isolate Israel through boycott and sanctions until it ended its oppression. It is a theory of change rooted in the belief that democracies like the UK’s, although deeply flawed, are susceptible to public pressure.

So a response to Ed Miliband’s announcement this week of a ban on products from illegal Israeli settlements and on the provision of services to support those settlements needs to begin with that understanding of the dynamics of change. This announcement would not have come without the mobilisation of huge pressure by the solidarity movement, especially in the three years since Israel unleashed its genocide in Gaza. It is that pressure, and the fundamental shift in public opinion that shows 50% of the public now support a settlement ban, with only 16% opposing it, that has motivated Burnham’s incoming government to act.

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A ban on settlement goods has been a core demand of the movement for many years and so it is right that we welcome it as a victory. But it is a demand that has always been framed as a necessary first step on the path to ending all British complicity with Israel’s system of oppression.

So, for now, one cheer but not the full three.

The ban is a significant advance in a number of ways, which helps explain the ferocity of the reaction from the Israeli government and pro-Israel voices here in the UK including, shamefully but predictably, some leadership figures within the Jewish community. As long ago as July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed the illegality of the occupation. Although not framed as such by Miliband, accepting the ICJ’s opinion regarding the illegality of the occupation is a step towards meeting the UK’s responsibilities in accordance with that opinion: both the obligation not to aid and abet the occupation, and the more positive obligation to act to end it.

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There is a shift in language, and both an acknowledgement and condemnation of the policy of ethnic cleansing being enacted in the West Bank, and the designation of settler violence as acts of terrorism. There is a reinforcement of the suspension of some arms licences by extending the criteria to arms that support illegal actions in the West Bank, not just in Gaza. There is also an inadequate but significant shift in the language around genocide. Whereas Starmer and Lammy engaged in active denial of genocide, with both stating that they knew the definition and didn’t apply it to Israel’s actions in Gaza (statements that made clear they actually didn’t know the definition, or were happy to ignore it), the new line is no longer a denial, but an assertion that this needs to be determined by the courts. That does not change the government’s position materially, but the rhetorical shift does open up new avenues of pressure.

By accepting the plausibility of the case put by South Africa, and opening an investigation, the ICJ affirmed the responsibility of third-party states to take action to ensure they were not aiding and abetting genocide. Starmer sought to evade these responsibilities by denying the plausible case for genocide, whilst ludicrously maintaining a rhetoric of support for the work of the ICJ. Pressure can now be bought to bear on Burnham to accept that, having acknowledged the possibility of genocide, and stated his support for the ICJ process, he must now also accept the responsibility – way beyond the measures announced this week – to ensure the UK is acting to prevent genocide.

The key immediate task for the Palestine solidarity movement is to apply pressure to ensure the measures announced are fully and comprehensively enforced. It is crucial that the government sees the commitment through to include not just products but services, which if interpreted correctly will include the UK taking action against Israeli banks. Logically, and in the spirit of what has been announced, it should also lead to action to ensure no public body is investing funds in complicit companies, including local authorities.

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But beyond that we need to apply pressure to force the government to address what is required to truly end all UK complicity in Israel’s crimes. This means, while welcoming this initial step, pressuring the government to acknowledge the illogicality, immorality and unsustainability of its new position. On the one hand, the government is acknowledging its responsibilities under international law not to be complicit in the commission of crimes, but on the other hand, both Burnham and Miliband retain the rhetoric of regarding Israel as a key democratic ally with whom they wish to maintain a flourishing relationship and continue normal trade.

This, as Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, puts it, amounts to wanting to distance oneself from the crime but remain on good terms with the criminal. Miliband reaffirmed the tired canard about support for Israel’s right to exist – no state has such a right. The key question he hasn’t addressed is: “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist as a state which practises a doctrine and policy of Jewish supremacy, denying rights to Palestinians?”

Failing to acknowledge that Israel is not a democratic state overseeing an illegal occupation, but a state maintaining a system of illegal racist domination has been the bulwark against sanctioning it, and the cause of the hostility towards the BDS movement, which Miliband reiterated in his statement. It is what gives fuel to the lie that BDS is motivated by antisemitism: if Israel is a liberal democracy, then why sanction it unless you have sinister motivations?

Of course the pro-Israel lobbyists currently raging at Miliband level the same accusation about the settlement ban and, to his credit, the foreign secretary has not allowed them to derail the new policy. The test will come when Miliband confronts the reality that these pro-Israel voices are correctly asserting: the impossibility of distinguishing between the settlement economy and the wider Israeli economy. It is true, not because Israel cannot correctly label produce produced in settlements if it wants to do so, but for the deeper reason that the settlement economy is deeply embedded in the wider Israeli economy. Beyond that reality, once you have accepted, as Miliband now appears to have done, that the charge of genocide against Israel is at the very least plausible, then the moral case for maintaining normal relations with the state becomes impossible to sustain.

So pro-Israel voices may be right that sanctions against Israel are likely, now the Rubicon has been crossed, to open the floodgates to full BDS. The task of the solidarity movement is to build the body of pressure that will burst those gates wide open.

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Ben Jamal was the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from June 2016 to May 2026.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo UK.

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If you’re a paid subscriber, you will get to watch live conversations on stage between Mehdi and Zeteo UK journalists and contributors Shehab Khan, Sangita Myska and Peter Oborne, as well as Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

We only got here because of your support, and we want you to be part of it every step of the way. Add our livestream to your calendar and watch the launch at Zeteo.UK or Zeteo.com by clicking here.

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If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade to a paid subscription to access the livestream and watch the launch live!

If you’re currently only a Zeteo UK subscriber but want to get more content like this from Zeteo as well, consider upgrading to our bundle option.

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When historians and storytellers look back on the decline and fall of the American empire, they might identify 9/11 as the beginning of the long end. The American empire did not collapse immediately, but 9/11 was the spectacular fulcrum, revealing the simultaneous power and vulnerability of it and its imperial citizens. Part of imperial privilege for average Americans is to deny that they are a part of empire. Another part of imperial privilege is to react with misguided fury and hubris, whether through demanding revenge for 9/11 or calling to make America great again today. A different kind of power can be found in renouncing empire and domination, but are Americans willing to embrace a power that acknowledges its own vulnerability?

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It may feel impossible to do so after a tragedy like 9/11, a terrorist event and a human catastrophe so shocking that images of people waving from their windows or falling through the air are still deeply disturbing. The dead included the wealthy and the working-class, citizens and undocumented, drawn from the vast diversity of the country. Their deaths induced many reactions, including a solidarity that allowed Americans to forget, for a while, their differences and unite as a grieving country. In commemorating 9/11, we should remember not only the dead, but also that fleeting moment of possibility where we believed in ourselves as a country.

Unfortunately, that sense of solidarity, grievance, and vulnerability that provided a sense of community also led many to demand retribution. Speaking out against that impulse can still be difficult now, 25 years later, but it was incredibly daunting back then. But not impossible.

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If you’re currently only a Zeteo UK subscriber but want to get more content like this from Zeteo as well, consider upgrading to our bundle option.

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Twenty-five years later, it is important to remember that the 9/11 catastrophe itself changed nothing. Regardless of the pabulum that politicians and journalists will intone for this sorrowful anniversary, what changed everything was not the attacks but the U.S. response to them.

What became known as the “Global War on Terror” was a choice, not an inevitability. As politically arduous as it would have been, there was a possible response in which the U.S. recognized that its decades-long extractive, exploitative approach to the Middle East, one that imported the region’s resource wealth and exported the means to subjugate its people, had been proven unviable and began unraveling it. Instead, the U.S. intensified its violent status quo. The War on Terror took the lives of what the Costs of War Project at Brown University tallies as between 4.5 and 4.7 million people.

But while the War on Terror was a choice – a choice made by American elites in both parties, after exploiting the post-9/11 fear and bloodlust to manufacture consent – and for the peoples of the Middle East and Southwest Asia a death sentence, it was also, for many rising powers around the world, an opportunity.

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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode until next week, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in Britain. – Mehdi Hasan

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The lights are going out across Europe. The surge of the AfD in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt is just the latest manifestation of an ever-escalating far-right threat.

It’s not just the headline figure which should chill you: the AfD vote more than doubled to 43.8%, up from 20.8% five years ago. It’s that the polls underestimated its support because this racist party mobilised disengaged Germans who previously did not vote. Turnout surged by nearly 18 percentage points – predominantly because of the sheer enthusiasm to vote for a party whose regional branch is classified by domestic intelligence as “far-right extremist”.

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Notably, support was lowest among those over 70. The oldest among them remember what happened the last time the far right held power in Germany: their country was reduced to rubble after launching a genocidal war of annihilation that left tens of millions dead. But more than half of middle-aged voters opted for the far right, as did more than four in 10 of the youngest voters. Germany’s far right is now closer to tasting power than at any time since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker as Soviet forces advanced on Berlin.

And there are more AfD electoral triumphs looming in elections due the weekend after next. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD are in the lead on 35% – more than double what they achieved in 2021. Even in cosmopolitan Berlin, they’re on 18% – nearly twice the vote they received six years ago.

Reasonable questions surely include: Why is Germany back on its bullshit? Was the lesson not delivered clearly enough last time? Yet we cannot divorce this from the broader onward march of the far right across the West.

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