With the Israeli elections coming up, and our government allowing a few chinks of light to appear in their formerly icy attitude to the genocide in Gaza, it seemed a good time to go listen to Peter Oborne.

It was a totally different experience to many of the Palestine and Western Asia related events I’ve been to. Oborne reminds me there used to be those people we thought of as ‘old Tories’, people about whom you can say ‘a nice chap’. People who are genuinely well-educated, often living and working in places they were reporting on, and making a refreshing change from the journalists and politicians constantly in the limelight, who appear to know nothing about anything except today’s PR line. Sad to say it, but Sunday afternoon with Peter Oborne was a refreshing change from the sort of strategic racism I’ve seen so much of in UK politics in recent years.

Peter’s book on the PSC stall squeezed behind the back row in Sunday’s full house. When someone suggested what he might put in book two, Peter’s comment was: ‘I’m not writing another book. It’s a hell of a business, writing a book, you know.’ (A quick glance at his publishing history on Wikipedia told me just how well he knows that!)

Peter was accompanied by Irfan Chowdhury, who was his researcher while he was working on his book, Complicit. They made a great double act, Peter, child of a military family (clearly, officer class) who was the Chief Political Correspondent for the Telegraph, who has lived and worked in Jerusalem, versed in the history and culture of the peoples he was writing about, and Irfan, a PhD student at Brighton University who’s currently writing a thesis entitled ‘How systematic were the British Army’s war crimes in Iraq between 2003 and 2009? An investigation into Britain’s abuse of underage Iraqi boys.’

Both of them are visibly disgusted by what’s been happening in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen in recent years. On the UK working with the Saudis, Peter simply says ‘it’s mad’. On the idea of being involved in an attack on Iran: ‘Insanity. What is it, face saving? To win an election?’

When we came to the topic of the Israeli election, Peter had already told us that on the topic of Israel / Palestine, you can’t trust the Guardian or the BBC ‘let alone the Times or the Telegraph’.  He said the narrative seems to be, get rid of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, support Eisencot, and you’ll get a wind-down of violence and horror, prevent Israel becoming a global pariah state.

But that creates a quandary for Palestinians, he says. From their point of view, if Israel keeps Netanyahu, the killings, the ever-escalating expulsions and the horrors of torture and death camps will continue – but the world is beginning to step up sanctions, now. With that, and further isolation, something will change if Netanyahu stays. However, if Eisencot wins, there will be a small reduction in violence and horror BUT by presenting Eisencot as an improvement, the rest of world may seek a ‘return to normal’ – a normal that still includes the military occupation of Palestine by Israel.

Eisencot is not a teddy bear. He was the IDF General in charge of the massacres of March of Return activists, and promoter of the Dahiya Doctrine – the idea that the best way to quash resistance is to create fear by killing loads of civilians.  ‘He was even condemned by William Hague for going after civilians,’ said Peter. ‘But The Guardian will present Eisencot as “someone we can do business with”.’

And sure enough, I’ve seen Guardian articles and BBC correspondents giving us the soft-soap on Eisencot today.

My favourite moment of Peter and Irfan’s double act came when Irfan had been explaining the background to Ansar Allah (Houthis to the BBC etc) in Yemen. He said our allies, the Saudis, were pushing Wahabi extremism into Yemen. Ansar Allah developed as the indigenous resistance to Saudi oppression and military violence. Although post-Islamic revolution Iran was sympathetic to them (as they are to Hesbollah and Hamas), the idea that any of those groups are just ‘Iranian proxies’ is a nonsense. They were natural developments — resistance movements against a more extreme, more violent threat to their own people… at which point Peter, who’d been nodding agreement all along, put in that ‘mind you, the Houthies are murderous bunch of torturers too’.

There’s a bit of balance for you.

But the one, big thing that both were passionately in agreement on was hearty approval of all that the PSC and the wider #Free Palestine movement are doing. Peter spoke about how Palestinians see videos of marches and actions, how it’s a comfort and an encouragement to them, and Irfan spoke about how the Met had initially refused to investigate UK citizens who returned from participating in the genocide in Gaza (or the RSF in Sudan – ‘if you must join the forces,’ put in Peter, ‘at least choose the UK ones.’) but, continued Irfan, it was public backlash that eventually forced the Met to start pursuing IDF veterans.

Peter likes Ed Miliband – thinks he is genuinely horrified by what’s happening to Gaza and the West Bank. He’s moving the government, and it’s public pressure that led to him getting that job. Miliband, Peter says, is showing up his former colleagues (he pulls a face when someone mentions Yvette Cooper) but is it enough to really make a change? He calls Burnham ‘an empty vessel’, and urges everyone to keep on pushing.

That was the big takeaway from the afternoon. Yes, there are old Tories who are ‘nice chaps’ but there’s really not a lot of ‘nice’ in the Westminster we have now, in any party. Whatever the result of those Israeli elections, let’s keep on marching, protesting, taking action any way we can think of, for Palestine, for Lebanon, for Yemen, for Sudan and yes, even for Iran, because there are only a few Milibands in Westminster. Ruthless, neoliberal politicians are in the majority and they will go on using racism, or anything else that works, to promote all the wars their donors profit from. It’s nothing but pressure from us that’ll make the government take sufficient action to seriously challenge the apartheid state, to actually end the illegal occupation that has been and continues to be the Palestinian people’s greatest problem.

[Note: the reason for the fancy pic at the top of the article is that Peter’s presence caused an overflowing full house, and the corner I was squeezed into was a difficult place to take photos from – all windows and reflections – so after a while, I settled for having fun taking interesting reflection pictures.]

[Note 2: people often say to me, if you can’t trust what they call the ‘normal’ media, how do you find things out? On the topic of Western Asia, Peter and Irfan worked out a list for us: I can’t write as fast as everyone was talking, but I caught these…. Zeteo, Ha’aretz, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, +972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye, Jonathan Cook, Shireen Al-Adeimi, Assal Rad.]

Anyway, that’s about where we are — whatever happens in Israel tomorrow, don’t let the news cycle wind down concerns about Palestine. Don’t give up until the occupation is ended and the apartheid state is no more. See you on the streets!

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