Many apologies in politics are just cheap hypocrisy
Why Israel saying “we are sorry” for killing aid workers means nothing.
By Alan Story
Channel 4 news presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy had an Israeli government spokesperson in his journalistic crosshairs the other night.
Almost 24 hours earlier, Israeli military shelling had killed seven humanitarian aid workers, including three Brits, who were delivering food to starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. (See photo above from Al Jazeera showing where an Israeli shell pierced the roof of an aid vehicle.) The story was starting to trend on UK and global news. Guru-Murthy, well known for his combative interviewing style, started out with a purportedly killer question.
“Are you apologising?” Guru-Murthy asked David Mencer. And for more than 60 seconds he and the Israeli spokesperson scrapped over the apology question. “Why not”? etc., etc. In the end, Mencer refused to answer. But he did say that “we grieve with the families” and this, he will be pleased to know, is how Channel 4 headlined the story.
Hours later on another channel, a spokesperson for the Israel Offence Forces --- and someone who, unlike Mencer, had obviously passed a course in public relations --- did say to the world media “yes, we are sorry.” Israel’s president Herzog also issued “sincere apologies.”
By that time, an Al Jazeera investigation was already revealing that the shelling of the convoy of World Food Kitchen vehicles on 1 April was “intentional.”
WHAT USE IS “WE ARE SORRY”?
But Tuesday’s Channel Four interview did get me thinking: what if Mencer had instead answered: “yes Krishnan, Israel does apologise”? And what use is Israeli government “grief” anyway? And to think, more widely, that so many apologies and statements from many politicians these days are just so much cheap hypocrisy.
Such politicians take us as fools or, to use a stateside word, as saps: “a stupid person who can easily be tricked or persuaded to do something.” To do something stupid like voting for them.
Illustration by Mr. Fish for the Chris Hedges Report Substack.
Joe Biden, supposedly “the one” to vote for instead of Donald Trump in the November US elections, said he was “heartbroken” by the Gaza killings. Meanwhile his administration is “getting ready to send Israel a massive cache of 2,000- and 500-pound bombs and dozens of F-15 fighter jets” as The Intercept reported. Who knows? There is an odds on chance that US-made shells did the killing on 1April.
As for Rishi Sunak, he told Benjamin Netanyahu that he was “appalled” by Monday’s ”intolerable” killings and the Israeli ambassador “was summoned to the Foreign Office for the first time in 12 years”, the BBC reported. Not sadly to be told that the UK was ripping up our own sizeable weapons contracts with the apartheid state of Israel. (The Campaign Against Arms Trade reveals that “UK has licenced £442 million worth of arms to Israel since 2015.”)
WHAT GOOD IS AN APOLOGY WITHOUT REMEDIAL ACTION?
Of course, apologies can be worthwhile in personal relations. They can, for example, restore trust. Sometimes they can do that in political relations as well.
A few years ago, a political colleague I will call Julie sent a scurrilous comment about me to someone I will call Fred. Late last year, Fred re-posted that comment in an email thread of about 15 people. I visited Julie and told her what was happening. She said she was genuinely sorry and emailed me an apology, adding “use it any way you wish.” I did….and never heard from nasty Fred again.
Back to Gaza. Monday’s killings were part of much wider and structural problem of Israeli colonialism. Saying “sorry” is simply a calculated PR stunt that only a sap would take seriously. And issuing an apology without taking any remedial action is a sham.
Can you imagine Benjamin Netanyahu going on Israeli TV tomorrow and saying: “I humbly apologise for the slaughter of more than 33,000 Palestinians”? And then do what?
Or can you imagine Keir Starmer appearing on the BBC and saying: “I humbly apologise for marching in lock step with Rishi Sunak on the Palestine issue …and for us both marching in lock step with Joe Biden”? And then do what?
It is the stuff of creating even more cynicism about our political system.
NO LIBERAL GUILT PLEASE
In 2023, the owners of The Guardian issued an apology because its founders as cotton merchants had greatly benefited from transatlantic slavery two centuries ago. Yet for some years now, that newspaper’s leading columnist has been an apologist for Israel. Its coverage of Israel’s war on the oppressed people ---- and almost “enslaved “--- people of Gaza has been decidedly pro-Israel.
Many politicians or organisations in a tight jam simply hit the “apology button” as an escape mechanism. In the past 24 hours, I have heard two examples on the news.
Here in the UK, what is really “intolerable” is that it has taken so long for Sunak, Starmer (and the followers of both) ---- as well as “liberal” papers such as The Guardian --- to EVEN START to appreciate how intolerable this war has been for the pulverised people of Palestine.
Come Election Day, some us will not accept any apologies from any of them if they say they got it a bit wrong on Gaza. Or if they parade liberal guilt.
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Check this out
1) What ever happened to the Socialist Alliance?
In 1999, a new “left of Labour” electoral alliance known as the Socialist Alliance (SA) was set up. Fairly rapidly the SA gained about 3,000 members, was backed by 15 other left organisations and stood 98 candidates in the 2001 general election. But by 2003, the SA was on the skids and it shut up shop in 2005.
Read THE LEFT LANE which comes out on 11 April for a detailed account by an active SA member of 20 years ago as to what led to its destruction.
It will be available here: https://theleftlane2024.substack.com
2) Three new interventions from Yanis Varoufakis
I think Yanis Varoufakis is one of the best leaders we have on the left in the Europe.
A brief bio: Born in 1961, Yaroufakis is Greek. He obtained a PhD in Economics in the UK and taught the subject at two English unis. He was elected to the Hellenic Parliament in 2015 and was appointed that same year as Minister of Finance in the Syriza government led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. He played a key role in his country’s lengthy debt crisis and led its negotiations with the EU. Since 2018, he was been Secretary General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DIEM25)
He is the author of numerous books (Google him) and a terrific communicator.
Here are three of his recent projects:
1) Democracy is finished in Europe (video – 17:35)
An excellent explanation for the growth of the far right in Europe.
2) In the eye of the storm: The political odyssey of Yanis Yaroufakis
https://eyeofthestorm.info/
Watch the trailer for his “six-part documentary series that begins by telling the story of Varoufakis’ dramatic battle with the European establishment: an epic struggle to rescue the most bankrupt nation in Europe, exposing the dark side of power at the highest levels.”
The series will be released soon; I will be ordering a copy.
3) Greece, EU elections, Palestine & the International Order – JACOBIN interview with David Broder.
Here Varoufakis is interviewed about his time as the finance minister of Greece, explains why recent crises have mostly benefited the far right, and looks at the decline of Western hegemony globally. Fascinating insider stuff.
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Edited by Alan Story, The Left Lane is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
You can reach us at: theleftlanepolitics@gmail.com
