HOW MEDIA ATTEMPTS TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE: In creating a media row about the policing of London marches against genocide, the Israel lobby knew it would score a victory, whatever happened.

A gruesome discovery was made in Gaza at the weekend. Some 300 Palestinian bodies – of men, women and children – were unearthed from an unmarked mass grave in the courtyard of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Even given Israel’s record of committing relentless atrocities in Gaza over the past six months – slaying over 34,000 of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children – this one stood out.

Some bodies were reported to have been found with their hands and feet bound, and stripped of clothing, strongly suggesting they had been executed during a three-month invasion of the city by Israel’s uniformed bandits. Others were said to be decapitated, or their skin and organs removed.

Some 10,000 people had been sheltering at Gaza’s second-largest hospital when it was attacked back in February.

At the time there were reports of patients and staff being picked off by sniper fire. The medical facility was left in ruins. Another 400 people are still reported missing in Khan Younis. More mass graves are likely to be uncovered.

Referring to some of the bodies, Yamen Abu Suleiman, a civil defense leader in Khan Younis, said ‘We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.’

The revelations from Khan Younis fit a pattern that has been gradually emerging as Israeli troops have pulled back.

Last week, the latest of several mass graves were found at Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa. Israel left the area earlier this month after destroying the hospital. Together, the graves are reported to have contained hundreds of bodies. Further unmarked graves have been discovered in Beit Lahiya. The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, said he was horrified by the reports.

Back in the 1990s, the identification of mass graves of thousands of Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica led to the setting up of a special war crimes tribunal of the International Criminal Court. It ruled in 2001 that a genocide had occurred in Srebrenica committed by Bosnian Serbs, a judgment later confirmed by the International Court of Justice, sometimes referred to as the World Court.

In the circumstances, one might have expected the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians to be front-page news – especially since the same World Court ruled three months ago that a plausible case had been made that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza. And yet, like so many other Israeli atrocities, this one barely caused a ripple in the news cycle. 

Months ago, the establishment British media largely lost interest in reporting on the continuing slaughter in Gaza. The contrast with the media’s early coverage of Ukraine has been stark. The discovery of a mass grave containing some 100 bodies in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha – wrongly blamed on Russian troops – caused international outrage. Bucha quickly became a byword for Russian savagery and the discovery sustained months of calls for Russian leaders to be tried for genocide.

The general indifference of British media outlets to the mass graves found in Gaza is hugely convenient for Britain’s two main political parties.  The UK has avoided pushing for a ceasefire to end Israel’s bloodletting in Gaza. It refuses to stop selling Israel weapons and components that have helped in the killing of Palestinians – and potentially aid workers too.

On Israel’s say-so, Britain has cut funding to UNRWA, the UN aid agency best placed to stop a famine Israel is willfully inducing in the enclave by blocking aid. A British abstention helped foil a vote in the United Nations Security Council this month to recognize Palestine as a state, something 140 other nations have already done. The Labour Party has offered only muted opposition.

Bipartisan support in the UK for Israel’s plausible genocide has provoked a groundswell of public anger, including regular protests in London that attract hundreds of thousands of marchers. In creating a media row about the policing of London marches against genocide, the Israel lobby knew it would score a victory, whatever happened