LONDON: Senior UK government ministers and MPs have clashed over whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to London this week.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Times Radio that Herzog “needs to answer the allegations of war crimes, of ethnic cleansing and of genocide that are being leveled at the government of Israel.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will hold talks with Herzog in Downing Street on Wednesday.
Streeting added: “I think he (Herzog) needs to explain how, when we have seen so much evidence of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Israeli Army, how he can possibly claim that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. I think he should explain that, if it is not the intent of the government of Israel to perpetrate genocide or ethnic cleansing, how on Earth does he think his Israeli government is going to achieve its stated aim of clearing Palestinians out of Gaza without the war crimes, without ethnic cleansing, or even without genocide?”
Streeting said he had spoken last week to British doctors who had worked in Gaza, receiving “the most harrowing eyewitness testimony, one saying for weeks no food was allowed into Gaza, not even for babies.”
