Brendan O’Hara is the Scottish National Party’s Middle East Spokesperson and MP for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber. He has been an MP continually since May 2015, making him one of the longest-serving parliamentarians for the Scottish National Party.
Before his time in politics, O’Hara had a successful career as a TV producer with STV, Sky and the BBC. Among his notable journalistic achievements is the Road To Referendum documentary series, which he wrote, produced and directed in 2013 – and which was subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland award.
Since the war in Gaza, O’Hara has been one of the most vocal proponents of Palestinian rights in Westminster. As an unabashed critic of the UK government’s position, he has drawn significant attention for his unflinching rhetoric in the House of Commons, alongside other key voices for Palestine, such as Jeremy Corbyn.
For this interview, The New Arab sat down with Brendan O’Hara at his office in London, after having first met him in a chance encounter at Glasgow’s Barras Market.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:
The New Arab: What is your main message in terms of the UK’s position on Gaza?
Brendan O’Hara: The UK is operating a two-tier standard to protect Israel, shredding international law in the process. I fear that this double standard means that in 10, 15, 20 years from now, international law will not exist in any meaningful way.
There used to be a tacit understanding that, while the people who created the rules (the West) would always apply them in their own interest, the system was nonetheless fair-ish. That notion has been completely abandoned. International law hasn’t just been bent or manipulated, it’s being completely destroyed.
If 50 or 60,000 Gazans killed, the majority of whom are women and children, doesn’t make the UK government see that, then I don’t know what will. If the genocidal language of some of Israel’s ministers, and the countless crimes against humanity that we’ve seen in Gaza, like Palestinian ambulance workers being summarily executed, doesn’t make them see that, then what will?
The abject moral cowardice that has been displayed by the UK, both by this and the last government, should beggar belief; But unfortunately, it has become par for the course for the UK in their dealings with Israel, going back decades. They are designing the downfall of all the institutions we created in the rules-based international order. They couldn’t be undermining it more if they took a sledgehammer to it.
Whatever the world looks like in 50 years, I think we will look back at this point as being the moment where it all began to disintegrate. I can’t see how it will stop this [chain reaction] of disintegration as we’ve already allowed Israel to cross what would have been hitherto unconscionable red lines. I’m watching people like David Lammy and thinking: “I know you don’t believe this. I know you know better. But he and the British establishment have decided that there is no line that Israel can cross.
The last 18 months have reminded us just how much the UK government picks and chooses what it calls genocide. Just look at the case of the Yazidis. It was clear to me [and others] in 2014 that genocidal violence was taking place against that community, but the media circus had turned its attention elsewhere, and nobody really cared enough.
Me and the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Yazidis pushed and pushed, but got nowhere. Then, out of nowhere, two years ago, James Cleverly (then Foreign Secretary) announced that the UK accepted that it was a genocide. This is an arbitrary process, [or one of political convenience].
Is the UK government’s position on Gaza the greatest hypocrisy you’ve seen in your lifetime?
Yeah, without a shadow of a doubt, it is. It absolutely is. What’s happening in Gaza is different because of the UK’s complicity. You can actually draw a line from King Charles Street to Tel Aviv. You can see that the UK is up to its neck in this. They are arming these people. They know what they’re doing. They can’t ever say they didn’t know what was happening. They know there’s a genocide. They know that Netanyahu’s end game is not security, but the annihilation of Palestinians and the eradication of a Palestinian State completely.
We can see this in the West Bank, where Hamas doesn’t even exist, but where we’re still witnessing the forced displacement of Palestinians, the harassment and closure of news agencies, the expansion of settlements, and increasing settler violence.
Yet all we hear from this government are mealy-mouthed platitudes about getting a peace deal back in place and moving towards a two-state solution, when they can’t even agree to start the process of recognising a Palestinian State. They must take us for fools. It’s the rank hypocrisy of it, coupled with the complicity, which is the worst I’ve ever seen during my lifetime.
Can you talk more about the chilling effect you have seen across Parliament?
The self-censorship is plain as day, I’ve also never seen anything like this in my career. If you look at the official parliamentary record (Hansard), the people in the Labour Party who you would have expected to speak out on Palestine, or have previously spoken out, prior to October 7, are largely silent now.
I think that’s down to the power of the Israeli lobby within Parliament and within the Labour Party, which is absolutely immense. They are incredibly well organised and very well resourced.
Why has the UK government decided to prioritise Israel over Palestine? What is the calculus?
The UK and the US have decided that Israel is too important an ally in the region to lose, particularly considering what they perceive as the massive threat from Iran. Also, for the UK, specifically, the economic risk of alienating the US by criticising Israel is huge, and Brexit has made the UK even more vulnerable to that powerless state of affairs.
Brexiters believed that America would be the UK’s economic saviour, but now the UK is bobbing about like a cork on the ocean, unable to control its direction of travel and desperately trying not to sink. The problem is that the UK cannot stand against America in any way, shape or form because it has no allies or friends anywhere else.
Brexit was self-harm of Biblical proportions, whose economic hit is an ongoing tsunami we’re still only beginning to feel. Labour knows this. They also know that they need to get back into the Single Market, the Customs Union, and allow freedom of movement. But they’re so scared of losing votes to Reform, and have become so paralysed with fear, that they can do nothing.
Meanwhile, the UK is beholden to the White House. So, when the US says, “Don’t even think about disrupting the F-35 fighter jet workflow,” they don’t dare disrupt it. Starmer probably lies awake at night thinking: “What the hell have I inherited and what have I allowed myself to become?”
He knows better. He must know that what’s happening in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank, is a genocide. A war crime upon war crime. Atrocity upon atrocity.
He knows that the UK is utterly complicit in these crimes, but he’s decided that it’s a price the UK must pay because the country is sinking, economically speaking. If Starmer gets the economy wrong, then he’s finished. Brexit has us sinking like a stone, so he cannot afford to jeopardise anything, especially our relationship with America. It’s moral cowardice.
I also believe that Starmer is trying to appease the right-wing voters by not entering the culture war that Gaza has become part of. So, it’s easier for him to do what he does best… and stand for nothing. That’s what got him elected.
The Labour Party, today, believes in nothing and stands for nothing, which is sad because there are some very committed and good Labour MPs, but they’re just so marginalised because they’ve brought in an absolute wall of identical, photofit, bland and compliant MPs who will do what they’re told, when they’re told.
It really is so depressing. Out of the 650 members, I can probably name the few dozen MPs, across all parties, who are speaking out against what is happening in Gaza; that’s how few of us are daring to do so.
You’ve challenged Labour on numerous occasions. What do you make of their arguments?
As I said earlier, as lawyers, both Starmer and Lammy know exactly what is happening, but as lawyers, they are aware of the legal ramifications of calling this out for what it is. Because if they said out loud that this is a genocide, then not only would there be legal ramifications and actions which the UK would be obliged to then take — actions that they really don’t want to take, but as I mentioned earlier, the political fall-out of calling this a genocide is something that they are not prepared to accept. So, they choose to stay silent.
When I and others challenge David Lammy on Gaza in parliament, you can see the red mist descend on him. For example, I asked him recently if he could think of another time when one of the UK’s closest friends justified the killing of babies and toddlers as legitimate military targets to the degree that we’re seeing Israel do in Gaza.
Lammy said: “There are atrocities on both sides”. And, so, we have him saying on the record that there are atrocities on both sides. The difference is that we, the UK, are supporting one side’s atrocities. We are supporting and arming and providing political cover to a regime that we have admitted is committing war crimes.
It’s like when David Cameron appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee in December of last year when he was Foreign Secretary. I thought that he was arrogantly ill-prepared, and I recall him saying that the first thing he’d ask of the Israelis was that “they should turn the water back on in Northern Gaza.” He basically admitted the Israelis had turned the water off, had the power to turn it back on, but were choosing not to do so. He indirectly admitted to Israel’s flagrant breach of international law, and then panicked and reverted to the old: “Oh, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer,” about nine times after that.
The idea that, if the UK hangs about long enough, then maybe the Israeli people will kick out Netanyahu and things will get back to “normal” is absolute nonsense. Even if it’s not Netanyahu personally, then those ideas and philosophies are so deeply entrenched and ingrained in Israeli society that getting a slightly more liberal prime minister is not going to create the serious and radical change that’s required to give Palestinians the dignity and self-determination they’ve been denied for decades.
So, the UK government will keep repeating platitudes like “Israel has the right to self-defence” because they have nothing else to say. They are hiding behind that statement in order to justify what is happening today in Gaza and elsewhere. It’s appalling.
What do you foresee happening under Trump concerning Palestine?
I had no faith in Biden to be able to control Israel. I’ve even less faith in Trump. Netanyahu has been emboldened by Trump. We’re seeing that playing out now.
The most powerful people in the world with regards to Israel and Palestine, Trump and Netanyahu, both think that there is a military solution to the ‘question of Palestine’. But history tells us you cannot defeat an ideology by shooting it, unless you start exterminating people entirely.
Netanyahu and his team are not stupid. They may be hideously wrong, but they’re not stupid. They know what they’re doing. Trump and Netanyahu are in this for the long haul, and what I fear we’ll see next is the annexation of the West Bank and the further control of Gaza.
Just killing everybody in Gaza so that there’s no resistance – is that the end goal that the UK wants to support? Because I fear that’s the mindset of those at the helm of the Israeli cabinet.
I think Starmer understands this reality. He knows that Israel’s military violence is creating tens of thousands of angry young people who are not going to make Israel any more secure in the long term.
You don’t get security by killing children’s parents and expecting them to then become compliant with your will. You might get security if you kill them all or displace them completely. Is that the future that the UK government is asking us to sign up to?
Sebastian Shehadi is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer at the New Statesman. Follow him on X: @seblebanon
