In a development so predictable it could have been written by a committee of lobotomised goldfish, Gaza City hospitals are once again counting the dead after an Israeli airstrike targeted Hamas leaders. The UK, meanwhile, has emerged from its customary state of moral paralysis to issue a flabby-handed call for an immediate ceasefire, a gesture that carries all the weight of a soggy biscuit hurled at a hurricane.
Let us paint the picture for you, dear reader, because the BBC certainly won't. The scene: a hospital corridor in Gaza, where the living queue to scream at the dead. The air thick with smoke and the scent of unfulfilled promises. The soundtrack: the rhythmic thud of explosions and the hysterical braying of British politicians on the airwaves.
"We urge all parties to de-escalate," burbled a Foreign Office spokesman, his voice dripping with the molasses of vacuity. "We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities." This from a government that sells arms to the Saudis, that hosted Trump's state visit, that thinks "humanitarian pause" is a synonym for "let us all pretend we have a conscience." The sheer nerve. The sheer, flapping, plumage-displaying nerve of the British establishment.
Let us not mince words: this is the diplomatic equivalent of shouting "stop fighting" at a pair of wolverines from behind a bulletproof window. The UK has all the influence in this conflict of a mildly constipated dormouse. Its calls for a ceasefire are the empty gestures of a nation that has reduced foreign policy to a series of pious tweets and lukewarm press releases.
Meanwhile, the hospitals of Gaza City do not have the luxury of moral posturing. They are dealing in the grim currency of bodies. The dead include, as ever, the requisite number of children and medics, those inconvenient collateral damages that the advocates of "targeted strikes" prefer to gloss over. But let us not dwell on the grisly arithmetic. It is not for the British press to report on the reality of missile impacts and shattered families. No, no. That would be too close to journalism.
Instead, we shall summon the ghost of Mandy Rice-Davies and observe that the Hamas leaders, those elusive phantoms, somehow always evade the bombs while their constituents do not. It is a curious magic trick, one that our political masters in Whitehall refuse to look behind. And why would they? Acknowledging the trick would require admitting that the whole sorry circus is a fraud.
So the UK calls for a ceasefire. It will be ignored. The bombs will fall. The hospitals will fill. The politicians will make more calls. The cycle will continue its grim spiral into the abyss, lubricated by the stale tears of the dying and the warm, cloying handshakes of the British foreign service.
In the end, dear reader, the only thing of substance to emerge from this latest convulsion of violence is a reminder: that the world is run by men in suits who mistake noise for action, and that the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces, or in this case, the body parts. So raise a glass of whatever passes for gin in the press room to the latest batch of victims. They are the only honest players in this game.
Oh, and the UK also called for a ceasefire. In case you missed it.
