What do you even say? Israel's murderous assault on Gaza may lead to a reduction in obesity,

which may improve the life expectancy of the surviving Palestinian population.

That's a claim made by one of the main pro-Israel lobby groups in Britain, UK lawyers for Israel,

and specifically its chief executive, Jonathan Turner. This comes in the context of the winds

beginning to shift against Israel in certain countries in the West, like Britain, as the enormity

of the crime being committed against the Palestinian people has become impossible to suppress or

ignore. Israel's cheerleaders are on the defensive, and they are doubling down on a strategy

they've had since day one of the genocide to sow doubt in the estimated death toll in Gaza

caused by the Israeli assault. In this particular case, there was a debate at the cooperative

group's annual general meeting over a motion proposing that the retailer stopped selling

Israeli produce.

This is an example of the crucial strategy of boycott divestment and sanctions,

a campaign modelled on the struggle against apartheid South Africa to use whatever levers

are available to isolate this genocidal and apartheid state.

The motion cited figures, estimates by public health academics,

in a letter to the Lancet, the world's most prestigious medical journal that was published last

July, so 10 months ago, when they suggested at that point that up to 186,000 people could have

been killed in Gaza at that point. That's because, as they noted,

in conflicts, though calling a genocide of conflict is obviously problematic. It's difficult to come up

with an all-encompassing word in this particular case. But the number killed through indirect

causes, such as lack of medical care, dwarfs the number directly killed by violence,

and the official death toll in Gaza

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