London peace conference speakers say US attack on Iran exposed imperialism

LONDON — Speakers at a peace and justice conference in London said Israel’s war in Gaza and the United States’ military action against Iran had exposed what they described as the realities of imperialism and were pushing the world toward a “law of the jungle.”

The remarks were made at the fourth annual conference of the Peace and Justice Project, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency. The statements reflect the views of the speakers and were not independently verified in the report.

Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, said the United States had “lost its mask” and argued that Israel’s actions had emboldened Washington. He accused the United States of carrying out military aggression against Iran on Israel’s behalf and of threatening or targeting other countries, including Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland and Oman.

Barghouti said Israel, with support from the White House and European governments, was contributing to the erosion of the international legal order established after the Second World War. He called for the United Nations to be “decolonized” rather than abandoned, warning that discarding international law would leave global relations to military powers and unrestrained force.

He also said the war in Gaza had exposed a gap between Western governments’ human-rights claims and their actions. Citing the suppression of pro-Palestinian student protests in several European countries, he called for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, an end to military exports and imports involving Israel, and ethical rules governing public investment, procurement and academic cooperation.

American journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin said years of live broadcasts showing deaths in Gaza had failed to compel international institutions to hold Israel accountable. She described those institutions as hollow and said Western politicians had not only failed to stop the killing but had criminalized opposition to it.

Martin characterized the actions of the United States and Israel in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran as part of a single process. She said attacks on oil infrastructure and civilian oil tankers constituted both crimes against humanity and systematic environmental destruction. She also argued that protests, divestment campaigns and other popular actions had begun to weaken traditional support for Israel in the United States.

Palestinian lawyer and international-law researcher Shahd Hammouri said the conflict should be viewed through the lens of political economy. She argued that global economic structures based on capital accumulation encouraged war, militarization and corporate profiteering, and that international law had failed to prevent those dynamics.

Hammouri said developments in Iran and Yemen should not be separated from the Palestinian issue, describing Palestinian freedom as linked to shifts in the balance of power in West Asia. She criticized Britain’s restrictions on some settlement-produced goods as inadequate and said people in Britain could still legally support Israel’s war economy through financial investments.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain’s Labour Party and founder of the Peace and Justice Project, said global military spending had surpassed $2.7 trillion while major powers were reducing foreign aid and funding for organizations including the World Food Programme, UNESCO and the United Nations. He said rising military budgets alongside cuts to social spending showed that war and arms-industry profits were being prioritized over public welfare.

Corbyn said the Gaza Tribunal had been established after efforts to secure an independent parliamentary investigation into Britain’s role in Gaza were blocked. He accused governments of complicity in the killing and arms transfers to Israel and said the destruction of cultural, historic and archaeological sites in Gaza formed part of an attempt to erase Palestinian identity and history.

New Gordon, a professor of international law at Queen Mary University of London and a member of the Gaza Tribunal panel, said the panel had heard 16 hours of testimony from 29 doctors, journalists, academics, lawyers, researchers, civil-society activists and political figures. He said the evidence could help support future efforts to hold British political and administrative decision-makers accountable.

Victoria Rose, a British reconstructive and plastic surgeon who has carried out several medical missions to Gaza since 2019, warned that the collapse of the territory’s health system would create a long-term crisis. She said nearly 5,000 people in Gaza had undergone amputations, while only eight people had been trained to produce prosthetic limbs or provide rehabilitation. She added that equipment needed to make prostheses had not entered Gaza since May 2024.

Rose said a London medical charity had prepared two shipments of orthopedic equipment. Although the shipments had reportedly received approval from Israeli authorities and the World Health Organization, they remained held in Egypt’s al-Arish, according to her account. She also said legal and financial restrictions in Britain made it difficult to pay trainee doctors directly in Gaza.

The conference speakers called for continued grassroots organizing, independent investigations and greater financial and technical support for Gaza’s medical sector.