WHEN the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, the attack on Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, the news reverberated around the world, with the Western media reporting every move.
It is an interesting reflection of the way of the world that when Pakistan decides to go to war against its neighbour Afghanistan, mounting air attacks in the capital Kabul, there is almost complete media silence in the West.
The one immediate exception is the Guardian which published a piece headed: ‘Pakistan targets militant hideouts in Afghanistan as conflict continues’.
It has to be said that the actions have been little more than skirmishes in a region that has a long history of instability, going back to the Raj and before, where the North-West Frontier was a continuous cockpit of turmoil.
This resulted in the British time of the infamous strategy of ‘butcher and bolt’, where troops would launch destructive punitive raids and then skedaddle before the tribes could assemble and extract their revenge.
As such, when Operation Enduring Freedom was launched, the news was not so much about the Afghan campaign as the role of the United States in it. Essentially, the US is news; primitive countries in the back of beyond are not.
It is the case that Israel has much the same effect. The punitive action against Hamas in Gaza has attracted hugely disproportionate media attention, in stark contrast to the murderous war going on in Sudan where hundreds of thousands are being slain or starved to death and the Western media can scarcely be bothered to report it.
This might be called generically the ‘Gaza effect’, defined loosely as a phenomenon where events attract disproportionate attention because of the identity of the participants. In the early days this was mainly a media effect, reflecting in the often wall-to-wall coverage.
Gradually, though, this has started to have real world effects, seen in the general election which produced five MPs who had stood on a Gaza ticket. Latterly, it has had a dampening effect on foreign policy when Starmer refused to support US/Israeli strikes on Iran, and initially withheld US access to British bases for fear of offending Muslim communities.
Such is the pervasiveness of this effect that it could have a significant impact of the local elections to be held on May 7, when more than 4,850 councillors will be elected in England, including the 32 London boroughs.
This we learnt from an article in the Telegraph which carried the headline ‘Pro-Gaza election push could spell the end for Starmer’, the sub-head telling us that ‘Vote Palestine movement aims to “make Palestine an election issue” in May’s local elections’.
Typically, the paper personalises the issue around a prominent political figure, as we are breathlessly informed that Starmer’s premiership is in fresh danger from a campaign by Gaza activists aiming to swing the local elections and elect hundreds of councillors on a pro-Palestine ticket.
But this really isn’t the main point – or shouldn’t be. Local elections already have a tenuous relationship with local democracy, where the proper role should be to cast judgement on the performance of councillors and their political parties, rewarding success and punishing failures.
All too often these days they have taken on the character of an extended opinion poll, used to measure the political temperature of the nation, the results bearing no relation to the performance of respective councils.
Now, the elections seem set to become even more detached from their original purpose as the Vote Palestine movement aims to ‘make Palestine an election issue’ at the ballot box in May, the intention being to punish Labour for its position on the conflict in Gaza.
Already, the elections are seen as a moment of danger for Starmer who will probably face significant pressure to resign should Labour suffer a heavy defeat – the latter being a foregone conclusion. But this development ramps up the pressure in a wholly different way.
The Vote Palestine movement, which calls itself a ‘national grassroots campaign’, is calling on voters to sign a ‘People’s Pledge’, signifying a commitment to consider candidates who have taken the ‘Candidate Pledge’ – this in turn signifying support for a three-point agenda which includes upholding ‘the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people’.
So far more than 1,000 candidates have signed the pledge, spanning the political spectrum to include Greens, the SNP and Lib-Dems, as well as 300 signatories within Labour itself.
Thirteen branches of the movement have been set up, nine of which cover ten London boroughs, while the others are in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield. Campaign literature is adorned with slogans including ‘together, let’s make Palestine an election issue’ and ‘Vote Palestine – sign the People’s Pledge now’.
Launched in December 2025 by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), according to the Morning Star, it is supported by the national Vote Palestine 2026 coalition, the Palestinian Youth Movement Britain, the Muslim Vote, the British Palestinian Committee, and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.
Supporting the pledge is Labour MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon, who says Labour’s abysmal polling could be explained in part by the Prime Minister’s ‘refusal’ to stand up for Palestine.
Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali and Gorton and Denton by-election victor Hannah Spencer are among those who have joined the movement, as well as Labour leader of Preston City Council, Matthew Brown, and Independent MP and Birmingham councillor Ayoub Khan.
Birmingham is going to be a particularly interesting test of this ‘Gaza effect’, where a local poll predicts an electoral wipeout for Labour. This will change the council beyond all recognition, ending a 14-year reign and leaving the party with just a handful of seats.
The greatest shock is the prediction that a wave of Independents – many of them pro-Palestine and anti-Israel Muslims, several of them former Labour-backed councillors who quit or were pushed out, plus well-known community activists – will take the most seats across the city, leaving the Greens in second place and Reform coming third.
In an update to the Daily Telegraph report, we see a new piece headed: ‘Pro-Palestine activists go door-to-door to sway voters’, with the sub-head having critics making the obvious point that the campaigners risk ‘distracting voters from local issues’.
Activists, we are told, are intimidating voters into backing pro-Gaza candidates, ‘stoking divisive sectarian politics and hatred’, and ‘distracting voters from local issues’ by injecting Gaza into the heart of the local elections.
A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism is particularly voluble, saying: ‘Unlike regular canvassing, which is designed to identify supporters, these crazed activists are making lists of those who don’t agree with them. This is despicable intimidation masquerading as virtuous activism, and with local elections upon us, it risks becoming voter intimidation.’
Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory Party chairman, said: ‘Local elections should be about fixing potholes, collecting bins and genuinely local issues. Under no circumstance should they be used to import international conflicts into town halls.’
Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: ‘These local elections have nothing to do with Palestine. Those trying to insert a conflict thousands of miles away into local elections risk stoking divisive sectarian politics and hatred. Going around recording people’s views on Israel and Gaza is sinister and potentially threatening.’
Russell Langer, director of public affairs at the Jewish Leadership Council, said: ‘Since the Hamas attack on October 7 2023, we have seen far too many local councillors and candidates use the fora of local government to target the world’s only Jewish state. Foreign policy is a reserved matter for the UK Government, not local councils. Vote Palestine is a bad joke.’
His sentiment was shared by Alex Hearn, from Labour Against Antisemitism, who noted that the campaign ‘won’t help a single Palestinian and distracts voters from the local issues – bins, potholes, housing – that actually affect their lives’.
These are fair points, highlighting the abuse of a system which is already seriously dysfunctional. Worryingly, it might also serve as a harbinger for the General Election, further corrupting the electoral process and leading to perverse outcomes.
This article appeared in Turbulent Times on March 16, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
