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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
58 October-November 2025
Contrition deficit
By Michael Smith
Anglo-Centrist ethical
emptiness
In the months since the October 7 2023 Hamas
attack on Israel, Piers Morgan and the hosts of
The Rest is Politics (Alastair Campbell and Rory
Stewart) (TRIP) have presented themselves as
voices of reason amid chaos — outraged above
all by Hamas’s atrocities, cautiously critical of
Israel, and supposedly committed to a nuanced
moral position. But their record is one of
inconsistency, hypocrisy, and rhetorical
hedging in the face of overwhelming evidence
that Israel’s response in Gaza is not merely
disproportionate but legally and morally
indefensible.
The audiences of YouTube chatfest, Piers
Morgan Uncensored, and of TRIP, both in their
own ways self-consciously British
commentaries with no shortage of global and
moral ambition, are not defined by ideological
rigidity, but by a craving for affirmation
disguised as balance. They are the self-
declared centrists who want to believe they are
above tribalism even as they reflexively
support Western power structures. TRIP in
particular prides itself on reasonableness
while steeped in bias. Even when they accept
problems, they can only deal with the evil
hegemons Trump, Johnson and Netanyahu as
if they are outliers. They are utterly out of their
depths in the nasty worlds of post-colonialism,
where Britain and the US are fast becoming
slaves to post-factualism and systemic
intolerance. To their audiences, the word
Morgan has not merely
failed to call Israel’s
actions what they are, he
has actively discouraged
others from doing so:
attacking those who
raised legal alarms,
mocking or questioning
those who warned of war
crimes or genocide
On 12 November 2023 and numerous other
occasions, Morgan pressed a guest with the
demand: “Why won’t you call Hamas
terrorists?”. On the same date, he declared:
“I’ve said that the way Israel is able even today
to turn on the taps of water and energy and fuel
into Gaza is wrong. Palestinians should have
the same human rights as people in Israel. I’m
unequivocal about this. But I’m also
unequivocal in my head that Hamas has to go.
(…) If Israel doesn’t do it how they’re doing it,
how do they get rid of Hamas?”. He reinforced
the point with a chilling analogy: “As you know
a lot of German civilians died in the process of
taking on the Nazis. So would you keep Hamas
in power?” (12 November 2023).
Typically, on 26 June 2024, framing the
debate after October 7, Morgan stated: “It
“genocide” is uncouth, impolite: an
uncomfortable interruption to their well-
curated worldview of civilised debate and
diplomatic posture.
Bias
For too long they sipped their teas and energy
drinks while vituperating at Hamas and
furrowing their brows at Israel’s “PR failures”
but recoiling in outrage if someone accused
Israel of genocide. The flattening of Gaza was
unfortunate, regrettable, but always
understood as a strategic misstep, never a
defining moral crime. Their listeners, especially
TRIP’s, thought they wanted “nuance”, but
what they really have been getting is moral
sedation: language that anaesthetises atrocity
while preserving their self-image as informed,
ethical citizens. In the end Morgan doesn’t
have the fibre to take on US or even MAGA
commonplaces and TRIP embarrassingly often
cite conversations they’ve had with informed
Jewish or Israeli friends. As dedicated insiders
it is no surprise that Alistair admits he gets
communications from the Israeli embassy if he
strays. They have fewer influential friends who
are Palestinian. What is the term for this: racist,
classist, blinkered, or simply biased? Whatever
it is it gets in the way of journalism and it is
extraordinary that eliminating it has been no
part of their late conversion to international
legal orthodoxy.
Initial framing: condemn
Hamas, protect Israel
It is impossible to forget that Morgan almost
daily, on his show Uncensored, demanded
guests explicitly condemn Hamas before they
were allowed to oer a view on Israel. He
framed this as moral clarity. But it functioned
as rhetorical control—demanding absolute
denunciation of Palestinian violence, while
giving Israeli atrocities the benefit of the
doubt.
The disgracefully slow intellectual
evolution of Piers Morgan and The Rest
is Politics on Israel’s War on Gaza
Morgn
TRIP
MEDIA
October-November 2025 59
accusations against Hamas horrors first” (26
June 2024). The underlying narcissism of the
one-time Britain’s Got Talent judge was
perhaps most on display when he insisted: “I
have from the beginning of this felt a genuine
moral quandary” (26 June 2024). Morgan
described his own stance as a morally
conflicted but principled defence of Israel’s
right to respond to the 7 October attacks
Around this time, as a loyal Britisher
channelling Bomber Harris, he was arguing in
eective defence of the war crime of the
reckless and disproportionate killing of
civilians: “As you know a lot of German civilians
died in the process of taking on the Nazis”. And
the slam-dunk, implicitly evoking Churchill:
“So would you keep Hamas in power?”.
He should have always kept it unnuanced
and just followed international law as
interpreted by the UN.
Useless in assessing the facts
and evidence
Independent of Morgan’s and TRIP’s framing,
the trajectory of Israel’s stance was manifest
very early on, and Village, among many others,
identified it immediately. Netanyahu
summoned Amalek; Gallant, Smotrich, and
Ben Gvir labelled Gazans “human animals”
and worse, and advocated mass deportation.
The IDF’s own spokesperson admitted their
goal was “damage, not precision”.International
experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur,
stated this conduct met the threshold of
genocide, yet, when she appeared on Morgan’s
show, she was met with a blast of patronising
whataboutery and terminated the interview,
later tweeting” “out of humility and decorum—
and given your country’s historic
responsibility—some questions should not be
asked”.
Campbell, and especially Stewart, were
famously wrong about the electoral prospects
of Trump but they called the fundaments of
was so barbaric, so medieval, so inhuman in
the way it was executed…So I thought you
have to start this debate about what’s going
on with a clear denunciation of what
happened that day”.
Hedging on the facts
When asked about hospital bombings, Morgan
echoed Israeli propaganda: “You’ve heard
their argument about that. They believe that
Hamas, and this has been corroborated by the
way, have been using hospitals deliberately,
and they don’t care about Palestinian lives…
They knew thousands of Palestinians would
die. They don’t care about their own people”
(12 November 2023).
When evidence mounted of Israeli airstrikes
on hospitals, including the Al-Ahli Baptist
hospital, Morgan initially called it “shameful”
and “horrific”. But within days, he pivoted,
parroting Israeli claims that Hamas might be to
blame and suggesting viewers must wait for
clarity: “If this was a mistake, a tragic one, then
fine. Let’s hear the evidence. We can’t accuse
without clarity”. When clarity came, all was
silence.
Campbell and Stewart on The Rest is Politics
hedged analogously. On 14 October 2023,
they interviewed Israeli sociologist Yuval Noah
Harari, described plausibly as a liberal.
Presented as the voice of reason, a man who
listens to experts, Harari said “most of the
experts I’m talking to say nothing frightens
Hamas more than the possibility of peace and
the way the attack was conducted — they want
to implant hatred in the minds of millions to
make sure there will never be peace”. This is
swiftly accepted by Campbell. On 19 October
2023, Campbell unreasoningly praised
Washington’s influence: “Joe Biden and
Anthony Blinken have been so much more
balanced, and shown in a way that it is possible
to be unequivocally supportive of Israel whilst
at the same time pointing to the need to
restrain”.
Both at least admitted early on to having
been duped by fake stories about Hamas
cruelty but their fundamental sympathies were
unaffected. Campbell properly dismissed
reports of white phosphorus as misattributed
footage: “People are pretending this footage
is from Gaza. So the white phosphorus bombs
people were posting on the Palestinian side,
as Israeli atrocities turned out to be footage
from Ukraine etc etc” (19 October 2023). He
described the Palestinian ambassador’s
reaction as “angry and emotional” (19 October
2023). The theme was repeated later when,
explained Israel’s assault on Hezbollah in
Lebanon through the lens of Israeli trauma,
Stewart said Israel was simply “totally
bewildered, horrified” after October 7 (1
October 2024).
TRIP is insidious. While Piers Morgan shouts,
The Rest is Politics whispers but the result is no
less evasive. Campbell and Stewart positioned
themselves from the outset as arbiters of
nuance: they acknowledged the suering in
Gaza and lamented Israel’s “strategic
missteps,” yet stopped short of condemning
them as war crimes or violations of international
law. Their commentary has been careful, civil
but tendentious and morally skewed. Their
posture is that of the polished diplomat: every
massacre is a failure of policy, never evil.
Repeated hospital bombings are “deeply
regrettable.” Forced starvation becomes a
“humanitarian concern”. They do not trac in
the inflammatory rhetoric of denialism, but in
something arguably more lethal: a refusal to
speak the truth plainly.
Equivocation on International
Law and the UN
While international bodies, legal scholars, and
human rights organisations have condemned
Israel’s conduct as collective punishment, war
crimes, and possible genocide, Morgan and
TRIP vacillated — first oering unqualified
support for Israel’s military actions, then
expressing vague moral discomfort, and
finally, very late in what increasingly appears
to have always been a genocide, turning
without ever acknowledging the legal or moral
implications of their earlier positions. They
refused the humility of standards, they felt we
needed to hear THEM. Bluntly, they failed to
centralise the informed and balanced
perspective of the UN.
Morgan, not a forensic or thoughtful force at
the best of times, though force he is, invokes
international law when criticising Hamas, but
ignores or obfuscates it when applied to Israel,
even as the ICJ accepted South Africa’s case
that Israel may be committing genocide, and
as Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and UN
rapporteurs documented collective
punishment, the weaponisation of starvation,
and explicit incitement. Instead of engaging
this legal framework, Morgan and TRIP prefer
vague empathy, “tragic”, “terrible”, “so sad”,
and deflection. This selective invocation of
international law — strict for enemies, non-
existent for allies — is not just a moral failure
but a journalistic one.
He always firmly insists on Israel’s rights: “If
you suer a terror attack of that nature, in a way
it was perpetrated, Israel has a fundamental
right and a duty to its people — if the
perpetrators say we are going to keep trying to
do this — to defend itself” (26 June 2024). And
we saw Israel using the charter for self defence,
so recklessly given, for maximum moral value,
justifying what was a genocide.
Morgan dismissed genocide claims not just
as wrong but as “outrageous” for a long time
warning: “You can’t just fling around words like
‘genocide’ to score points. Map your
In the end Morgan doesn’t
have the fibre to take
on US or even MAGA
commonplaces and TRIP
embarrassingly often cite
conversations they’ve had
with informed Jewish or
Israeli friends
60 October-November 2025
Israel’s policy in Gaza and Palestine far more
discreditingly wrongly. Stewart’s explainer on
Israel-Palestine on 11 October 2023 describes
what Palestinians experience as an apartheid
state and they called an apartheid state
because they feel that they are not being given
full civil and democratic rights and if they were
given full civil and democratic rights the
situation would be very dierent”. He counters
that with the apparent equal viewpoint that
“there are many Israeli points of view but they
would start by saying that these are very
serious enemies out there that Hamas back in
the 1990s had a founding charter dedicated to
the complete elimination of the state of Israel,
that states like Iran were committed to the
elimination of the state of Israel, that the 67 war
and the Yom Kippur war were designed
basically to wipe them o the face of the map,
that they feel that they have been marginalised
and attacked unfairly at United Nations forums
for decades while other countries like China
and Zimbabwe and Cuba haven’t been
attacked the same way. They feel it’s an
existential threat. They would emphasise that
the Israeli army warn civilians before it attacks
buildings. They will emphasise and again there
are many dierent views on this 1967 territory
but some Israelis would say the territory they
took is central for protection of the state of
Israel: the Golan Heights for example were
artillery positions from which the Syrians
rained rockets down on them and that Israel’s
right to defend itself involves being very
realistic about the significant threat that
Palestinians pose”. He revealingly concludes:
“So somewhere there are two positions and we
look forward to debating the 500 others”.
Israel’s turpitude seems just one possibility.
Turning, late
As the death toll rose into the tens of thousands
with most of the buildings in Gaza gratuitously
destroyed, mass children’s limb-amputations,
hospitals bombed, and Israeli truthfulness
shredded, Morgan slowly shifted tone. But he
never acknowledged his prior credulity or
vacuous moral triteness.
By the summer of 2025, Morgan finally
admitted, “I resist no more”, acknowledging
that Israel’s conduct had crossed a line. On 12
June 2025, Morgan told an Israeli spokesperson
who he’d on several previous occasions
deferred to: “I just I’m afraid I take exception to
a three-month policy of starvation of a
populace that has been relentlessly
bombarded that includes so many children (…)
I just find that unconscionable”.By late
September 2025 Morgan featured Max
Blumenthal calling Trump “Netanyahu’s cuck”
and assailed a former IDF sergeant for under-
recognising the numbers of dead Gazans: a
volte face from his sustained earlier scepticism
as to whether even Hamas health ministry
figures could be trusted. It was too late.
TRIP also shifted. By July 2025, their always-
more-moderate tone had reversed too. Stewart
said: “They are killing tens of thousands of
people and trying to drive millions out and I
don’t know whether we should be calling it
crimes against humanity” (8 July 2025).
Campbell went further, calling Netanyahu an
“alleged war criminal” and, for the first time,
acknowledging that Israel’s campaign could be
called genocide (8 July 2025). By 24 September
2025, TRIP was all for international recognition
of Palestine, Campbell dismissed a concerned
Israeli listener’s view that this was rewarding
Hamas with “blah blah blah”. conjuring Israel
as a “pariah state” and wondering if it even
cares. It was an evolution in politics and a
revolution in sympathy but crucially they
blithely forgave themselves for Israel-Gaza and
certainly never deprecated themselves about
it as they have regularly done with their vatic
failures on Trump’s re-election.
More than TRIP’s, Morgan’s U-turn has not
gone unnoticed. Critics across the political and
legal spectrum have highlighted the
opportunism of his shift. Emad Moussa in The
New Arab suggested his pivot from staunch
defender of Israeli military action to critic of its
excesses was driven by public backlash, not
moral reflection. JFeed described his stance as
a “rollercoaster”, praising Israel’s self-defence
one day and condemning its strikes on Rafah
as “indefensible” the next. Legal commentator
Natasha Hausdor accused him of enabling
disinformation by silencing legal voices which
warned early on of Israeli war crimes.
Commentators were acknowledging that he
had indeed been more interested in shouting
down those who used the term genocide than
engaging with the law.
Why it matters
Morgan has not merely failed to call Israel’s
actions what they are. He has actively
discouraged others from doing so: attacking
those who raised legal alarms, mocking or
questioning those who warned of war crimes
or genocide, reserving special and outrageous
vituperation for Greta Thunberg for her flotilla.
His silence is not neutral. It is moral cowardice
wrapped in the language of centrism. By
refusing to update his framing — as opposed
to his conclusions — in light of overwhelming
evidence, and by not acknowledging his prior
errors, he has helped normalise a conflict
response that violates, in part because it
ignores, every principle of international
humanitarian law. And he has left bombastic
complicity on the register for commentators on
the next genocide. TRIP’s ready self-forgiveness
trivialises the world’s most unforgiveable
crimes and their victims.
If public figures like Morgan and the hosts of
TRIP wish to maintain or gain credibility, they
must do more than steer themselves of the
rocks of equivocation. They must confront the
consequences of their language — their early
licence, their dismissals, their silence. Then
they must take responsibility for helping shape
a discourse that has enabled one of the most
destructive, disproportionate and useless
military campaigns in history.
Anything less is not centrist journalism but
unremediated complicity in war crimes.
Independent of Morgan’s
and TRIP’s framing, the
trajectory of Israel’s
stance, the heedlessness
to law, was manifest very
early on, and Village,
among many others,
identified it immediately
