‘A litany’ in the common meaning is ‘a sizeable series or set’ (Merriam Webster), but for me the specific religious usage is more meaningful. See The Litany from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/litany.
The CofE Litany headlines our sinfulness and need for forgiveness, starting thus: “O God the Father of heaven: have mercy upon us miserable sinners” and although I have profound problems with a lot of it, at the same time I love it! I love its structure and the way it is used (not that it is used very often these days, as far as I know), if not all of its content. There’s a lot more I’d like to say about this litany (I differ from many other liberal Christians in the importance I place on our sinfulness and need for forgiveness, for example), but that is for another time.
When I read the text below from Peter Oborne’s ‘Complicit’ (OR Books, New York and London, 2025, pp 258-261), it sounded to me very much like a religious litany. To my mind, that 'we' in the introductory paragraphs, meaning 'Britain', rightly indicates that I, as a Briton, can't escape at least some degree of responsibility.
See what you think.
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The Role of Britain
We bear a heavy responsibility for the deaths in Gaza, third in line only behind Israel and its primary patron and collaborator the United States. We helped enable the daily slaughter, destruction, disease, starvation, and human misery. We could have stopped arms sales. We could have sanctioned Israel. We could have ended military support.
We could have come to the aid of the Palestinians. We could have supported a special war crimes tribunal, as we did in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. We could have submitted evidence at The Hague, as we did after the Bosnian Genocide. We could have deployed sanctions, as we did against Putin, and held Israel's leaders personally accountable for their atrocities. We could have sent British navy ships to Gaza to relieve the blockade. We could even have made the moral case for a no-fly zone over Gaza to protect its inhabitants, as we did to protect Kurds against Saddam Hussein
Damn you Keir Starmer. Damn you Rishi Sunak. Damn you Lammy, Cameron, Cleverly. A second damn for Lammy for shaking Benjamin Netanyahu's bloodstained hand.
Damn you Mitchell and Falconer, the bag carriers.
Damn you Lindsay Hoyle, Commons Speaker who wrecked a ceasefire motion and got Starmer off the hook.
Damn the Foreign Office officials who put their pensions before Palestinian lives.
Shame on the British military which trained, advised, and supported the genocidal Israeli army. Damn you Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. As chief of the defence staff you had the power to stop this. You have brought Britain's armed forces into disrepute.
Damn the arms manufacturers who have profited from supplying the Israeli military. Damn you BAE Systems, profiteers from death.
Damn the special relationship. It's led Britain into a cesspit.
Damn the politicians and journalists who never reported on or cared about the deaths of Palestinian journalists targeted and killed by Israel.
Damn the blood-soaked British newspaper industry. Damn you Murdoch. Damn you Rebekah Brooks. Damn you Victoria Newton, editor of The Sun. Damn you Tony Gallagher. You are The Times editor who awarded space to Yoav Gallant, wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes including the use of starvation as a weapon of war and crimes against humanity. Damn you Professor Niall Ferguson for co-writing that article. [1]
Damn you Chris Evans, editor of the Daily Telegraph, for turning your newspaper into one of Israel's propaganda tools. Damn you Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist. You allowed your renowned journal to denounce the International Court of Justice genocide judgment as a ‘show trail’ [2]. You knew that Israel was turning Gaza into a 'hellscape' yet still demanded: 'fight on' [3].
Damn you Daily Mail editor Ted Verity and your offshore proprietor Lord Rothermere. Damn you Michael Gove. Damn The Spectator.
Damn the ignorant, lavishly paid, cruel, canting newspaper columnists and studio hosts. Damn the know-nothing reporters who peddled lies and twisted the facts. Damn the reporters who were too afraid to search out the truth.
Damn those who passed by on the other side. Damn the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to meet a Bethlehem pastor [4]
Damn the moral cowards at the top of the BBC: Samir Shah, Robbie Gibb, Tim Davie, Richard Burgess. Damn you for failing to understand the meaning of the great institution you have disgraced, or why it mattered so much.
Damn the atrocity deniers. Damn those who treated Palestinians as less than human. Damn those who viewed Palestinians as statistics. Damn the ideologists. Damn the 'clash of civilisation' barbarians. Damn the Great Replacement conspiracists. Damn the neoconservatives – never embarrassed, humbled, or sated.
Damn the extreme right for your bigotry and racism. Damn you Nigel Farage. Damn you Tommy Robinson. Damn you Douglas Murray.
Damn you Priti Patel. Damn you Kemi Badenoch.
Damn the self-appointed guardians of public discourse who smeared those who marched for peace as terror supporters. Damn Suella Braverman. Damn Yvette Cooper.
Damn the supporters of Israel who turned the charge of antisemitism, one of the great evils of human history, into a cheap propaganda weapon to cover for Israeli crimes.
Damn the lobbyists. Damn you Conservative Friends of Israel. Damn you Labour Friends of Israel – with a second damn for your disreputable jolly to Tel Aviv at the height of the slaughter. [5]
Damn those who didn't care. Damn those who did care but were afraid to act. Damn those who intimidated them into inertia. Damn the cowards and the careerists.
Damn those who put power before morality. Damn the pragmatists. Damn those who had their doubts but didn't voice them.
Damn those who didn't know. Damn those who didn't want to know. Damn those who didn't understand. Damn those who didn't want to understand.
Damn all who were complicit in this brazen, public, and protracted crime against humanity.
I expect you all think you will get away with it. You have in the past. But the world may be starting to change.
Notes and references.
1 Niall Ferguson and Yoav Gallant, ‘Israel Has Done Most of the Job – now Trump Can Finish It’. The Times (20 June 2025)
2 Editorial, ‘Charging Isreal with Genocide Makes a Mockery of the ICJ’, The Economist (18 January 2024)
3 Editorial, ‘Why Israel Must Fight On’, The Economist (2 November 2023)
4 On the grounds that he had shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn MP. The archbishop, to his credit, later apologised to Pastor Munther Isaac. Patrick Wintour, 'Pastor Says Welby Would Not Meet Him If He Spoke at Palestine Rally with Corbyn, The Guardian (21 February 2024).
5 'LFI Delegation Visits Israel and Palestine as Conflict Reaches 600 Days’, lfi.org.uk (30 May 2025). See also: Hamish Morrison, 'Labour Politicians Fail to Declare All-Expenses-Paid Trip to Israel’, The National (14 July 2025).
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