Israel, Palestine and the UK

The conflict between Israel and Hamas which erupted on the 7th October is complex and it is rooted in history. Neither news headlines nor social media offer the format needed to explore the topic fairly.

The arguments on both extreme ends of the conflict have been well expressed in the media, but many UK citizens find the polarised discourse uncomfortable.

The only place where you can read both sides of the arguments, side by side, is in the House of Commons debates. And there are a lot of debates on the subject, as shown by these screenshots.

Scrolling through debates on your phone screen is a lot quicker and easier than ploughing through Parliament TV. We summarise each debate in chart form so you can quickly spot MP's and parties that interest you, and navigate directly to their contributions.

The first of these screenshots shows a summary of a debate from 29th January 2024 about the conflict. You can see who contributed. The size of each bar shows how many words they spoke.

Clicking on one of those bars takes you to the actual words that they spoke in the debate. You can scroll up and down the debate to read the whole thing.

Note the exchange between Imran Hussain and Andrew Mitchell in the screenshot. Parliamentary debates really do include both sides of the argument.

Subscribing to the ScrutinyCounts app will give you access to the Topics function. From there you can select "Foreign Affairs". There you will find a multitude of debates about Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East, going back to the start of 2020.

In short, if you're serious about current affairs, and want to read politics in the raw, without any editorial filter, you should download the ScrutinyCounts app now.