“The world is judging,” David Lammy said in the Commons today, with all the pique of an imperial overlord rebuking a former colony. “History will judge them. Blocking aid. Expanding the war. Dismissing the concerns of your friends and partners. This is indefensible and it must stop.”
The speech surely won him loud applause throughout the progressive world, not to mention among Labour’s diminishing Muslim base. Next stop: endorsing false claims that Israel is conducting a “genocide” and unilaterally recognising a Palestinian state. It’s coming. Mark my words.
Hamas is already licking its lips. Yesterday, when Sir Keir Starmer joined Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney to issue a statement rebuking Israel and vowing “concrete action” against it, the jihadis issued a delighted official response, calling it a “principled stance”. Which rather suggests that we’re now on the wrong side of history, doesn’t it? Or at least on the wrong side of morality.
The volte face on support for Jerusalem was only a matter of time. In fact, it was something of a surprise that it hadn’t come sooner. During the months it has been in power, the Starmer government has been maintaining a degree of superficial support for the Jewish state while pursuing a policy agenda that told a different story.
Suspending 30 arms export licences. Voting against Israel at the United Nations. Supporting the pernicious International Criminal Court case against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, then suggesting that Britain would uphold the arrest warrant and take them into custody were they to set foot on our soil. Plotting with Emmanuel Macron to recognise a State of Palestine.
Step by step, the government has been edging the country towards a position that is hostile towards Jerusalem, while trying to keep Jewish voters happy with platitudes and not giving Reform any gratuitous targets.
The same strategy has been pursued in other policy areas, from Brexit to immigration. Throw the public some rhetoric to shut them up, then press the button on decisions that take the country in precisely the opposite direction. It looks like flip-flopping until you realise you’ve been had.
Well, now the move has come. Say goodbye, Britain, to the long-awaited free trade agreement with Israel, which would have provided a much-needed boon to the economy. Our trade is currently worth £5.8 billion; this with the nation that produced the cybersecurity startup Wiz, which in March was snapped up by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, for a record-breaking $32 billion. This with a nation that actually knows how to fight a war. Lammy has suspended it.
If this continues, we can also likely bid farewell to our security cooperation. Hundreds of millions of UK-Israel trade is military spending, which over the years has been of vital importance to Britain.
British troops were supplied with the Spike NLOS missile – to start with, directly from IDF stocks for the sake of speed – saving many British lives. Our servicemen have trained on Salisbury Plain with Israel’s high-tech Rhino mobile command and control centre. The RAF has conducted numerous exercises with the Israelis, which has been of huge benefit; Israeli forces are unique in actually putting their kit and training to the test in high-stress, real world environments. We need the benefit of such hands-on experience.
The cooperation goes both ways. When I met him in Israel, Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of Mossad, told me that a 2007 Israeli strike on a secret nuclear reactor in Syria came about after a tip-off from MI6.
All this has been placed in jeopardy. For what? Of course, we crave an end to the fighting in Gaza. But the Israeli hostages are not an afterthought, as they so often seem in government speeches. They are a casus belli, and Israel is entitled to do all it can to get them home.
For another, Hamas is not yet destroyed. If Lammy has an alternative idea for getting Israel’s civilians home and obliterating the jihadis, let’s hear it. Right now, however, the two original provocations to war remain intact; diminished, but intact.
Britain may have the luxury of suggesting that Israel downs weapons before it finishes the job, but that’s only because our people aren’t the ones who will be raped, kidnapped, butchered and mutilated – again – if Hamas is able to regroup. Likewise, the two-state solution.
In Israel, support for that plan is at rock bottom, across the political spectrum. Why? Because their children are the ones who will suffer the results of a terrorist state, endorsed by the international community, just across the border. From the point of view of Westminster, however, the feelgood factor is more important.
It all reminds me of the hullaballoo over Rafah. Remember? Israeli forces were held up for four months by the Biden administration, backed by the international community, who all insisted that a “humanitarian catastrophe” would occur if the invasion went ahead.
The propaganda campaign was intense. Footage of suffering children was everywhere. Every single public figure was talking about the campaign. A social media meme called “all eyes on Rafah” went viral, viewed by almost 50 million people.
Eventually, however, Israel gave up listening. It evacuated the million civilians to safety within ten days and took the fight to Hamas. As a result, very few innocents were killed but the redoubt of the jihadis was razed. The smuggling tunnels into Egypt, the lifeline of Hamas, were captured and blown up, and Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7, was killed.
Israel, it seems, was on the right side of history that time. The war is messy, the loss of life agonising and the Netanyahu government deeply compromised by the hardline elements within it. Take a step back, however, and this is a fight against jihadism. Our foreign secretary should take heed: There’s only one way that history is going to judge that struggle.
“The world is judging,” David Lammy said in the Commons today, with all the pique of an imperial overlord rebuking a former colony. “History will judge them. Blocking aid. Expanding the war. Dismissing the concerns of your friends and partners. This is indefensible and it must stop.”
The speech surely won him loud applause throughout the progressive world, not to mention among Labour’s diminishing Muslim base. Next stop: endorsing false claims that Israel is conducting a “genocide” and unilaterally recognising a Palestinian state. It’s coming. Mark my words.
Hamas is already licking its lips. Yesterday, when Sir Keir Starmer joined Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney to issue a statement rebuking Israel and vowing “concrete action” against it, the jihadis issued a delighted official response, calling it a “principled stance”. Which rather suggests that we’re now on the wrong side of history, doesn’t it? Or at least on the wrong side of morality.
The volte face on support for Jerusalem was only a matter of time. In fact, it was something of a surprise that it hadn’t come sooner. During the months it has been in power, the Starmer government has been maintaining a degree of superficial support for the Jewish state while pursuing a policy agenda that told a different story.
Suspending 30 arms export licences. Voting against Israel at the United Nations. Supporting the pernicious International Criminal Court case against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, then suggesting that Britain would uphold the arrest warrant and take them into custody were they to set foot on our soil. Plotting with Emmanuel Macron to recognise a State of Palestine.
Step by step, the government has been edging the country towards a position that is hostile towards Jerusalem, while trying to keep Jewish voters happy with platitudes and not giving Reform any gratuitous targets.
The same strategy has been pursued in other policy areas, from Brexit to immigration. Throw the public some rhetoric to shut them up, then press the button on decisions that take the country in precisely the opposite direction. It looks like flip-flopping until you realise you’ve been had.
Well, now the move has come. Say goodbye, Britain, to the long-awaited free trade agreement with Israel, which would have provided a much-needed boon to the economy. Our trade is currently worth £5.8 billion; this with the nation that produced the cybersecurity startup Wiz, which in March was snapped up by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, for a record-breaking $32 billion. This with a nation that actually knows how to fight a war. Lammy has suspended it.
If this continues, we can also likely bid farewell to our security cooperation. Hundreds of millions of UK-Israel trade is military spending, which over the years has been of vital importance to Britain.
British troops were supplied with the Spike NLOS missile – to start with, directly from IDF stocks for the sake of speed – saving many British lives. Our servicemen have trained on Salisbury Plain with Israel’s high-tech Rhino mobile command and control centre. The RAF has conducted numerous exercises with the Israelis, which has been of huge benefit; Israeli forces are unique in actually putting their kit and training to the test in high-stress, real world environments. We need the benefit of such hands-on experience.
The cooperation goes both ways. When I met him in Israel, Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of Mossad, told me that a 2007 Israeli strike on a secret nuclear reactor in Syria came about after a tip-off from MI6.
All this has been placed in jeopardy. For what? Of course, we crave an end to the fighting in Gaza. But the Israeli hostages are not an afterthought, as they so often seem in government speeches. They are a casus belli, and Israel is entitled to do all it can to get them home.
For another, Hamas is not yet destroyed. If Lammy has an alternative idea for getting Israel’s civilians home and obliterating the jihadis, let’s hear it. Right now, however, the two original provocations to war remain intact; diminished, but intact.
Britain may have the luxury of suggesting that Israel downs weapons before it finishes the job, but that’s only because our people aren’t the ones who will be raped, kidnapped, butchered and mutilated – again – if Hamas is able to regroup. Likewise, the two-state solution.
In Israel, support for that plan is at rock bottom, across the political spectrum. Why? Because their children are the ones who will suffer the results of a terrorist state, endorsed by the international community, just across the border. From the point of view of Westminster, however, the feelgood factor is more important.
It all reminds me of the hullaballoo over Rafah. Remember? Israeli forces were held up for four months by the Biden administration, backed by the international community, who all insisted that a “humanitarian catastrophe” would occur if the invasion went ahead.
The propaganda campaign was intense. Footage of suffering children was everywhere. Every single public figure was talking about the campaign. A social media meme called “all eyes on Rafah” went viral, viewed by almost 50 million people.
Eventually, however, Israel gave up listening. It evacuated the million civilians to safety within ten days and took the fight to Hamas. As a result, very few innocents were killed but the redoubt of the jihadis was razed. The smuggling tunnels into Egypt, the lifeline of Hamas, were captured and blown up, and Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7, was killed.
Israel, it seems, was on the right side of history that time. The war is messy, the loss of life agonising and the Netanyahu government deeply compromised by the hardline elements within it. Take a step back, however, and this is a fight against jihadism. Our foreign secretary should take heed: There’s only one way that history is going to judge that struggle.