Before turning to David Lammy’s latest betrayal of the Jewish state, it is worth reminding ourselves how we got here.
Seventeen months ago, Hamas unleashed an orgy of death, rape and mutilation on Israeli families and dragged more than 200 innocents into the catacombs of Gaza. Now Israel wants its people back. It would also rather like to prevent such obscenity from befalling its citizens again.
Forgive me, but such an obvious refresher is needed as our leaders have a habit of indulging in two-track morality when it comes to the conflict, then expecting us to normalise it.
During a debate in the Commons on Monday night, Mr Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, accused Israel of breaking international law - citing the “lack of aid” going into Gaza.
Downing Street has since slapped down the remarks, insisting that the Government’s position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are at a “clear risk” of breaching international law.
But the Foreign Secretary’s comments, however ill judged, were unsurprising from a Government which suspended a negligible number of arms licences to the Jewish state in an empty act of gesture politics last September.
Because the truth is that if Hamas wants the bombardment to stop, it just needs to release the people it is holding.
Instead, the terror group persists with the slow torture, safe in the knowledge that the world — I’m looking at you, Mr Lammy — would condemn Israel when it reached the end of its tether. For this reason, in the eyes of Hamas, the more of its own people are killed, the better. Children especially.
Israel has been restrained. It telegraphs its attack plans in advance by repeatedly warning civilians to evacuate via millions of leaflets, phone calls, text messages and even loudspeakers dropped on parachutes. It provided a digital map where people could check which areas would be safe. It allowed hundreds of lorries of aid into the Strip daily.
You cannot destroy Hamas without spilling blood. War is war. Civilians die. Governments and commanders make mistakes; people go too far. Take 300,000 servicemen from any nation and some of them will commit crimes, even those in British uniform. But this conflict has been fought to higher standards than any other, especially given the depraved nature of the enemy.
When Donald Trump suggested unleashing “hell” if the hostages were not released by midday on February 15, hell came there none. Instead, the deal continued as agreed, with captives emerging in small groups amid outrageous propaganda spectacles. But here we are a month later and Hamas is digging its heels in. Israel needs its people back. It needs to defend its borders. But rather than backing his ally up, Mr Lammy appears to be defending the interests of jihadis.
I cast my mind back to December, when the mother of British hostage Emily Damari — who has thankfully since been released — addressed the Labour Friends of Israel lunch in London. Mr Lammy was in attendance and left her underwhelmed. “A few hours after my speech, the Foreign Secretary published a statement calling for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza for the winter”, she later told reporters. “But there was no mention of the need to get any of that aid to Emily and the other hostages.”
Plus ça change. It’s Israel’s response that gets this Government’s blood up, not the jihadism that made it unavoidable. Speaking in Quebec last week, US secretary of state Marco Rubio summarised the pathology. “We’re sitting around as the world, sort of accepting that it’s normal and OK for you to go into a place, kidnap babies, kidnap teenagers,” he said. “We’re just dealing with some savages. That’s it. These are bad people, terrible people, and we need to treat them as such.”
Nobody wants anybody to suffer. And there is doubtless true suffering in Gaza. But for almost 18 months, this suffering has been weaponised, exaggerated and fabricated for political reasons. The West, meanwhile, plays along and our political leaders are too craven to stand up for our common interests.
Yes, Israel has finally suspended aid deliveries into Gaza. Yes, it has turned off the electricity supply. But the most striking aspect of this is that it has been giving resources to the enemy for almost a year-and-a-half.
Egypt meanwhile, which shares a border with Gaza, has not been under any pressure at all to allow humanitarian assistance – it could have set up refugee camps for civilians in the Sinai, for instance.
If you were able to watch the BBC’s notorious Hamas documentary before it was humiliatingly pulled from the air, you’d have witnessed a Strip replete with food and provisions. In one scene, we see an interviewee shopping for ingredients in bountiful markets. All of these provisions were allowed in by Israel and seized by Hamas, where it was sold to the population for profit and used as leverage to retain power. In response, Hamas has just ramped up the cruelty.
Name another war, perhaps one involving our own forces, in which an army has behaved like this. Did Britain, the United States and our Iraqi and Kurdish allies evacuate civilians from Mosul before we bombed it to bits in 2016-2017? Did we send waves of aid and energy into the hands of Islamic State? Did we agonise about our targeting, in conjunction with legal experts embedded with military decision makers? Did anybody even mention the number of civilian casualties? I’ve spoken to special forces spotters who served in Mosul, and they estimate that in some instances, the coalition killed up to 60 civilians for each combatant. Israel’s ratio is reportedly about 1:1.
I don’t recall the democracies raising their voices in unison to demand that we stop obliterating Islamic State, any more than they had a problem with obliterating the Third Reich.
But when it comes to this existential war, we appear to have suddenly found our voices.
Amid the sound and fury of the news cycle, it is all too easy to forget the fundamentals. We are talking about the Middle East’s only democracy, fighting for its life against a cunning jihadi group with the same ideological roots as Islamic State. With war drums beating in Europe, we may soon be deprived of the luxury of bleeding hearts. Which side are you on, Mr Lammy?
Before turning to David Lammy’s latest betrayal of the Jewish state, it is worth reminding ourselves how we got here.
Seventeen months ago, Hamas unleashed an orgy of death, rape and mutilation on Israeli families and dragged more than 200 innocents into the catacombs of Gaza. Now Israel wants its people back. It would also rather like to prevent such obscenity from befalling its citizens again.
Forgive me, but such an obvious refresher is needed as our leaders have a habit of indulging in two-track morality when it comes to the conflict, then expecting us to normalise it.
During a debate in the Commons on Monday night, Mr Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, accused Israel of breaking international law - citing the “lack of aid” going into Gaza.
Downing Street has since slapped down the remarks, insisting that the Government’s position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are at a “clear risk” of breaching international law.
But the Foreign Secretary’s comments, however ill judged, were unsurprising from a Government which suspended a negligible number of arms licences to the Jewish state in an empty act of gesture politics last September.
Because the truth is that if Hamas wants the bombardment to stop, it just needs to release the people it is holding.
Instead, the terror group persists with the slow torture, safe in the knowledge that the world — I’m looking at you, Mr Lammy — would condemn Israel when it reached the end of its tether. For this reason, in the eyes of Hamas, the more of its own people are killed, the better. Children especially.
Israel has been restrained. It telegraphs its attack plans in advance by repeatedly warning civilians to evacuate via millions of leaflets, phone calls, text messages and even loudspeakers dropped on parachutes. It provided a digital map where people could check which areas would be safe. It allowed hundreds of lorries of aid into the Strip daily.
You cannot destroy Hamas without spilling blood. War is war. Civilians die. Governments and commanders make mistakes; people go too far. Take 300,000 servicemen from any nation and some of them will commit crimes, even those in British uniform. But this conflict has been fought to higher standards than any other, especially given the depraved nature of the enemy.
When Donald Trump suggested unleashing “hell” if the hostages were not released by midday on February 15, hell came there none. Instead, the deal continued as agreed, with captives emerging in small groups amid outrageous propaganda spectacles. But here we are a month later and Hamas is digging its heels in. Israel needs its people back. It needs to defend its borders. But rather than backing his ally up, Mr Lammy appears to be defending the interests of jihadis.
I cast my mind back to December, when the mother of British hostage Emily Damari — who has thankfully since been released — addressed the Labour Friends of Israel lunch in London. Mr Lammy was in attendance and left her underwhelmed. “A few hours after my speech, the Foreign Secretary published a statement calling for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza for the winter”, she later told reporters. “But there was no mention of the need to get any of that aid to Emily and the other hostages.”
Plus ça change. It’s Israel’s response that gets this Government’s blood up, not the jihadism that made it unavoidable. Speaking in Quebec last week, US secretary of state Marco Rubio summarised the pathology. “We’re sitting around as the world, sort of accepting that it’s normal and OK for you to go into a place, kidnap babies, kidnap teenagers,” he said. “We’re just dealing with some savages. That’s it. These are bad people, terrible people, and we need to treat them as such.”
Nobody wants anybody to suffer. And there is doubtless true suffering in Gaza. But for almost 18 months, this suffering has been weaponised, exaggerated and fabricated for political reasons. The West, meanwhile, plays along and our political leaders are too craven to stand up for our common interests.
Yes, Israel has finally suspended aid deliveries into Gaza. Yes, it has turned off the electricity supply. But the most striking aspect of this is that it has been giving resources to the enemy for almost a year-and-a-half.
Egypt meanwhile, which shares a border with Gaza, has not been under any pressure at all to allow humanitarian assistance – it could have set up refugee camps for civilians in the Sinai, for instance.
If you were able to watch the BBC’s notorious Hamas documentary before it was humiliatingly pulled from the air, you’d have witnessed a Strip replete with food and provisions. In one scene, we see an interviewee shopping for ingredients in bountiful markets. All of these provisions were allowed in by Israel and seized by Hamas, where it was sold to the population for profit and used as leverage to retain power. In response, Hamas has just ramped up the cruelty.
Name another war, perhaps one involving our own forces, in which an army has behaved like this. Did Britain, the United States and our Iraqi and Kurdish allies evacuate civilians from Mosul before we bombed it to bits in 2016-2017? Did we send waves of aid and energy into the hands of Islamic State? Did we agonise about our targeting, in conjunction with legal experts embedded with military decision makers? Did anybody even mention the number of civilian casualties? I’ve spoken to special forces spotters who served in Mosul, and they estimate that in some instances, the coalition killed up to 60 civilians for each combatant. Israel’s ratio is reportedly about 1:1.
I don’t recall the democracies raising their voices in unison to demand that we stop obliterating Islamic State, any more than they had a problem with obliterating the Third Reich.
But when it comes to this existential war, we appear to have suddenly found our voices.
Amid the sound and fury of the news cycle, it is all too easy to forget the fundamentals. We are talking about the Middle East’s only democracy, fighting for its life against a cunning jihadi group with the same ideological roots as Islamic State. With war drums beating in Europe, we may soon be deprived of the luxury of bleeding hearts. Which side are you on, Mr Lammy?