The National Jewish Assembly condemns the UK Government’s latest sanctions against Israeli organisations and individuals connected to Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank.
These measures are not a serious response to violence. They are a political attack on Israel and on the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland, dressed up as a human rights measure.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was right to describe the move as disgraceful. The real purpose of these sanctions appears to be the imposition of a political position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, camouflaged as action against violence.
The hypocrisy is glaring.
The UK Government has chosen to sanction Israelis while increasing financial and technical assistance to the Palestinian Authority, despite the PA’s continuing “pay for slay” policy, under which terrorists and their families are financially rewarded. There is no comparable action against the Palestinian Authority. There is no equivalent pressure on Hamas. There is no serious consequence for the incitement, glorification of murder and institutionalised hatred that continue to fuel Palestinian terrorism.
Instead, the Government relies on the now familiar and deeply misleading language of “settler violence”.
Where individual or group criminal acts occur, they should be investigated and prosecuted. Israel itself has acknowledged this problem and taken action against extremists. But the sweeping use of the term “settler violence” is often a shameless distortion. It smears hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians through the actions of a small minority, while obscuring the far greater and more systematic violence directed against Israelis.
Recent legal analysis by UN Watch exposes how flawed this narrative has become. It highlights how UN reporting has relied on unverifiable sources, recycled biased claims, inflated statistics and categories that can include incidents with no actual violence at all. In some cases, Palestinian attackers injured or killed while carrying out attacks have been folded into the broader narrative of “settler violence”. That is not serious evidence. It is political theatre.
The double standard is unmistakable. Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria are collectively stigmatised. Palestinian terror is contextualised, excused or ignored. Hamas is treated with caution. The Palestinian Authority is treated as a partner. Israel is treated as the problem.
This is not balance. It is moral inversion.
If the UK Government is serious about peace, it should be demanding an immediate end to the Palestinian Authority’s terror salary scheme, an end to incitement in Palestinian schools and media, the dismantling of Hamas, and real accountability for those who murder, fund and glorify the murder of Jews.
Instead, it has chosen to pressure Israel, reward the Palestinian Authority, and legitimise a narrative that too often turns Jewish victims into political footnotes.
These sanctions will not advance peace. They will embolden rejectionists, reward extremism and further fuel the antisemitism already spreading across Britain and beyond.
The National Jewish Assembly calls on the UK Government to reverse this disgraceful policy, apply one standard to all parties, and stop using distorted claims about “settler violence” as cover for an increasingly hostile and one-sided approach to Israel.
