NJA statement on Foreign Secretary’s measures against Israel
BRITAIN HAS CROSSED A DANGEROUS LINE
The National Jewish Assembly strongly condemns the measures announced today by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband against Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, and the inflammatory language used to justify them.
The Government will ban goods from communities beyond the Green Line, restrict services including finance, construction, infrastructure and real estate, prohibit property advertising, impose further sanctions, and refuse licences for arms and other controlled exports it judges to “materially contribute to the occupation”.
This goes far beyond disagreement with Israeli policy. Britain is constructing an architecture of economic exclusion around Israelis according to where they live and conduct business.
The Green Line was a 1949 armistice line, expressly never intended to determine permanent borders. Yet Britain is turning it into a line governing lawful economic engagement. British citizens, many of them Jews, own property beyond it and may now face restrictions. A British Jew could therefore face legal consequences because of a connection to a Jewish home in the heartland of Jewish history, to which Jews have maintained a connection for millennia.
The NJA unequivocally condemns genuine violence by Jewish extremists. It is for Israel’s police and courts to deal with those responsible. But Mr Miliband cited UN claims of six violent “settler attacks” a day as though the figures were beyond dispute, despite UN Watch identifying serious methodological problems, including non-violent incidents being recorded as “settler violence”.
Against that contested background, Mr Miliband declared that the British Government believes there is “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists”, while accusing Israel of too often turning a blind eye.
That is an extraordinarily grave accusation. The Palestinian population of Judea and Samaria has grown enormously under Israeli control, while Israel itself has more than two million Arab citizens. Yet international prescriptions for Palestinian statehood routinely assume Jewish communities must disappear from territory allocated to Palestine. There is something deeply perverse about invoking “ethnic cleansing” while treating the removal of Jews as acceptable.
Increasingly, Labour’s vocabulary is becoming indistinguishable from that of the anti-Israel movement: occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, settler terrorism.
The double standard is obvious. Israel receives sanctions, bans and restrictions. The Palestinian Authority is merely urged to accelerate reform, despite terrorism-linked payments, continuing incitement, glorification of terrorists and an education system that continues to promote violence, martyrdom and rejection of Israel.
Mr Miliband highlighted inflammatory statements by some of Israel’s most right-wing politicians. Yet when Labour MP Peter Prinsley challenged his approach, Mr Miliband invoked Husam Zomlot, who repeatedly declined simply to condemn Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and has described Israel through the language of apartheid, colonial occupation and ethnic cleansing, advocated sanctions and an arms embargo, and declared that “the essence of the whole project in Israel is the erasure of the Palestinian people.”
These measures may also hurt Palestinians themselves. Palestinians working in Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria have historically earned substantially higher wages than within the Palestinian economy.
Mr Miliband acknowledged the fear of Britain’s Jews and his Government’s responsibility to combat antisemitism. Yet he then placed the authority of the British Government behind the terminology of “ethnic cleansing” and “settler terrorists”.
Labour MP, Peter Prinsley, warned that opponents of Israel frequently fail to distinguish between Israel, Zionism and British Jews, creating a real risk of increased attacks against Jews here. Sadly, recent precedent in this country shows exactly where such rhetoric can lead. By placing the authority of the British Government behind accusations of “ethnic cleansing” and “settler terrorism”, Mr Miliband risks putting an even greater target on the backs of Britain’s Jewish community.
Israel receives consequences. The Palestinian leadership receives expectations.
Britain has not advanced peace today. It has institutionalised a double standard, handed the anti-Israel movement further ammunition, and made life still more difficult for the British Jewish community it repeatedly promises to protect.
Featured image: Ed Miliband, official portrait, 5 July 2024. Photo: Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street, via Wikimedia Commons, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
