Ten days ago, I wrote an Open Letter to Ed Miliband, our Foreign Secretary, urging him to address the genocide in Gaza. A day later, completely coincidentally, he made a Statement in the House of Commons referring to the heinous actions of ‘settler terrorists’ in the West Bank, imposing sanctions on businesses operating illegally in that part of the occupied state of Palestine — as formerly recognised by the UK.
The Statement was well-received by many — including many in the Conservative Party. And it would have been a huge battle for Miliband to persuade others inside the Labour Party that this was a necessary policy shift. He is to be warmly commended for taking on this fight.
However, for all those campaigning for an end to the genocide in Gaza, we must not be taken in by this so-called ‘comprehensive reset’.
THE ACTIONS THEMSELVES ARE LARGELY SYMBOLIC. AND THE REST SHOULD BE SEEN AS A SOMEWHAT CYNICAL DISTRACTION.
What was not said by Ed Miliband is significantly more important than what was said.
- His reference to ‘the most unimaginable trauma and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza’.
Such faux-compassion is sickening. What has caused that trauma and suffering? It’s not some ‘natural disaster’. It’s the utterly ruthless, continuing determination of the Israeli government to obliterate the Palestinian people in Gaza through a planned genocide. A genocide unwaveringly supported by the UK Government. By Ed Miliband personally. By Andy Burnham personally.
2. His reference to ‘ethnic cleansing in the West Bank’.
It’s so important that Miliband used those precise words. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime. This represents a significant shift.
But what of the ethnic cleansing in Gaza? Where is the condemnation of Israeli politicians calling explicitly for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians in Gaza – such as Itamar Ben-Gvir (National Security Minister) and Israel Katz (Defence Minister) who claimed recently that Israel is now ‘organised and prepared’ to remove Palestinians from Gaza ‘by every way possible’?
What makes ethnic cleansing unacceptable in one part of occupied Palestine but apparently acceptable in another? The hypocrisy is rank.
3. His official acceptance (on behalf of the UK Government ) of the 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the entirety of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. This is very welcome.
But of itself, it is woefully insufficient. An ICJ ruling of illegality obliges all UN states to do what they can to bring that illegality to an end. Ed Miliband gave no indication of what the UK Government would do to comply with the ICJ’s ruling. Could that be because it would inevitably entail addressing the genocide in Gaza as well as the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank?
4. His assertion that he is ‘unwavering in my support for the state of Israel’.
How can any decent person’s support be ‘unwavering’ for a state which has been accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of ‘a plausible genocide’; which actively promotes limitless war crimes in the West Bank, and whose Prime Minister has had an arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC for the war crime of using starvation as method of warfare; which ignores the 2024 ICJ ruling that its occupation of Palestine is illegal; and which has been described by the ICJ as an ‘apartheid state’, operating very much along the same racist lines as South Africa once did.
5. His acknowledgement of ‘a deep sense of shame’ at what has been happening in Gaza.
Well, that’s good. The actions of the UK Government have indeed been deeply shameful, they are still deeply shameful, day after day, after day.
But acknowledging shame (either personally or in the name of one’s country) whilst doing literally nothing to end the policies and actions that have led to a confession of shame, takes hypocrisy to an even more abhorrent level.
Andy Burnham is clearly a much more decent person than Keir Starmer. Ed Miliband is clearly a much more decent person than Yvette Cooper or David Lammy. But their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza is no less morally abhorrent.
And the way in which they will be judged should be no less rigorous.
