Labour’s senseless arms to Israel ban just sends a message to our enemies that we are weak on terrorism
LAST weekend, Israel discovered the bodies of six of its hostages in a tunnel in Gaza – innocent young people executed in cold blood by the Hamas terrorist organisation.
Five of them had attended a music festival, like Glastonbury or Reading, and the other was an occupational therapist staying at a kibbutz.
For the past 11 months they have been held in barbaric conditions and, just as they were about to be rescued from a tunnel underneath Rafah in Gaza, they were shot dead.
Since the massacre on October 7, I have twice been to the site of the Nova festival where these young people were taken from.
It was heartbreaking to see the devastation brought on these rural communities.
Essential tool
It is like going to a concentration camp site from World War Two, but knowing it all happened just a few months ago.
Yet, on the day that four of these dead hostages were buried, the Government announced it was suspending licenses for ten per cent of arms to Israel.
The timing could not have been worse.
The message it sends to Hamas is they can commit these atrocities and yet it will be Israel that is punished.
Following the announcement of the export ban, I met with the Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Attorney General Richard Hermer.
One of the items they told us they were no longer sending are drones.
These are an essential tool in the search for hostages, who are being held captive in homes and tunnels all over the Gaza Strip by Hamas and other terror outfits.
It doesn’t make sense to hinder this humanitarian operation, which the Government says it supports.
It is also defending the ban, arguing that it is just ten per cent of our arms exports to Israel and the country can still defend itself.
If it doesn’t make any material difference, the ban is only symbolic.
In which case the signalling is all wrong.
It sends a message to other allies that we may not be as dependable as we should be and it sends a message to our adversaries that we might be weak on terrorism.
We are hearing reports that the White House is annoyed about the UK ban, which is understandable because it puts pressure on the US President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who are facing similar calls from some of their supporters.
I think the export ban shows a level of inexperience from a party that has been out of power for 14 years.
It also sends a bad message, because yesterday was the day that the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced the formation of the Independent Alliance of MPs who called for a total arms embargo to Israel.
Keir Starmer deserves a lot of credit for turning around the Labour Party from the dark days of Corbyn, which were beset by anti-Semitism.
Now you’ve got this risk of perception, which I don’t think is the case, that the new government is “Corbyn-lite”.
Labour under Sir Keir has built up trust with the Jewish community and credibility with the whole country on national security.
We all want to see an end to this horrible war, the hostages released, humanitarian aid going into Gaza, reconstruction, for Hamas to be prevented from ever being able to do anything like the October 7 massacre again and to see the pursuit of a two-state solution.
It is absolutely right that Israel should hear challenges from its friends and allies on Gaza and how it conducts its war of self-defence.
But I believe the politicians in Israel are much more likely to listen to you if they think you understand its security needs.
Israel is a country that faces constant existential threats, and it’s a country where many of the population are descended from people who went through the Holocaust.
It is also important to remember that Israel is on our side.
The UK buys a lot more arms from Israel than Israel buys from the UK.
Broke peace
One of the key items being bought from Israel is the Arrow missile defence system to knock Russian rockets out of Europeans skies.
At the same time our allies are buying Israeli weapon systems that will protect us from Russia, we’re trying to tie Israel’s hands behind its back when it’s fighting on several fronts.
We need to remember that there was a ceasefire on October 6 last year.
Hamas broke that peace on October 7 with the biggest massacre of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust.
They massacred people house by house, burning whole families alive, in areas where a lot of people were very pro reconciliation with Palestinians.
If Hamas released the hostages and renounced violence there would be no more conflict.
After the Ariana Grande concert bombing in 2017, and the attempted attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna earlier his year, we know where death cult terrorist ideology leads.
We’ve got to be absolutely clear that Hamas cannot win.
- Phil Rosenberg is President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.