THE Foreign Secretary has accused independent MP Zarah Sultana of delivering a Palestine speech “designed for TikTok” after she criticised the UK Government’s approach to Israel.
Sultana used a Commons exchange to argue that Labour’s trade ban on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank was intended to deflect attention from wider UK “complicity” in Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
She told MPs: “Whether directly or indirectly arming a genocide is still arming a genocide and it announced a settlement ban as a dead cat hoping to distract us from wider UK complicity.”
The Coventry South MP said Ed Miliband could impose “full economic and diplomatic sanctions on Israel”, end arms sales and intelligence co-operation, and describe events in Gaza as a genocide.
She added: “So I ask him directly, how many more Palestinian men, women and children must be killed by Union Jack weapons before this government finally stops arming Israel completely?”
Miliband responded by describing her intervention as a “complete travesty”.
He told the Commons: “This government is taking action. It’s taking action on goods, it’s taking action on services.
“We’ve banned the arms licences for the IDF in Gaza. We’ve taken action across the board. We’ve declared the occupation as unlawful.
“It might have been designed for TikTok, but it really doesn’t become her.”
Sultana, who was elected as a Labour MP before leaving the party, later hit back at Miliband in a post on Twitter/X.
She wrote: “In the Chamber just now, I called Labour’s settlement trade ban what it is: a dead cat to distract from the UK’s ongoing complicity in genocide.
“Instead of answering why his government still arms a genocidal apartheid state, the Foreign Secretary accused my question of being ‘designed for TikTok’.
“That’s what the Tories used to do when they couldn’t answer the question.
“As for TikTok, has Miliband seen his own? Absolutely tragic.”
The clash came after Miliband accused the Israeli government of turning a blind eye to the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians with a diplomatic row triggered by the sanctions.
Both Israel and the US criticised the UK’s stance, which will see a ban on imports from illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and sanctions on individuals and firms providing services to settlers.
Israel announced its own counter measures after Miliband set out the sanctions as part of a reset in the way the Labour Government will deal with Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration.
Miliband said the British Government believed the occupation of the West Bank as a whole was unlawful, going beyond the previous position that only described the settlements themselves as illegal.
And he said there was increasing evidence that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza.
