WHEN I heard that the Labour Government was imposing sanctions on Israel’s illegal settlements, my first response was cynicism.
Israel is a state, after all, which has committed a livestreamed genocide. It wiped Gaza from the face of the earth, bombed its hospitals and deliberately starved its people. It has deliberately targeted children – and no, that’s not a hyperbolic distortion of killing by recklessness.
As well as Western doctors who have served in Gaza, a UN independent commission concluded Israel was deliberately killing and maiming Palestinian children earlier this year.
As for the West Bank: this Palestinian territory has suffered the longest belligerent occupation of our time. This occupation is completely illegal, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council. Israel is illegally colonising that land with more than three quarters of a million settlers – better known as illegal colonists.
Since October 2023, more than 1100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank alone, many of them children. Here is an intertwined campaign of terror: the Israeli army, who are killing Palestinians, destroying their refugee camps and driving them from their homes, and the settler terrorists they support.
Surely – surely! – the bar is on the floor here. What were we doing engaged in trade with these illegal settlements in the first place, we might reasonably ask? What difference will this make when it represents a pinprick, given the £6 billion annual trade Britain conducts with Israel?
Yes, it is frankly depressing that we are supposed to be grateful for any action taken against Israel given the abomination being inflicted on the Palestinians – an abomination armed and facilitated by our own government.
But some wise voices spoke to me, and made me rethink that total cynicism. We do, after all, want to pressure Western governments into shifting from their facilitation of Israel’s crimes to taking a stand against them.
Unless transformative governments are elected in London and other Western capitals, that is unlikely to be a sudden leap.
The point is this concession was only achieved because of pressure from below. Palestinian journalists – who have suffered the worst massacre in the history of journalism – opened eyes to the scale of the crime, one covered up by Western media outlets.
People across this island marched and campaigned. Those who took direct action against complicity in genocide were arrested and jailed. Those who held simple placards in support of those direct actionists were arrested en masse.
The fury with Labour encouraged voters in England to vote Green, and hardened up support for Wales’s Plaid Cymru and the SNP In the Gorton and Denton by-election – when Andy Burnham was blocked from standing – Zack Polanski’s Greens crushed Labour. In local elections, four times as many Labour voters defected to the Greens as went to Reform.
This is what forced Keir Starmer out, and made Andy Burnham prime minister. His new government is not, alas, currently offering the transformations needed both home and abroad.
But it feels under pressure to address the fury of those who defected from Labour’s ranks. All of that is why they have been forced to take action – however limited – which Starmer refused.
Indeed, that action goes further than other Western countries. It involves taking action against Israeli financial institutions which help fund settlements. So it’s not just, say, grapefruits, avocados and herbs from settlements which could be targeted. It includes Israeli banks and insurance companies.
We could just – as my initial response tended towards – respond with cynicism. But the danger then is we demobilise people. We leave people thinking that it doesn’t matter how much we march and campaign or rebel against the Westminster government, nothing will ever change. And that will stop many people from marching, campaigning or voting to express their dissent.
That will mean the movement in solidarity with Palestinians will fizzle out, and Westminster politicians will stop feeling pressure to break from complicity in one of the worst crimes of our age.
Instead, the response should be to redouble our efforts. We only won this limited action because of pressure – so now we have to increase that pressure.
It doesn’t mean showering Labour with gratitude. It just means being hard-headed about how change happens – which often is not in sudden leaps, but in a series of smaller shifts which – over time – become a deluge.
After all, we have won public opinion. The polling shows that half the electorate think Israel has committed genocide, with just 17% dissenting. There is support – by huge margins – for a total arms embargo, sweeping sanctions and the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Our key challenge is translating what the public demands into public action. What is in the way is a political and media elite wedded to championing the interests of the Israeli state over both public opinion, the law and basic morality.
That explains the intensity of the smears. Israel’s allies believe they can make people fear the consequences of standing with the Palestinians.
We are overcoming all of that – but only through determination and courage. The Palestinian people can’t afford our self-indulgence: after all, it’s the West which condemned them to their fate. So let’s respond to this small victory by patting ourselves on the back for forcing power to concede – and redouble our efforts to win far more.
