Any appeasement of anti-Israel fanatics is doomed to fail

Telegraph

8 hours ago

Next week is shaping up to be one of the most exciting since the general election. There will be two key votes – the first on the Government's welfare reform plans in which dozens of Labour MPs are expected to rebel, risking losing the party whip and, therefore, putting their parliamentary careers in jeopardy.
That will be closely followed by a vote on legislation to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group, which the Government will find easier to win than the welfare Bill, even if ministers anticipate the Lords will kick up a bit of a fuss over the definition of terrorism and whether it applies to the hard-Left pro-Palestinian group.
How Keir Starmer handles these challenges will tell us a great deal about his style of Government and his relationship with his own party. He already outraged parts of Labour by removing the whip from a number of MPs who rebelled against the whip over the continuation of the Conservatives' two-child benefit policy. A handful of those rebels still haven't been restored to the bosom of the parliamentary party and if that doesn't change before the next general election, they will not be permitted to stand as Labour candidates.
That is the threat, explicit or otherwise, that will (probably) secure a parliamentary majority for the welfare Bill. And the number of potential rebels who would risk their careers in defence of Palestine Action is considerably smaller. But feelings are running high nonetheless.
It's quite the conundrum for the Government. The Prime Minister and his foreign secretary, David Lammy, have made great efforts to avoid any accusation of exhibiting any form of leadership on the continuing crisis in the Middle East. Where previous Labour administrations stood proudly alongside their American and Israeli allies in opposition to the terrorist ambitions of Iran through its funding of various Islamist proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, this Labour government prefers a strategy that the Foreign Office might describe as 'diplomatic discretion', or which the late Baroness Thatcher might have called 'being frit'.
Iran has repeatedly promised to wipe Israel – an ally of the UK's right up until the loss of four previously safe Labour parliamentary seats to independent pro-Gaza candidates last year – from the map and has hardly bothered to hide its support for the principle of suicide bombings in Tel Aviv. Yet the prospect of the regime gaining possession of a nuclear weapon seems not to bother UK Government ministers overmuch, despite the nightmare scenario that is certain to materialise should the Ayatollahs ever get a big red button of their own.
This is the context of next week's debate on whether, finally and belatedly, the Government ought to get tough with groups like Palestine Action who have gone so much further than peaceful and legal protesting. Much of the current wave of protests is founded on opposition to the West. In the last few days, the sea of Palestinian flags that has become so familiar in protest marches in our cities has started to be intermixed with placards warning the Government not to attack Iran and that doing so would put Britain and the US 'on the wrong side of history'.
Those protesters should be clear that their preferred vision for the Middle East does not include Israel, with its very anti-Arab notions of democracy and tolerance. Those who protest that Iran should be allowed to develop their own nuclear 'deterrent' know exactly how such a deterrent would be used, and they're fine with that.
This is the root of the conflict currently playing out in the region, a war, not just between nations but between ideologies. And supporters of Palestine Action, along with its reprehensible and violent tactics, are unequivocally on the side of the gay-hanging, women-murdering Ayatollahs.
That, rather than any niceties as to the definition of terrorism, is what next week's debate should be about. Independents like Jeremy Corbyn and his motley crew of pro-Gaza MPs and perhaps a handful of former Labour colleagues can always be relied upon to oppose any measure that smacks of pro-Westernism, and they will vote accordingly. Starmer, meanwhile, will find himself in an unusual position.
He has gone to great lengths in the last year to position his Government between two stools, between his own instinct to support Israel in its fight against Hamas terrorism and the need to avoid losing any more of the UK Muslim vote. He should have worked out by now that turning on former allies, allowing the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli ministers and placing restrictions on military exports to Israel will never satisfy the crazed hatred of the Jewish state by a segment of the population.
By lining up his MPs in explicit opposition to a group that wears its pro-Palestinian credentials on its keffiyeh, Starmer risks undermining much of his previous efforts to assuage an audience that can never be satisfied. We must hope that he accepts the futility of those efforts and abandons them.