Please click the arrow below to hear my latest Note from the Resistance. A slightly edited text of my remarks follows beneath it.
Two members of Israel’s ruling coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have been targeted with sanctions by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
You don’t have to support Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to see how loathsome this move is. Never before have these countries sanctioned members of an ally’s government.
And this during a global onslaught against Israel in which it’s being accused of war crimes, human rights abuses and genocidal extermination of which it’s not only innocent but is itself the victim.
The statement by the foreign ministers of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway underlines the already all-too obvious fact that the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway are very much part of that onslaught.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich themselves will hardly be affected by these sanctions. The real purpose of this statement — despite its hypocritical pieties about wanting “a strong friendship with the people of Israel” — is to treat Israel as a pariah, on the basis of systematic lies, distortions and demonisation.
The foreign ministers state: “Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.”
These men are therefore not being targeted for what they’ve done but for what they’ve said.
Yes, the language they use is variously sometimes extreme or recklessly inflammatory. Many Israelis are deeply opposed to the hardline policies both men represent.
But what these five foreign ministers fail to acknowledge is that much of the rhetoric and attitudes of these men is in response to the sustained and endemic violence by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli Jews, in pursuit of the extermination of both Jews and the State of Israel.
The foreign ministers state that “extremist settler violence and settlement expansion” undermine a future Palestinian state.
Yes, there is a problem with a small minority of Israelis living in the disputed areas of Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, who are aggressive and violent. And yes, there are some illegal Israeli settlements.
But what the foreign ministers fail to acknowledge is that much of this so-called “settler violence” is actually self defence against the multitudinous attacks on Israeli residents by local Arabs, which occur almost every day.
And they also fail to acknowledge the illegal Arab settlements which are being built across the “West Bank” in order to encircle and squeeze out the Israeli residents — the only people who are entitled to live there under international law several times over.
Why do these foreign ministers ignore this Arab violence against Israelis? Why do they ignore this Arab expansionism? They view the Israeli residents in these territories as an impediment to a future Palestine state. Why?
Twenty per cent of Israel’s population is Arab. Why shouldn’t a future Palestine state contain thousands of Israeli residents? Why are the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway thus promoting the ethnic cleansing of Jews from a future state of Palestine?
Their badly written statement hysterically repeats a combination of “settlers,” “violence” and “extremism” in every paragraph about the “West Bank,” with no mention at all of the murderous violence Israeli residents there have suffered for so many years. The only violence these foreign ministers can see is by Israelis. Why is that?
And if, as they say, “violence is incited by extremist rhetoric,” well these ministers and other members of their governments are themselves guilty of precisely such incitement. In statement after statement, they’ve helped fuel the current pre-pogrom atmosphere in which Jews across the west are being threatened, abused and attacked.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy has accused the Israelis of starving Gazan civilians, killing a disproportionate number of them, causing a humanitarian catastrophe, and repeatedly striking hospitals and aid workers.
Yet it’s Hamas that’s to blame for all this by stealing the food aid, using Gaza’s population as human shields and cannon fodder, and turning hospitals into legitimate military targets under international law by hiding its infrastructure of mass murder underneath them.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong has accused Israel falsely of “killing civilians by the thousands”, for overseeing the starvation of children and for pushing ahead with “illegal settlements” in the West Bank.
Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, has accused Israel of war crimes.
And when a heckler at a meeting in Calgary last April shouted “There’s genocide happening in Palestine right now!”Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney responded: “I’m aware! That’s why we have an arms embargo!”
These statements are all blood libels against Israel, based on lies and wild distortions and the reversal of victim and aggressor in a vicious scapegoating that’s truly wicked.
The picture these governments are all painting, depicting Israelis as inhumane monsters, is bound to incite hatred of Israel, a belief that it’s so evil it shouldn’t exist at all, and corresponding violence against Jews as “supporters of child-killers” or “genocide”.
In any event, what conceivable business is it of Britain and the rest to intervene in Israel’s domestic affairs and instruct it what to do with its own government ministers?
They treat no other country like this. But this virulent hostility is now the default position throughout the western so-called progressive and educated world.
Indeed, the more “progressive” the government, the worse this gets. It’s no coincidence that Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway, which have liberal or left-wing governments, are viciously hostile to Israel and are where there’s some of the most extreme and pervasive Jew-hatred in the west.
And their double standards are quite eye-watering.
Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is still getting money and support from Britain and the rest despite continuing to pay some $300 million annually to terrorists and their families as a reward for murdering Jews, and despite the clear evidence of its systemic, medieval and Nazi-style demonisation of Jews.
The Palestinian Authority’s so-called ambassador to Britain, Hussam Zomlot, actually accused the Israelis of having “genocidal genes”. If that isn’t extremist rhetoric that can incite violence, what is? Yet Zomlot isn’t being sanctioned by the British government but continues to be treated as a respected diplomat.
The five foreign ministers’ statement of “unwavering support for Israel’s security” is sheer humbug. Their repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire by Israel would mean victory for Hamas and the certainty of future slaughter of Israelis.
Given the Palestinian Arab strategy of a Palestine state as a stage towards Israel’s destruction, the unceasing calls to slaughter Jews emanating from Palestinian society and that society’s overwhelming and declared support for repeated October 7-style massacres, the two-state solution would be in fact a final solution.
And so these five governments are actively working for Israel’s surrender to genocidal Islamism.
The vilification of Israel is an attempt to cast it as a pariah state in order to prime the world to support its destruction. Britain, Canada Australia New Zealand and Norway have now shown beyond doubt they are part of that shocking campaign.
These five governments have chosen to stand with genocidal Islamists against Israel, with lies against truth and thus with barbarism against civilisation. They are allies of Israel no longer. They are a menace to civilisation itself.
*** My new book The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – and Why Only They Can Save It, can be bought on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk