Melanie Phillips
Substack, Sept. 3, 2024
“They’ve thrown Israel under the bus at the moment that it’s fighting for its life under a seven-front genocidal onslaught from Iran and its proxies. The British punished Israel for defending itself on the very day it was burying its war dead.”
Almost at the very moment yesterday that Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the six Israeli hostages murdered by Hamas last week, was being buried in a deeply traumatised and anguished Israel, the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, announced a partial arms embargo against the Jewish state.
The day after the IDF had discovered in a Gaza tunnel the bodies of the six hostages, all of whom had been shot in the back of the head at close range by Hamas, Lammy told the House of Commons that Britain was suspending 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel, including components for military aircraft, helicopters and drones.
He told MPs that a two-month review had found a “clear risk” that UK arms might be used in serious violation of international humanitarian law.
This was absolute rubbish. There is no such risk and the government knows it. It was choosing to defame and punish Israel, at a time of epidemic antisemitism and anti-Israel derangement, in order to feed the ravenous hatred of Israel that consumes a high proportion of Labour MPs and party supporters as well as Labour’s steadily increasing Muslim constituency.
This despicable move was made even more nauseating by the hand-on-heart protestations of unwavering support for Israel that accompanied it. Lammy and the Foreign Office said the UK backed Israel’s right to defend itself, claimed the embargo wouldn’t compromise Israel’s security and said it wouldn’t change the UK’s “steadfast support” for the Jewish state.. … [To read the full article, click here]
