Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and groups of British Jews, including the Chief Rabbi, have written to condemn the British government for suspending around a tenth of the weapons export licences for British companies selling equipment to Israel.
The United Kingdom government — a new leftist administration just two months old and having suffered to some extent in the July election from strongly pro-Palestine candidates eating into its voter base — announced it was suspending a series of weapons exports licenses to Israel. The Labour leadership has insisted this was not a political decision but senior critics have castigated the UK for turning a cold shoulder to Israel, and potentially emboldening Hamas, at such a crucial time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was a “shameful decision” and pointed out many of those killed in the October 7 attack by Hamas were British citizens, with the terror organisation still holding a further five British citizens hostage. Netanyahu said: “Instead of standing with Israel, a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism, Britain’s misguided decision will only embolden Hamas.”
British Jews including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis also spoke out against the government’s decision, and told the government: “As Israel faces down the threat of Iran and its proxies, not just to its own people, but to all of us in the democratic west; this announcement feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of International Humanitarian Law, when in fact it is going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it.
“Sadly, this announcement will serve to encourage our shared enemies… Britain and Israel have so much to gain by standing together against our common enemies for the sake of a safer world”, reports The Jewish News.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said they had spoken to the government to relay their “deep concern”, saying it sent a “dangerous message” to Hamas that the UK would decide to suspend arms sales on the same day terrorists had committed atrocities. The President of the Board, Phil Rosenberg, had further told BBC radio today: “On the day that those beautiful people were being buried, kidnapped from a music festival like Reading or Glastonbury, the UK decides to send a signal that it’s Israel that it wants to penalise, and that is a terrible, terrible message to be sending both to Israel in its hour of need, also to Hamas”.
The UK government has moved to defend its actions as being purely a matter of international law, and not about trying to side with one party to the conflict or another. UK Defence Minister John Healey defending the action, stating “We had a commitment to follow the rule of law” today, and revealing he had called his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant to break the news to him before going public with the news.
Gallant “found the call unwelcome”, he said, before asserting it was simply a matter of tough love for Israel, claiming: “sometimes your closest friends are the ones that need to tell the hardest truths”.
Previously, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said of the decision to suspend 30 of 350 arms export licences to Israel “including UK-made components used in military drones, helicopters, and aircraft, including fighter jets used by the Israelis” that the country has “a legal duty to review export licences”.
Having done so, he said, the assessment left him “unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
British state broadcaster the BBC calls the government’s position a “tightrope walk” trying to appease all, and “satisfying no-one”. Hard-line pro-Palestine Islamic sectarianism has recently emerged in UK politics and made itself felt at this year’s election, even denying a senior Labour figure his seat and place in the new government. Labour has long counted these voters as its own private reserve of support, and it being leeched away to harder-left candidates outside the party has caused concern.
Just yesterday, an ‘Independent Alliance’ of pro-Gaza politicians was formed in Britain’s Parliament, saying in a statement: “Millions of people are crying out for a real alternative to austerity, inequality and war – and their voices deserve to be heard.”
Stopping British weapons and equipment exports to Israel has been an urgent priority of the hard left since the October 7th attack, with several protests and even direct actions against UK arms manufacturers in recent months. In November, a major avionics factory operated by BAE systems was blockaded by ‘Workers for a Free Palestine’ activists who asserted Israel is a “terrorist state”. The factory is understood to contribute to the F-35 project.
In June, activists protested at a factory in Glasgow, Scotland, a court hearing they caused over one million pounds of damage at the side. Sheriff John McCormick said that activists “entered the building through the roof and caused damage including to parts essential to submarines”.
In another action in June, ‘Palestine Action’ activists broke into a weapons factory in Kent, England and smashed up the shop floor with crowbars. In August, police officers were hit with sledgehammers when activists armed with other weapons including axes and whips raises a further arms factory in Bristol, which was ram-raided with a prison van and again smashed up.
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