Ed Miliband seems to have developed something of an obsession with Israel. No opportunity to condemn the Jewish state is missed, no accusation too sweeping, no rhetoric too inflammatory.
The foreign secretary's latest intervention, a video published on Monday following the devastating floods in Gaza, is a case in point.
“Heavy rain and strong winds have resulted in 17,000 tents being affected by flooding, damaged buildings collapsing, and more people losing their lives…My message is that the UK government will not stand by. We are demanding the government of Israel ends arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian access, protects humanitarian workers, and provides humane treatment and basic welfare for the civilian population of Gaza.”
It’s telling – and entirely to be expected of Miliband – that not once in his 234-word rant does the word Hamas appear. Not a single mention of the terrorist organisation responsible for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Not a single mention of Palestinian agency or responsibility. Only Israel – and a speech which in tone comes from the era of the British mandate, as if Miliband is empowered and entitled to demand that the Israelis bend to his sectarian-Muslim-afeared knee.
This is not merely the broad point that Hamas is responsible for the state of Gaza, having launched a war on Israel by massacring 1,200 people on October 7, 2023. There is a more specific point about the flooding in Gaza which has prompted Miliband’s video.
Just as Hamas’s refusal to allow a single civilian to shelter in its tunnel network during the war was effectively a death sentence for many of them, so now Hamas is prohibiting the erection of fibreglass tents for winter, prohibiting the distribution of tents and food. The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Public Works, working with the UN Development Programme, began a project to establish camps with fibreglass tents. On the day before the rainstorm, Hamas arrested the engineers and building crews and demanded that they signed a pledge to work only under Hamas’ control. They then confiscated the tents. Hamas is now, as it has always done, demanding that all aid efforts go through it, so it can prolong and profit from Gazans’ suffering.
Miliband throws around libels about Israel with all the care of the worst activist. He says “We are demanding the government of Israel ends arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian access, protects humanitarian workers, and provides humane treatment and basic welfare for the civilian population of Gaza.”
In other words, Israel is guilty of a war crime – as if Israel is making Palestinians suffer for the sake of it. But the few restrictions Israel has put in place are targeted and with a clear purpose, such as the import into Gaza of wide tent poles, specifically because Hamas uses them to build tunnels. Despite Miliband’s libels, Israel has provided over 91,000 tents and 8,200 trucks with blankets, tarpaulins and winter clothes. Many of the delays are on the UN’s side, with over 400 approved requests in limbo.
It was Hamas’ behaviour after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 that has caused today’s deeper problems. Israel left Gaza with significant infrastructure in place, including greenhouses, factories, modern plumbing and sewage systems. Hamas – as they have openly said – dug up as much of the irrigation, water and sewage pipes as they could to build rockets and other armaments. These rockets were dubbed “sewage pipes with wings."
Miliband is uninterested in context or accuracy. He is interested only in pandering to the hatred of Israel that threatens Labour MPs through the sectarian Muslim vote. He shames his office, he shames himself and he shames decency itself.
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