Birmingham has no shortage of urgent problems. Its council has suffered bankruptcy, a protracted bin strike and a grave loss of public confidence. Europe’s largest local authority needs an administration distinguished by competence, restraint and sound judgment.
It is therefore deeply troubling that Kamel Hawwash, the Green councillor now responsible for children, young people and families, should have spoken on October 7, 2023, of Israelis captured by Hamas as bargaining chips who could be used to extract political concessions, as the JC reports exclusively.
Appearing on Algerian television while terrorists were still rampaging through southern Israel, Hawwash referred to reports that more than 35 Israelis, “mostly soldiers”, had been seized. “The first thing they can do is keep these people and negotiate on many issues,” he said. “The matter isn’t just about the prisoners; it’s about lifting the siege and other things they can strive for.”
It is relevant that Hawwash believed he was speaking principally about soldiers, which somewhat mitigates the remarks, but not by much. These were not prisoners of war taken in conventional fighting between armies. They were seized during a savage assault directed predominantly against civilians. Human beings are not bargaining chips, and their seizure does not become legitimate because their terrorist captors hope to exchange them for prisoners or political concessions.
This is not the first time that local politicians have allowed overseas conflicts to intrude into municipal politics, distracting from the responsibilities for which they were elected, such as fixing potholes and removing rubbish from the streets. The irony is especially glaring in Birmingham, where residents have endured overflowing bins and disrupted collections for months. Councillors are entitled to hold views on international affairs, but town halls should not become arenas for relitigating distant conflicts they have no power to resolve, still less for mobilising local communities against one another.
The danger is that this worrying trend is also spilling into national politics and may become a feature in our next general election. The problem is not merely one of misplaced priorities. What we are witnessing is a wider degradation of British politics. This country is a diverse democracy in which many citizens have family ties, religious loyalties, national sympathies or deep emotional investments in conflicts abroad. Those attachments are politically potent and, precisely for that reason, responsible parties should be wary of exploiting them or organising domestic politics around them. Their task is to construct a common civic life, not to divide voters into rival communities mobilised around grievances imported from overseas.
The Green Party has increasingly chosen exactly this dangerous course. Once defined chiefly by environmental concerns, much of the party has made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a central test of political virtue, so that even local elections become vehicles for overseas grievances. The result is not greater support for those suffering abroad but deeper division at home.
The Jewish community has been one of the principal victims of such sectarian politics. The debate around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – or, more precisely, the relentless demonisation of Israel within that debate – has helped to fuel antisemitic intimidation and attacks. But the danger extends beyond any single community. Once political parties begin appealing to voters primarily through ancestral loyalties and imported grievances, citizenship itself is weakened. Neighbours are encouraged to see one another not as participants in a shared national life but as representatives of rival causes elsewhere. The social trust and cohesion on which a liberal democracy depends are steadily eroded in the process.
Britain’s diversity can be a source of strength only if it rests upon a common civic identity and equal standards for all. Political leaders should resist the temptation to inflame overseas passions for electoral advantage and return their attention to the duties for which they were chosen: governing competently, protecting social peace and serving the public as a whole. Birmingham, of all places, can ill afford anything less.
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