The United States has warned against imposing trade sanctions on Israel, saying that such measures would “subvert US interests”. It is a warning that should be taken with the utmost seriousness. It is not merely a defence of America’s “model ally”, as the US defence strategy paper describes Israel, but a declaration by Britain’s indispensable security partner that such measures would be strategically harmful.
In a statement to the JC, a spokesman for the US State Department said: “The US government firmly opposes this effort and rejects any efforts to economically isolate, or discriminate against, Israel. Such initiatives subvert US interests in the region and undermine the prospects for peace.”
A British government contemplating such measures would therefore risk not only another quarrel with Jerusalem but also a serious rupture with Washington. It would be an extraordinary act of self-harm.
The government has for some time been considering restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Andy Burnham, widely expected to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, suggested a possible outright ban as part of a more punitive approach towards Israel.
There are legitimate disagreements over settlements and Israel’s friends are entitled to criticise its policies, just as Israel is entitled to insist that its security requirements and historic and legal claims cannot simply be wished away. A trade ban, however, would not constitute constructive diplomacy but would mark another stage in Britain’s transformation from a candid ally into an increasingly hostile and unreliable one.
The strategic cost to Britain itself would extend far beyond the trade directly affected. Israel is one of the world’s most advanced centres of innovation, particularly in cyber security, artificial intelligence, medicine, water technology and defence – capabilities on which the UK will increasingly depend in a more dangerous world. Economic relations with Israel are therefore not an act of charity towards Jerusalem but benefit British companies, universities, investors, the NHS and workers. Endangering them for the sake of political theatre would weaken Britain’s access to an exceptional economy whose technologies will be critical for national security and economic growth.
Nor can US opposition be dismissed. Britain relies on the United States for intelligence, military power, nuclear co-operation and diplomatic support, as well as trade and investment. A government should require an overwhelming national interest before provoking its most important military ally and largest single-country trading partner. Appeasing the most radical anti-Israel wing of British politics plainly does not meet that test.
The danger is that Burnham will try to prove his credentials to Labour’s estranged left by doing just that – distancing himself further from Israel than even the current government, a step that would be both unprincipled and politically futile. Voters who have deserted Labour for the Greens because they regard hostility towards Israel as a defining cause will not be won back by a settlement trade ban. Labour cannot outbid the Greens in an auction of hostility towards the Jewish state, nor should it try, particularly while the Green Party faces recurring allegations of antisemitism among its representatives and activists.
The extraordinary obsession with Israel – or, more precisely, with a grotesque caricature of the Jewish state as uniquely criminal – has already harmed British public life. Antizionism has become the principal vehicle for hostility towards British Jews, and every ministerial denunciation delivered without proportion or context reinforces the notion, intended or not, that Israel is uniquely malevolent and that British Jews must answer for its alleged crimes.
Britain’s Israel policy has become trapped in a cycle in which each concession to anti-Israel opinion produces demands for the next. The result has not been greater British influence in the Middle East, progress towards peace or the return of Labour’s lost voters. It has been the estrangement of an ally, encouragement for extremists at home and now an explicit warning from Washington.
The next prime minister should break that cycle, not accelerate it. Britain has economic and security interests to defend, alliances to preserve and a Jewish community entitled to expect that its government will not indulge a politics of obsession that fuels antisemitic vitriol. Anti-Israel trade sanctions would betray all three.
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