At the very beginning of his op-ed message to Israelis, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer calls himself a friend of Israel. But his actions show this statement to be a lie.
On 20 February 2024, while still Leader of the Opposition, he led the Labour Party in declaring in an amendment to a motion by the Scottish National Party (SNP) that “an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah … must not take place” and demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire." This amendment was shouted through on the following day, without being voted on, because the speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, broke convention to allow a vote on the Labour amendment, instead of the SNP’s motion. What followed in the Commons was a quite unseemly confrontation, in which a sober discussion of the war was entirely absent.
That incident represented anything but support for Israel, and complying with Starmer’s demands would have been disastrous for both Israel and the West. At the time, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was on the run in Khan Younis, but both he and most of the rest of the murderous terrorists under his command were alive and ready to plan further murders.
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer threatened Israel over Gaza with recognition of a Palestinian state
(Photo: Toby Melville, Pool Photo via AP)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet deserve great credit for ignoring Starmer and sending the IDF into Rafah. There, on October 16, 2024, Sinwar was found and killed. Starmer, by then prime minister, opined in passing that “no one should mourn” Sinwar, and then immediately proceeded to threaten Israel, declaring that “the world will not tolerate any more excuses on humanitarian assistance." An excellent demonstration of the fact that Starmer’s friendship is worth precisely nothing.
Just as worthless are the British prime minister’s statements in support of Israeli hostages.
Hamas took the hostages as part of its campaign to destroy Israel and establish an Islamist state “from the river and the sea." It will only release hostages under unbearable military pressure, or in return for Israeli concessions so deep that they will compromise Israel’s very survival. Therefore, when Starmer calls for “negotiations on a ceasefire and a long-term peace” as a way of returning the hostages, he is de facto calling for Israel to make such intolerable concessions. That would be the practical consequence of stopping the present offensive in Gaza, as Starmer would have Israel do. This is absolutely unacceptable and profoundly immoral.
The prime minister professes to be concerned by the “death, destruction and hunger” in Gaza, without apportioning blame for this claimed state of events. He should remind himself that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan did not look like country gardens in 1945, nor did they smell of roses. Those responsible were held to account. In 1946, The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced 12 of the most senior surviving Nazis to death for their crimes. Another such Tribunal in Tokyo sentenced Japan’s wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and six other prominent war criminals to death in 1948.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is waging a campaign of delegitimization against Israeli
(Photo: Maryam Majd/Getty Images, REUTERS/Amir Cohen, Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)
Just as those criminals bore the responsibility for the destruction inflicted on Germany and Japan in World War II, so Hamas bears responsibility for the destruction inflicted on Gaza. It is quite strange that Sir Keir, not merely a lawyer, but a former director of Public Prosecutions, is neither able to see nor to state this.
Starmer is sufficiently purblind that he insists that recognizing a Palestinian state is essential for peace. The reverse is true. Not only is part of Gaza still controlled by the murderers of Hamas, but that part of Judea and Samaria which is not under Israeli control is overseen by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The use of the term Judea and Samaria is quite deliberate. The term ‘West Bank’ was unknown in English until 1957, and became irrelevant in 1988. That's when King Hussein of Jordan, the nation on the east bank of the eponymous river, severed administrative and legal ties with this territory, which it had occupied by brute force for 19 years, from its illegal invasion of May 1948 to its shattering defeat by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967.
The creators of the PLO insisted, in its founding document of May 1964, on “affirming the inevitability of the battle to liberate the usurped part” of the “sacred homeland Palestine.” That usurped part is the very same land that Britain recognizes as the territory of the sovereign State of Israel. To make it explicit, the PLO was created for the very same purpose as Hamas – to annihilate Israel. These are the people to whom Starmer would grant a state.
Much has changed in the more than 61 years since the founding of the PLO, but the fundamental attitudes of its leaders have not. On the same day that Sir Keir chose to recognize a hypothetical future Palestinian state, Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to the United Nations in his capacity as head of the PLO and of the Palestinian Authority. In it, he described Israeli actions as “crimes of the occupation” and also as “crimes of siege, starvation and destruction."
Abbas is not waging war on Israel, but he is certainly waging a campaign of delegitimization. In the process, he and his colleagues ignore Sir Keir’s irrelevant suggestions. On the day that the prime minister suggested that Sinwar not be mourned, the PLO’s Executive Committee publicly expressed “condolences to the Palestinian people and all national factions on the martyrdom of the great national leader Yahya Sinwar." It is an unforgivable crime to associate with such people, let alone to recognize their statehood. No functional, let alone peaceful, state can or will be borne of such a policy.
As I conclude, I read the news that Starmer has obtained the distinction of the lowest satisfaction rating for any prime minister since 1977, in an Ipsos poll which records that 13% of Britons are satisfied with him, and 12% with the government that he leads. Polls are fickle, but the depth of disgust that Sir Keir has engendered less than 15 months after winning a landslide election victory is worthy of note.
Dear prime minister, kind Sir Keir, you are a desperate man, possessed neither of decency nor of common sense. Please resign your office forthwith.
- Dan Zamansky is a British-Israeli independent historian and author of "The New World Crisis," a Substack analyzing the problems of today