Jewish Leaders Condemn Ed Miliband Over Israeli West Bank Sanctions

Jewish leaders have condemned Ed Miliband after he announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The foreign secretary triggered a furious diplomatic row as he announced a “reset” of the UK’s relations with Israel.

In a statement to MPs, Miliband accused Israeli settlers in the West Bank of “ethnic cleansing” as he vowed to take action against those who provide services including finance and real estate for settlement expansion.

“All too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians,” he said.

Miliband’s statement was welcomed by the vast majority of Labour MPs, but the Israeli government responded by announcing the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem.

In a furious denunciation of Miliband’s statement, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis said it was “truly a dark day for British Jews”.

He said: “Today our government has chosen to ignore the deep concerns expressed by so many of us.

“The measures announced amount to little more than political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour a dangerous obsession with the Jewish State.

“These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target.

“On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace.”

He added: “Gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel, and the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.”

The Jewish Leadership Council said the sanctions on trade with West Bank settlements “risks becoming a de facto boycott of Israel, giving legitimacy to those who reject Israel’s very existence”.

“The government is simply yielding to pressure from the most extreme elements of British society,” they said in a statement.

“They will continue to push the government to take increasingly radical action against Israel, to the detriment of peace in the Middle East and community relations in the UK.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews expressed their “deep regret” at Miliband’s announcement.

In a statement, they said: “We have warned the UK government that it should know that protesters who cry ‘From the river to the sea’ will not be placated by any measures short of the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.”

France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden have all joined the UK is slapping sanctions on Israeli settlers today.

In a joint statement, the countries confirmed this action follows steps already taken by the Netherlands and Belgium.

Speaking before Miliband’s statement, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel,  accused the UK government of “discrimination against Jews”.

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