Emily Thornberry and Israel: A Blindspot

Shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry doesn’t seem to possess the same ideological dogma that drives many of her Labour Party colleagues towards an unyielding hatred of Israel. For many on the left, hatred of Israel is the core of their worldview.

But what Thornberry has succumbed to is a just as common, if not more common, feature on the left – an unconscious blind spot when it comes to hatred of Israel. This includes her inability to realise the extent of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic ideological derangement all around her in the Labour Party.

But in terms of her potential position as the UK’s Foreign Secretary, her recent letter to Jeremy Hunt about Iranian-Israeli tensions in Syria was deeply troubling. In the second paragraph she said:

These exchanges have been accompanied by unacceptable rhetoric from both parties, with Iranian air force commander Aziz Nasirzade saying his pilots were ready to ‘confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the earth,’ and Israeli intelligence minister saying: ‘the policy has changed. This is an open confrontation with Iran.’

It is disturbing that Thornberry did not pause, and reconsider the wisdom of this paragraph. In one instance, an Israeli intelligence minister describes Israel’s conflict with Iran as an “open confrontation”. Iran, it should be noted, is a country which has played a pivotal role in arming Hezbollah to the teeth with tens of thousands of missiles on the Lebanese-Israeli border; which has armed and funded Hamas, a terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction; and which has been attempting to consolidate its extensive military installations in Syria.

In case Iranian intentions were not clear, Brigadier-General Hossein Salami, a senior member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said last week that Iran’s strategy “is to erase Israel from the global political map”, adding chillingly that “Israelis will not have even a cemetery in Palestine to bury their own corpses”.

It is clear from Iran’s stated ambition that Israel needs to be able to defend itself with the best weapons available. Thornberry’s call for an arms embargo, if Israel continues to respond to Iranian aggression, thus verges on the absurd. This would prevent the UK, for example, from supplying Israel with technologies that enable the functioning of its Iron Dome, a purely defensive system that protects Israel from missiles coming from Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon.

Thornberry may be telling herself that balance is crucial, that dialogue and understanding are the only way forward. She may genuinely believe that both Israel and Iran contribute to heightening tensions. But to take this position forward she must recognise the truly malevolent, murderous intentions of the Iranian regime, and discard the equivalence she seems to suggest with legitimate Israeli expressions of the need for self-defence.

On the 23rd of January, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry wrote a letter to Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on recent confrontations between Iran and Israel in Syria.

Here is a link to the letter: https://twitter.com/EmilyThornberry/status/1088498463875256320 

It is an absurd letter, urging an arms embargo on Israel if it engages in ‘escalating acts of aggression’ against Iran. Thornberry describes “heavy Israeli bombardment of Iranian installations around Damascus on Monday”, “reportedly in retaliation for Iran’s firing of a surface-to-surface missile into the Golan Heights”.

This "reported retaliation" came in response to Iran firing a medium range missile at a ski resort,  with mass casualties only avoided because of Israel’s missile defence system. The Israeli response was entirely legitimate self-defence.

Thornberry then mentions ‘Iranian installations around Damascus’ – Is there no condemnation of what Iran are doing there? Should they not be asked to leave Syria?

She then goes on to condemn, seemingly equally, the rhetoric on both sides. Let’s compare: the Iranian rhetoric (moderate by their standards) talks of “confronting the Zionist regime and eliminating it from the earth”. The Israeli rhetoric simply speaks of “an open confrontation with Iran”.

The shadow foreign secretary fails to seriously consider the grave threat that the Iranian presence in Syria poses to Israel – Iran uses Syria as a base to attack Israel and as a supply route to give its proxy force Hezbollah advanced weapons and missiles.

Thornberry calls on the Foreign Secretary to press Israel to act with “restraint and proportionality”. Israel IS acting with restraint and proportionality, to a genuine and serious threat coming from the Iranian presence in Syria.

Remarkably, Thornberry urges the UK to punish Israel if it continues in acts of aggression (self-defence) against Iran, but for the UK to seemingly only verbally reprimand Iran for its dangerous actions.

The arms embargo that Thornberry calls for in the letter in the event of Israel continuing to defend itself will interfere with UK exports of components of kit that is purely defensive and saves civilian lives.

Amos Yadlin - The Strategic Challenges Facing Israel

Speaking at a private forum in late 2018, Director of the Institute for National Security Studies, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin presented an overview of the different regional threats facing Israel.

We Believe in Israel has abridged the paper into a short, one-page summary for our audience. View the PDF below, as well as the link to the full paper.

Download PDF

View the full paper: http://www.bicom.org.uk/analysis/bicom-briefing-the-strategic-challenges-facing-israel/ 

Response to Avi Shlaim's Op-ed in Gaza

On Monday, The Guardian published this opinion piece by Avi Shlaim’s on Gaza (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/07/ten-years-first-war-gaza-operation-cast-lead-israel-brute-force ). Regrettably, it is extremely tendentious.

The situation in Gaza is indeed a human tragedy where there has been unnecessary loss of life in three major conflicts in ten years. Everyday existence for Gazans is bleak.

But the culpability for Gaza's tragedy sits with its Hamas rulers - an Islamist terrorist group committed to destroying Israel, and who murdered their internal Fatah Palestinian opponents upon seizing power.

Israel wanted Gaza to have self-rule and be an economic success - it withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005 and forced Israeli settlers to leave to try to advance the peace process.

There is only an Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian Authority blockade of Gaza because Hamas is using every resource intended for civilians to build terror attack tunnels and missile arsenals - no such blockade exists of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel has only carried out major military operations in Gaza when indiscriminate missile attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians have reached intolerable levels of hundreds of missiles. Shlaim is dismissive of the missile attacks saying "Israel claimed to act in self-defence" as though the pounding of Israel's southern communities was irrelevant.

Shlaim's claim that Israel uses force as "first resort" is a lie - in every case Israel has shown restraint in the face of hugely provocative and dangerous missile attacks to a point far beyond what any other nation would tolerate before resorting to military responses.

Shlaim accuses Israel of collectively punishing Gazan civilians when in fact the IDF has gone to unprecedented lengths to try to avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’ best efforts to place its own civilians in harm's way - using schools, hospitals and mosques as bases.

He claims Israel are trying to "terrorise" Gazans into repudiating Hamas - but it’s actually Hamas that for 13 years has terrorised the people it governs - it is running a totalitarian regime

Shlaim says that Gaza is "the biggest open-door [sic] prison on Earth"

He's right

And Hamas are the guards.

- Luke Akehurst, Director of We Believe in Israel

A new opinion poll reveals that 38 per cent of people believe Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite, while 25 per cent believe he is a committed campaigner against racism and antisemitism.
 
Populus surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2035 GB adults from 5-7 October 2018 on behalf of BICOM. The annual survey asks questions about countries in the Middle East with specific questions about trade, counterterrorism and support for a boycott of Israel. 
 
Each year the survey includes a new question on a topical issue and this year BICOM measured support for Jeremy Corbyn’s own explanations in light of accusations of antisemitism.