Finian Cunningham
Britain is fuelling the genocide by Israel, as it is with the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
So, Britain announced with much fanfare this week that it was imposing sanctions on Israel's illegal settlements in Palestine. Note that the sanctions are not against the Israeli state, but rather a much narrower definition: Israeli entities in the Occupied Territories.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham claimed that the move was an example of Britain giving international leadership to stand against oppression and injustice.
Addressing the British Parliament, Burnham said: "In this difficult and dangerous world, Britain has to stand for something, Britain has to show leadership, Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice... That is what the British people expect of us, and that is what this government will do."
Several other European states and Canada have also joined the British-led initiative to ban trade and investment with companies doing business in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.
Israel's occupation is illegal under international law, yet Britain, the European Union and the United States have done nothing in the way of imposing sanctions. Sanctions are something the West prefers to impose on Russia, Iran, China, Cuba, North Korea, among others.
In announcing the sanctions, the United Kingdom's foreign minister Ed Miliband told the House of Commons that "Britain was a country that upholds its values at home and around the world, fighting against oppression and suffering, and standing up for what is right."
The pious tones from London about Israel's "ethnic cleansing" are not convincing.
For starters, the supposed sanctions do not cover British components for the F-35 fighter jets that the United States sells to Israel. The British parts are crucial for flying the US-made stealth aircraft. The warplane has played a major role in razing Gaza to the ground. Also not included in the sanctions are drones and surveillance equipment that British firms supply to the Israeli military. All those components are crucial for enabling the nearly three-year genocidal violence that Israel has conducted in Gaza.
If the British government were serious about "standing against oppression," it would go a lot further than focusing on violations by Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories. The pogroms and construction of new settlements are carried out with the full assistance of the Israeli state, not just by gun-wielding fanatical settlers. Britain and other Western states have provided the legal and diplomatic cover for Israeli war crimes.
In any case, the supposed measures against Israeli business and exports from the West Bank are minimal. A recent Al Jazeera investigation found that Britain has billions of dollars invested in companies that are intimately involved in illegal settlement building. We can be sure that London is not going to cancel investments.
Total British-Israeli trade is estimated at $8 billion a year, including lucrative military items. The amount of business that Britain does with the Occupied Territories is about 1 per cent of its total trade with Israel.
Burnham and Miliband said the British government did not support boycott and divestment sanctions against the state of Israel. Both of them were at pains to emphasize that the measures are nominally limited to the violations going on in the Occupied Territories, not what Israel is doing right across Palestinian land, including Gaza, which is a genocide.
So there you have it. Britain's "moral leadership" is nothing but tokenism and duplicity.
Should we expect anything else ? After all, as former British diplomat Craig Murray pointed out this week, Burnham's government has decided to give top-secret information for building cruise missiles to the corrupt Kiev regime. Murray warns that the Storm Shadow missiles will soon end up being sold on the black market, given the rampant corruption of Ukraine under the Zelensky cabal.
Britain is also supplying this NeoNazi regime with long-range drones that are being used to target Moscow and Russian civilians.
Is this standing up against oppression and for supposed British values?
What's really behind London's belated show of concern for Palestinians?
As Burnham and Miliband alluded, it's all about Britain appearing to show international leadership. It's a cheap way to burnish London's "moral posturing" as a defender of "humanitarian values."
Israel has hit back with the usual denunciations of "anti-semitism" and by closing down the British consulate in East Jerusalem. But for London, these repercussions are bearable for the bigger gains of British international PR.
As noted above, the lion's share of its lucrative trade with Israel will go on, business as usual.
The other key motive for the Burnham government is that it realizes that a majority of the British public has become staunchly opposed to the Israeli regime. The three-year genocide has opened the eyes of many Britons (and those of other Western nations) to the historical injustices and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Israel is increasingly seen as a pariah, apartheid state that should be prosecuted for war crimes.
Britain's role as the former colonial power in the Zionist annexation of Palestine is one of deep complicity and shame.
Andy Burnham was shoehorned into Downing Street to take over from the hopeless and hapless Labour leader Keir Starmer. The British establishment has bet on Burnham to shore up its imperialist interests by boosting military spending and deepening involvement in the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
However, Burnham's popularity has quickly worn off as he looks like Starmer 2.0.
The tokenistic moves to support Palestinian rights and oppose Israeli violations are a cynical electioneering ploy. By talking up sanctions against Israeli illegal settlements, Burnham is calculating that it will garner votes from the growing public anger over the genocide.
But the measures that London is taking are negligible. They amount to a polite tap on the wrist of the Netanyahu regime as it continues its genocide.
Britain is fuelling the genocide by Israel, as it is with the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. British duplicity is as legion as its hypocrisy.