It would be insane for Britain to ban arms sales to Israel

E. Rowell: It is difficult, at times, to maintain one’s sanity in an insane world.  Difficult yes, but not impossible, as Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson points out.

The sooner we denounce the idea, the better

By Boris Johnson, DAILY MAIL    5 April 2024

There are claims of a Cabinet row amid suggestions Rishi Sunak and Lord Cameron might soon be prepared to take a tougher line against Israel/©wire image

If you want an example of the death wish of Western civilisation, I give you the current proposal from members of the British establishment that this country should ban arms sales to Israel.

If you want evidence of government madness, it appears that Foreign Office lawyers are busily canvassing the idea — which has not, as far as I can tell, yet been rejected by the Foreign Secretary himself. He seems to have gone into a kind of purdah on the subject.

More alarming still, we are told that an Israeli arms ban is the subject of an active row in Cabinet, with only a handful of ministers positively sticking up for Israel.

The contagion has spread pretty wide, and very fast. The proposed embargo is now supported by MPs on all sides, by the former head of MI6, by some former Supreme Court Justices, and by about 600 members of the legal profession, all of them clamouring for us to turn our backs on the only democracy in the Middle East.

We are being asked to shun the Israelis, to mount a total moral repudiation of Israel — when that country has only recently suffered the biggest and most horrifying massacre of Jewish people since World War II; and when 130 hostages, including, for heaven’s sake, a baby, are being kept in dungeons in Gaza by their jihadi captors; and when the release of those hostages, it cannot be stated too often, would mean the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces and the end of the conflict.

How can we get things so wrong, so upside down? What has come over us?

Let us be clear what it would mean, to ban arms sales now, when Israel is under a greater existential threat than at any time I can remember.

If we ban the sale of arms ourselves, it surely follows that we do not think any self-respecting country should be arming the Israelis.

And if we are willing everyone, including the U.S., to end their military support, be in no doubt what that means. There is only one logical conclusion.

We are willing the military defeat of Israel and the victory of Hamas. Remember that in order to win this conflict, Hamas only has to survive. All they need at the end is to hang on, rebuild, and go again.

That’s victory for Hamas; and that is what these legal experts seem to be asking for. So let’s just remind ourselves what this war is about, and why Israel has been forced to act.

Israel has no choice but to defend itself because the charter and aim of Hamas is to destroy Israel, and indeed to liquidate the entire Jewish people. The Hamas massacre on October 7 was plainly designed to further that end: the moral and political destruction of Israel.

There was a reason why they meticulously planned and then performed those unspeakable murders and rapes. There was a cold logic to the barbarism seen that day, to the beheadings and the burnings. They wanted to show Israelis, and anyone thinking of coming to Israel, that this was a place where ordinary and innocent families could be enveloped in violent catastrophe.

They wanted to evoke global feelings of repulsion about events in Israel, and, of course, they wanted to provoke the Israelis into a violent response, because they knew that retaliation would inevitably forfeit sympathy for Israel around the world.

That’s why they took the hostages: to give Israel no choice but to fight. That’s why they refuse to give the hostages back. That’s why they prepared so carefully for the war, cynically designing their very defences so as to provoke the greatest loss of Palestinian life, and the greatest possible loss of Western support for Israel.

That’s why they built 400 miles of tunnels, and that’s why they made sure to conceal themselves beneath mosques, hospitals, schools and other civilian targets.

They are actively using the death and suffering of their own citizens, maximising their pain and grief so as to rally international opinion against Israel — and we are falling for it.

I do not for one minute deny the immense suffering of the people of Gaza. I just ask you to consider who is really to blame for it.

Pro-Palestine protesters gather in Westminster, as calls for an arms ban to Israel grow/Vuc Valcic/Avalon

Two women visit the site of the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel/AFP via Getty Images

It was shattering to see the recent killing, by the Israelis, of three British and other Western aid workers. There must be an inquiry.

The Israelis must explain what happened, and bring to justice those responsible for what must surely have been a hideous mistake. But in all our grief and rage about what is happening on the ground in Gaza, we should not forget the essential moral difference between Hamas and Israel.

It is still true, in all the chaos and carnage of war, that Israel is sending warnings of its attacks — by phone or text or leaflet. Israel is trying to use precision munitions. Israel is trying to make sure that there is some kind of proportionality between the military objectives and the risk of human suffering. Israel is trying to winkle out the Hamas terrorists, while doing its best to spare the surrounding population.

Israel is trying to minimise casualties. Hamas is trying to maximise them — including on their own side. Hamas know that it is this awful spectacle, of the suffering of Palestinian women and children, which breaks our hearts in the West and weakens our resolve.

At the moment they can see us melting, and weakening, and in our voices — both in London and Washington — they can hear our growing irresolution.

They listen to this sudden discussion of boycotting Israel, and they think they can succeed in their objective: to deprive Israel of Western support and make it impossible for the Israelis to complete their mission.

If the West continues to crumble — and especially if Britain and the U.S. crumble — then the Israelis will be prevented from getting into Rafah. They will be prevented from achieving their objective: of finishing Hamas as a military force in Gaza.

The Hydra’s heads will be allowed to regrow. Hamas will be able to do another October 7, and then another. Above all, the rest of the world — where they are already so dubious about the willpower of the West — will see that, when it came to it, we did not have the guts, the fibre or the strategic patience to stick up for a democracy; and that we were willing to let the jihadis win.

Is that really what you want, all you legal experts who say that Israel’s actions now necessitate an arms embargo? Do you want to hand victory to a bunch of murderers and rapists?

Crowds flee as Hamas closed in on the music festival in Israel

You talk of humanitarian law. Where was the humanity of Hamas on October 7? Show me the operation of humanitarian law in the Gaza of Hamas — a place ruled by fear and summary execution, where homosexuality can carry the death penalty.

Humanitarian law? They are laughing at us. If we ban arms to Israel now, it would, of course, be absurdly hypocritical. I don’t remember many qualms about loss of civilian life during the Nato strikes on Libya.

We sustained — very sensibly — our vast arms deals with Saudi Arabia throughout the war in Yemen.

But it’s not the hypocrisy I mind. It’s the implication: that good, clever, kindly people in this country are actually willing to take away, from Israel, its means of defending its citizens against Hamas.

That is insane. That is shameful — and the sooner the Government formally denounces the idea, the better.