When We Are Attacked, We Get Attacked
On October 7, Israel was attacked. Nearly three years later, Israel has become the accused.
The language has grown louder. Genocide. Apartheid. War crimes. Sanctions. Recognition of a Palestinian state. And now another expression has entered the vocabulary of the British government.
Ethnic cleansing.
Standing in the House of Commons, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, announced sweeping measures against Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. Goods produced in settlements will be banned from Britain, while sanctions will target specific companies and individuals providing services such as construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.
But it was not the sanctions that stopped me. It was the language.
Miliband told Parliament that the British government believes there is “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.”
Ethnic cleansing. Two words drawn from some of the darkest chapters of human history.
Miliband knows their meaning. He quoted the UN definition before making the accusation. There is settler violence, and where crimes are committed, those responsible should face justice. But an accusation as grave as ethnic cleansing carries the weight of history. Spoken from the dispatch box of the House of Commons, it also carries the authority of the British government.
Miliband did something else before delivering that accusation. He introduced himself as a “proud British Jew.”
He spoke of his grandmother, who found sanctuary in Israel after losing her husband and 60 other family members at the hands of the Nazis. He remembered visiting her in Tel Aviv and picking oranges on the kibbutz where his cousins lived.
Then came the indictment.
Why was his Jewish history necessary?
His Jewishness does not place Israel beyond criticism. But neither should it lend greater moral authority to that criticism simply because it comes from a Jew. If you invoke Jewish history, you invoke its weight.
Miliband knows what October 7 meant to Jews. He said so himself. He knows that British Jews are living with rising antisemitism. He said that too. Yet in the same speech, he reached for one of history’s most charged accusations.
There will be those who call it courageous precisely because a Jewish Foreign Secretary said it. And there will inevitably be those who hear something else:
If even a Jew says this about Israel, it must be true.
That is where the danger begins.
Something has changed since October 7. Israel was invaded. Families were murdered. People were burned in their homes. Men, women and children were dragged into Gaza. Israel went to war, and the country that was attacked became the country on trial.
Criticise Israel when criticism is deserved. Condemn settler violence. Challenge its government. But words do not remain inside Parliament.
They travel — through television, social media, demonstrations and university campuses. Israel becomes genocidal. Zionism becomes racism. Israelis become colonisers. Somewhere along the journey, the line between Israel, Zionists and Jews begins to disappear.
A Jew in London becomes answerable for Jerusalem. A Jewish student becomes answerable for Gaza. A synagogue becomes a place outside which people come to protest.
Governments cannot be held responsible for every antisemite who exploits criticism of Israel. They are responsible for the words they choose.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian cause has gained a political momentum not seen for years. Recognition of Palestinian statehood has accelerated. Sanctions have widened. Israel has become increasingly isolated.
Palestinians deserve dignity, security and a future of their own. But there is a bitter irony in what followed the massacre of October 7.
Hamas crossed into Israel and committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In the years that followed, international pressure increasingly turned towards the country it attacked.
What lesson does that send to the next terrorist organisation watching?
Commit an atrocity large enough to shake the world, survive the response, and wait for international pressure to turn upon the country you attacked?
That is a dangerous lesson for the world to teach.
Ed Miliband has every right to criticise Israel and every responsibility to condemn violence. But in that speech, he chose something more.
He began with the sanctuary Israel gave his grandmother after the Nazis tore apart her family. He ended by recalling how Britain gave sanctuary to his Jewish refugee parents.
Between those two memories of sanctuary came the accusation:
Ethnic cleansing.
There was a time when an attack upon Jews reminded the world why a Jewish state was necessary. October 7 should have been such a moment.
Instead, it revealed an old and bitter paradox.
Israel was attacked. And nearly three years later, the accusations, sanctions and condemnations continue to gather.
When we are attacked, we get attacked.
