This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

When the Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband stood up in the House of Commons to denounce Israel for having “turned a blind eye to” the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians living in parts of the occupied West Bank and imposed sanctions on illegal settlements, he brought an end to Britain’s shameful complicity through silence in the crime of the century.

Criticism of the UK Government’s action ranges from the feeble to the toxic. Supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pretend that any attack on him and his policies is an antisemitic attack on Jews as a whole, though this is obviously not the case. Those who equate the two give a green light to what former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, quoted with approval by Miliband, calls “a violent and criminal effort to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank”.

Cynics write off British action as ineffectual, but the hysterical reaction of the Israeli Government shows this to be mistaken. Advocates of inaction invariably argue that the top dogs, right or wrong, will ignore the puny efforts of their opponents, but the opposite is usually true. To give a concrete example, I was struck when looking at official files in the National Archives at Kew, how British ministers appeasing Germany in the 1930s were outraged by any hint of public criticism and worked hard to suppress it. Had the UK and other Western governments reacted more strongly against the slaughter in Gaza, then some of the 75,000 dead, including 20,000 children according to the UN, might still be alive.

Others absurdly argue that criticism of Israel by the UK will work to Netanyahu’s advantage come the Israeli general election because he can claim he is the target of Israel-hating enemies. But taken to its logical conclusion, this approach would mute all criticism of Netanyahu, on the risible grounds that this is the best way to get rid of him.

Some pundits see all government actions through the myopic lens of party politics, so they suspect that sanctions on Israeli settlements are simply a bid to dash the Greens and steal their pro-Palestinian political clothes before the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Another way of looking at it would be recognition that the Government is going with the flow of public opinion, which a YouGov poll shows approving the ban on trade with Israeli settlements by 52 per cent to 17 per cent against.

Some may feel that Andy Burnham and Miliband are getting too much applause for doing what should have been done long ago. It is extraordinary to recall that Sir Keir Starmer appeared to have said in 2023 that he approved of Israel depriving Gaza of water and power – and then taking a week to decide he had misspoken. Burnham and Miliband are simply filling a vacuum of leadership and policy by doing the right thing now.

But there is an important lesson for Britain here because vacuum of leadership and policy are a recurrent feature in the contemporary political landscape. These create uncertainty and even anarchy but also offer Britain an opportunity to reset and replace relations with many countries other than Israel which are out of date or have turned sour.

The most........

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