UK Imposes Symbolic Arms Embargo on Israel as Netanyahu Fights Mass Israeli Protests Demanding His Resignation

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Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP

UK Imposes Symbolic Arms Embargo on Israel as Netanyahu Fights Mass Israeli Protests Demanding His Resignation

- A Radical Dispatch

1) UK Imposes Symbolic Arms Embargo on Israel

The UK under Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy has imposed a symbolic arms sale limit on weapon supplies to Israel. In doing so, the UK joins other European nations who have either totally or partially halted weapon sales to Israel, due to concerns over Netanyahu’s war crimes in Gaza.

Sky News reports 2nd September 2024:

Click to play:

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy: “It is with regret that I inform the House today the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

The limited and symbolic embargo covers only 30 out of 350 UK arms licences to Israel, and crucially, exempts sales pertaining to the F35 fighter jet.

Labour MP Zarah Sultana explains her concerns.

The UK’s only British-Palestinian Member of Parliament Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat) questioned why the assessment only pertained to Gaza, and not the West Bank too.

British human rights organisations raised similar concerns.

The Independent reports 2nd September 2024:

“Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said: ‘While this decision appears to demonstrate that the UK has finally accepted the very clear and disturbing evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, it’s unfortunately too limited and riddled with loopholes.

Exempting the F-35 fighter jet programme – essentially giving this programme a blank cheque to continue despite knowing that F-35s are being used extensively in Gaza – is a catastrophically bad decision for the future of arms control and misses a clear obligation to hold Israel accountable for its extensive war crimes and other violations.’

Oxfam GB said: ‘The government’s suspension of some weapons exports to Israel is welcome recognition of the clear risk that Israel is using UK arms in serious breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza. But suspending just 30 licences out of 350, and crucially leaving loopholes for components in F-35 fighter jets that have been dropping 2,000lb bombs on Palestinians for months now, is nowhere near adequate’.”

UK officials have briefed corporatist press that Netanyahu’s maniacal conduct in Gaza left them with little choice.

The Times reports 4th September 2024:

“Binyamin Netanyahu’s ‘scorched earth policy’ in Gaza has forced western democracies to walk a difficult tightrope with Israel, according to a western official defending the UK’s arms ban.

The official warned that the way Israel had carried out its fight against Hamas, with relentless ferocity, would make the country less safe. They questioned how Israel could be ‘so stealthy’ using precision weapons when striking back at its enemies but had carried out a ‘scorched earth policy’ when it came to Gaza.”

Despite stinging Israel politically, the UK decision will largely remain symbolic because Britain supplies just 0.02% of Israel’s total arms sales. 99% of Israeli arms are secured from the US and Germany.

The Times reports 4th September 2024:

“The UK’s contribution to the country’s arsenal is just 0.02 per cent, with Britain approving licences worth £18.2 million last year…The ban also exempts F-35 fighter jet parts, which campaigners claim play a key role in the bombing of Gaza…

…However, the decision sets the UK apart from its main allies, the US and Germany, the biggest suppliers of arms to Israel. Figures used by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show that, from 2019 to 2023, the US and Germany provided 99 per cent of Israel’s arms imports. The figures give greater weight to bigger and more advanced weapons.

In May, the US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel and threatened to halt them altogether if it invaded the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. Despite that, in August, Joe Biden’s administration approved more than $20 billion in new weapons sales to the country, including 50 F-15 fighter jets and 33,000 tank cartridges. The US also handed over 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106 million (£81 million) and $147 million of components for the manufacture of 155mm artillery shells as part of two other military sales since the start of the war on October 7.

The Americans provide Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid as part of a ten-year agreement aimed at maintaining the country’s defence superiority over its neighbours.

Germany, the second biggest supplier of weapons to Israel with sales totalling $326.5 million in 2023, has approved considerably fewer exports of weapons since the start of the year as criticism of Israel’s tactics have mounted…”

By enforcing this partial ban, the UK joins Spain and the Netherlands who have gone further by imposing broader bans, and Italy and Canada who have not renewed arms sales to Israel since the onset of the Gaza war.

The Times reports 4th September 2024:

“..Italy, which provided 0.9 per cent of Israel’s imported arms in 2019-23, including reportedly helicopters and naval artillery, halted new export approvals after the start of the Gaza war, although previously signed orders were honoured. Under Italian law, arms exports are banned to countries that are waging war and those deemed to be violating international human rights.

Last year Canada exported military goods and technology worth $22.2 million to Israel but it has not granted any new export licences since January 8. Melanie Joly, the Canadian foreign minister, said this was because of the ‘rapidly evolving situation’.

As well as announcing that no arms sales to Israel had been approved since the war began last year, Spain said any ship carrying weapons to Israel would be banned from docking at Spanish ports.

In February a Dutch court blocked the sale of F-35 parts to Israel, ruling there was a ‘clear risk’ of humanitarian violations.”

2) Israel’s Netanyahu is an Obstacle to Peace

In the build up to the UK’s arms embargo and even after Hamas’ brutal execution of 6 Israeli hostages, the Israeli security-sector, the majority of the Israeli public and vast sections of Israel’s mainstream corporate media have all maintained that Netanyahu has been the main obstacle to attaining peace.

The head of Israel’s internal security apparatus Shin-Bet, Ronen Bar has accused Netanyahu and his cabinet of supporting “Jewish terrorism”.

The Guardian reports 23rd August 2024:

“The head of Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, has warned the country’s leaders that Jewish terrorism in the West Bank is out of control and has become a serious threat to national security.

Ronen Bar issued the warning in a letter to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the attorney general and members of the Israeli cabinet, some of whom are outspoken backers of the extremist settlers responsible for the escalating violence.

Bar’s letter, sent last week but published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday night, has highlighted the wide, acrimonious gap between the far-right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition and Israel’s security apparatus.”

Such colonising settler-outposts in the West Bank - illegal even under Israeli law - have rapidly expanded under Netanyahu’s Likudnik patronage.

The BBC reports 3rd September 2024:

The BBC reports 3rd September 2024:

“The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year - more than in any previous year.

The outposts - which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans - often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.”

Netanyahu has done what he always does, by pointing at Hamas terrorism as his ‘get out of jail’ card.

The Times reports 3rd September 2024:

“Hamas said it had executed six Israeli hostages over the weekend and threatened to kill more as the Israeli prime minister defied international pressure and protests at home by doubling down on keeping troops in Gaza, possibly scuttling ceasefire talks.”

Radical Media has always uncategorically condemned all terrorism, whether that be Jewish-settler terrorism or indeed jihadist terrorism.

But does Netanyahu?

The Radical Dispatch reports 18th October 2023:

The above Radical Dispatch from last year contains receipts demonstrating that it was in fact Netanyahu who maintained a policy of arming and funding Hamas terrorists in order to split the Palestinian nation under PM Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thereby making a Palestinian state impossible to pursue. Readers are advised to revise it above.

This year, word is out.

Click to play:

Investigative reporter Ben Swann: “Bloodthirsty terrorists, savages, genocidal barbarians, and Nazis. These are all words that Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have used to describe Hamas. So it might come as a little bit of a surprise that Israel, while designating Hamas a terrorist organization, has been consistently supporting these genocidal barbarians with suitcases filled with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. I'm investigator journalist Ben Swan, and this is Reckoning Israel and Gaza.

Although Israeli support for Hamas was happening as recently as last year, it began in the 1980s. See, in the 1980s, Israel directly supported Hamas because they wanted it to become more powerful as a governing authority than the secular non-religious PLO, or Palestinian Liberation Organisation. That's a name you haven't heard in a while.

See, Israel knew that turning the national struggle into a religious struggle, or a jihad, would allow Israel to frame Palestinian liberation as the aim of only Islamic fanatics. Former Israeli General Yitzhak Pondak told the New York Times, quote, the Israeli government gave me a budget and the military government gave me a budget and I financed the opening of as many mosques and schools as possible. We wanted to strengthen Islamic institutions. For decades, this social support system cultivated the political and religious ideologies that now drive Hamas militants, adults who once attended the very mosques and schools directly funded by Israel.

It wasn't merely about supporting Islamism and passively wishing it would yield religious leadership. Israel actively engineered Hamas's takeover of Gaza. According to a leaked diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, Israeli Defense Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin explicitly said in 2007 that, quote, Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state, end quote.

So in 2012, with the explicit permission of Israel, the government of Qatar began delivering suitcases filled with millions of dollars in cash every month to the ruling party in Gaza, Hamas. According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Qatar delivered $1.1 billion in U.S. cash at Qatari Rials from 2012 to 2019. While working in Gaza, Reuters photographer Ibrahim Abu Mustafa took photos of Hamas government employees after they received their monthly salary in U.S. dollars. Israeli journalist Barak Ravid noted that, quote, Israel's coordination with Qatar over the transfer of money to Gaza is one of the most bizarre elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a paradox where Israel allows funds to Hamas while considering them a terrorist organization, end quote. So, so why?

Israel facilitated the transfer of more than a billion dollars to Hamas for political reasons. By bolstering Hamas and ensuring they remain the dominant political force in Gaza, Israel effectively minimised the chances of the more secular Palestinian Authority, which already controls the West Bank, from coming to power in Gaza.

See, this strategy hinders the formation of a unified Palestinian state. And Netanyahu, well, he actually said this during political party meetings in 2019. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu told other members of his party that, quote, anyone who is against the Palestinian state should be for sending money to Gaza because keeping Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank helps to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In an interview with German media, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Omer said, Netanyahu supported and advanced Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu wanted to keep Hamas alive because he thought that if Hamas would remain in power in Gaza, it would divide the Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, and so it would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Predictably, this strategy of channeling billions of dollars to their so-called greatest enemy backfired on Israel when Hamas launched its cross-border attack on October 7th.

And for Americans, not only are we not told this incredibly crucial, maybe the most crucial part of this entire story between Israel and Hamas, but we're also left footing the bill, using billions of US taxpayer dollars to defend Israel from a monster that Israel itself helped to create. As the former Israeli religious affairs head, Avner Cohen said, quote, Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation.”

In light of these revelations, Netanyahu’s protestations that the UK imposing any form of arms embargo on Israel is tantamount to ‘emboldening Hamas’, fall rather flat.

The Times reports 3rd September 2023:

“The UK’s decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel has caused a diplomatic row with the country as Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, denounced the move as ‘shameful’ and said it would only ‘embolden’ Hamas.”

As even US negotiators have concluded, and that is according to Israeli press, that Netanyahu is the main obstacle to peace.

Haaretz reports 1st September 2024:

“Senior officials from the Biden administration and from other countries currently mediating talks between Israel and Hamas have lost their faith in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated intentions to reach a cease-fire and hostage release deal….”

Likewise, the Israeli public themselves have come to the same conclusion and took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands - crucially, even after Hamas’ execution of 6 hostages - to demand that Netanyahu resign.

Click to play:

Netanyahu’s response was to do the only thing he knows how, clamp down.

The Times of London reports 3rd September 2024:

“In Israel, thousands of protesters took to the streets on Monday for a second consecutive day, hoping to force the government into a deal for hostages’ return. Major road intersections were blocked across the country and protesters waved Israeli flags and carried photographs of hostages. The protests broke out after the bodies of the six hostages were retrieved from a tunnel in Gaza. The Israeli military said that Palestinian militants had “brutally murdered” the six by shooting them at close range. Hamas previously suggested they had died in an Israeli airstrike. Biden’s accusation that Netanyahu was not doing enough to bring about a deal elicited strong responses on both sides. A Hamas official said that it was a recognition that Netanyahu was the one standing in the way of a deal.”

Israel’s own hostage negotiating team have joined their country’s national security sector, and the majority of their public, in blaming Netanyahu for the break down of talks.

The Times of Israel reports 20th August 2024:

“Sources involved in the ongoing talks for a hostage release-ceasefire deal have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of intentionally sabotaging the negotiations…”

Who remembers what we said, only days after October 7th?

3) Toxic Netanyahu is Now a Liability For Allies

President Trump has known that Netanyahu is a liability since his previous administration.

The Radical Dispatch reports 27th March 2024:

Click to play:

Trump: “It will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal. As far as settlements, I'd like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit. We'll work something out, but I would like to see a deal be made. It might be a bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand. That's a possibility. So let's see what we do. It doesn't sound too optimistic, but that's... I was disappointed in BB just on a personal basis.

I thought he wanted to make a deal more than that, you know. And I will be honest, I had a great meeting with him, Abbas, right? I had a great meeting with him. And we spent a lot of time together, talked about many things. And it was almost like a father. He was so nice. Couldn't have been nicer. And after meeting with Bibi for three minutes, I looked at him and said, you don't want to make a deal, do you? And he said, well, and the fact is, I don't think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal.”

Defending an Israeli first position on all security matters is becoming increasingly difficult on both sides of the Atlantic as domestic issues become more pressing.

Unity News Network sums up the issue when responding to the way in which former UK Home Secretary, an Israel-First politician, Suella Braverman (Con) reacted to the recent symbolic UK arms embargo:

As we previously stated in Radical Media Netanyahu is now a liability for Trump’s America First doctrine.

The Radical Dispatch reports 21st August 2024:

Like JD Vance, “the head of Trump’s campaign LaCivita also previously appears to have been a Never Trumper. Just as with Pence in 2016, it looks like the RNC has once again surrounded Trump with those who hate him. A shake up may be needed, before it is too late”

The polls seem to indicate a slump in Trump’s popularity over this issue too.

AF Post reports 2nd September 2024:

All is not lost, and there remains much to play for. But Trump’s advisors would be well advised to shake up his campaign.

Newsweek reports 21st August 2024:

“Vice President Kamala Harris is not leading in a single battleground state, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Navigator Research between July 31 and August 8, showed the Democratic presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump are tied in Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin, while Harris is behind in Arizona and Pennsylvania.”

Because as we stated in this week’s attached WARRIOR CREED podcast, an Israel-First position only makes sense if one is Israeli.

Click to play:

Maajid Nawaz for WARRIOR CREED: “The key thing, the key point here is to remember that it's not too late to turn around, but it makes no sense to hold an Israel first position if you're American. It makes no sense to hold an Israel first position if you're British. Unless, of course, you're on their payroll. It does make sense to hold an Israel first position if you're Israeli. But even then, what is the Israel first position? We'd argue it's what the majority of the Israeli public have adopted. And that is a position against Netanyahu. We'd argue it's what the head of the Shin Bet has adopted, what Israel's national security sector has adopted. And that is to be critical of Netanyahu. We'd argue it's what Israel's negotiating team, the position they've adopted, which is to say that Netanyahu has been an obstacle to peace. That's the Israel first position, which makes sense to adopt if you're Israeli. If you're not Israeli, why on earth are you adopting an Israel first position?"

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