Starmer’s hideous double speak on Palestine
DANIEL JUPP
ON Sunday Keir Starmer announced that the UK was formally recognising a Palestinian state.
The move breaks the established UK policy position of decades standing and is a legitimacy imparted following horrific Hamas-led terrorist actions of October 7, 2023, the deadliest terrorist assault in Israeli history and the worst one-day slaughter of Jews since the Second World War.
That attack included the torture and gang rape of women and girls of all ages, the tying up of victims who were then burned alive, and the slaughter of children including toddlers. Fathers were murdered in front of their children, grandmothers murdered or abducted, and kidnapped infants strangled by hand. Hostages, including those released, were starved, tortured and severely mistreated and paraded as trophies. Yet the British Government, along with Canada, Australia and other nations have rewarded the terrorists for these atrocities.
US President Donald Trump warned them: ‘If you do that you really are rewarding Hamas, and I’m not about to do that.’
Starmer and the Government assert that, contrary to President Trump’s position, the recognition of Palestinian statehood is a move designed to encourage peace.
‘In the face of the growing horror in the Middle East, we are acting to keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution,’ said Starmer. ‘Hamas is a brutal terror organisation. A call for a genuine two-state solution is the exact opposite of their hateful vision. So we are clear this solution is not a reward for Hamas because it means Hamas can have no future, no role in government, no role in security.
‘Meanwhile, the man-made humanitarian crisis in Gaza reaches new depths. The Israeli government’s relentless and increasing bombardment of Gaza, the offensive of recent weeks, the starvation, and devastation, are utterly intolerable. Tens of thousands have been killed, including thousands as they tried to collect food and water . . . With the actions of Hamas, the Israeli government escalating a conflict and settlement building being accelerated in the West Bank, the hope of a two-state solution is fading. But we cannot let that light go out.’
Throughout his speech Starmer offered a moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas and the actions of Israel, and like many leftists and Islamists he appeared to place primary responsibility for all subsequent deaths following October 7 on the Israelis.
The reality that Hamas is a ‘brutal terrorist organisation’ and began the war through an orgy of torture, murder and bestial savagery, was briefly offered as a passing nod which required no further impact on one’s position regarding the ongoing casualties.
Far more time was spent on Israel’s ‘cruel actions’ and there was no recognition of the manner in which the Israel Defense Forces follow strict rules of conduct and do not deliberately target civilians (contrary to the kind of propaganda Starmer himself seems to accept). Hamas, on the other hand, do not care for moral limits. They even desire civilian casualties, both those they inflict on the hated Israelis, and those Palestinian civilians whom they use as both human shields and propaganda tools.
The Government and Starmer personally are in fact fully signed up to a central, hideous lie: that a nation defending itself by targeting terrorists is equally or more responsible for the innocent casualties than the terrorists who launched it by massacring women and children. Against all valid evidence, the Government accepts Hamas-supplied reports and propaganda about casualty rates, and the falsehood that Israeli forces deliberately fire on those queuing for food supplies, and presents a direct moral equivalence between one of the worst terrorist organisations on the planet and a traditionally Western ally.
In the recognition of Palestinian statehood and the manner in which that decision was presented, Starmer is acquiescing with the Hamas version of events.
He is rewarding Hamas even though it continues to hold 43 Israelis hostages from more than 250 seized, though fewer than half of them are believed to be alive.
A dark satirical meme has offered a comic slant on this debacle. It suggests that the SNP and its former leader Nicola Sturgeon must be upset to realise that Scottish independence could have been recognised almost immediately by the Government if only they had led an incursion into Britain and a mass slaughter of the English. These are, it seems, the circumstances under which the Government has chosen to recognise a Palestinian state.
Of course it is true that the kind of recognition Starmer is offering is not at first glance as extreme as some street level protesters. He criticises Hamas and gives assurances that the move will somehow prevent Hamas leading a Palestinian nation. But on what basis? None. Such assurances are fanciful. Sanctions against Hamas mean nothing when their objectives have been achieved.
Nor is it true that the Green Line, or so-called 1967 borders, represent a just compromise conducive to a permanent peace. These were temporary demarcations of the territory which the UN and all participants initially recognised as not being permanent borders. It was Arab negotiators who insisted that the 1949-1967 Green Line was not a permanent border. What Starmer is insisting should now be applied was a line drawn on a map showing ceasefire positions.
It is true that these borders could have become permanent and might have eventually be considered just by both sides if Palestinian terrorist groups had ever laid down their arms and worked for peace. But they didn’t. Instead the contested areas act as terrorist bases.
Every area controversially ‘settled’ by Israelis or seized and ruled by them has been an area won in wars launched by Palestinians and allied Arab states. That’s why the current map differs from the 1949-1967 borders.
Israelis have already seen that those borders don’t protect them. Today, much of Israel’s ‘controversial’ border fencing is on land Starmer would hand to Palestinians led by terrorists. The whole reason for these protections was the fear of actions like October 7, and October 7 stands as testament to what happens to Israelis when they withdraw and surrender positions that are strategically helpful to assaults on Israel or when their border security isn’t firm enough.
Israel withdrew from multiple settlements in 2007. Israel has bulldozed Israeli settlements in pursuit of peace and Israel withdrew from Gaza which was self-governed and led by Hamas after the 2006 Fatah-Hamas war kicked out the Palestinian Authority (PA) there.
The ongoing Fatah-Hamas split does complicate matters. This internal Palestinian leadership struggle resulted in more 600 deaths in 2006 and 2007. It’s true that the Fatah-dominated PA is somewhat milder and more secular than the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, Sunni Islamist Hamas. But the PA, which rules large parts of the West Bank and about two and a half million Palestinians there, is not exactly moderate. It has co-operated with Hamas at some points, and it too has offered ‘martyrdom’ payments to the families of terrorists. It’s perceived by many Palestinians as weak and corrupt, but should not be perceived by Westerners as moral and good just because it’s a hair’s breadth less insane than Hamas.
Thanks to that internal split though, the difference between the US view on recognising Palestinian statehood and the European/Starmer view hinges not just on one’s moral position regarding the difference between Israel and Hamas, but also on which Palestinian faction will gain most by that recognition. The PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, has welcomed the recognition of statehood. So have Hamas, who call it a ‘just outcome’.
Yet if people who strangle kidnapped babies consider your decision a ‘just outcome’, you might have made a hideous moral mistake.
Perhaps you believe everything you’ve heard about the thousands of ‘innocent victims of Israel’s cruel actions’. Or even if you just want a light of hope, a route to peace. Does recognising a Palestinian state now make peace more likely?
No, it doesn’t. First, it has had an immediate negative impact in terms of negotiations. The US and Israel have declared that they will be boycotting a French summit on the war. Recognising Palestinian statehood has immediately undermined their efforts because they see it as rewarding Hamas while hostages are still being held. Few governments wish to enter negotiations brokered by nations they assume to be supporting terrorists and capitulating to terrorist demands.
The timing of such recognition might also deeply damage Anglo-US relations. It’s obvious that Trump’s opinions are at odds with Starmer’s on a wide range of issues. Justice Secretary David Lammy is among senior Government figures to have, in the past, shared extremist leftist assessments of the American president, indeed the kind of attitudes towards Trump that have played their part in the growth of US domestic terrorism from the left such as the murder of Charlie Kirk or the two assassination attempts on Trump himself.
The Trump State visit was a relative success and the timing of the Palestine announcement appears deliberately calculated to make it so. Conspiring to deliver such an announcement after meeting the Americans, but not putting it to them honestly beforehand, would be a very obvious snubbing of US concerns, and one that could be interpreted only as the cowardly act of an unreliable and untrustworthy government.
Such a move tells the US, and Trump in particular, that the British can put on a lovely show but can’t be trusted with anything important. If the impression was given that such a move wouldn’t be coming at all, the impact of doing it would be disastrous for US-UK relations.
Nor should we ignore perhaps the most cynical and parochial explanation of the timing of this announcement. The Labour Party, whose annual conference begins on Sunday, faces a collapse of their hard left and Muslim vote by not being quite extreme enough.
The Corbyn splinter party comes from that movement, as does a recent local election result where a Muslim independent group trounced a Labour Party candidate. It can’t help but be an explanation of the Palestinian recognition to see the Labour Party as desperately trying to appease its own most radical and extremist supporters.
Finally, though, we come to the real core. It’s not whether you think it’s moral or immoral that ultimately matters; it’s not how the US interprets it. It’s what consequences it has in the Middle East and for peace. On this, I’m pretty sure its effect is the exact opposite of the one Keir Starmer is claiming it will have.
Rewarding terrorists brings more terrorism, not less. Starmer and co have handed Hamas a massive propaganda victory. It is Hamas that has been the public face and the armed presence fighting the war, not the Palestinian Authority. Any triumph for the Palestinian side will be interpreted in the Middle East as a Hamas victory.
Palestinians won’t believe this is a win for Abbas. They will believe it is a win for Hamas. So recognising a Palestinian state at this point in time reinvigorates and emboldens terrorists and lets Hamas tell the Arab world that the October 7 attacks bore fruit, namely the recognition of a Palestinian state by European and British fools.
While Israel has been trying to end the route of terror by severe consequences, weak Western leaders have shown the Islamic world, once again, that the West betrays its friends, is easily manipulated and deceived, and will always respond to terrorism with concessions.
The peculiar genius of the Western liberal globalists is to condemn the pursuit of peace when it makes sense, and celebrate the pursuit of peace when it guarantees more conflict. There’s a complete failure of psychological understanding, a risk analysis that is invariably wrong, and a set of smug assumptions or delusional prejudices that navigate towards costly disaster.
Hamas will be smiling at every word Starmer said, knowing it helps them. And since recognition comes with full rights to an embassy staffed by people with diplomatic immunity, we may even be welcoming terrorists as diplomats based in London in the near future.
This article (Starmer’s hideous double speak on Palestine) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Daniel Jupp
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