Hamas Praises Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband, millionaire Marxist and “proud Jew,” has just announced a new policy, designed to weaken Israel’s hold in Judea and Samaria. From now on, the UK will ban all agricultural products and manufactured goods produced in Judea and Samaria from entering the country. The aim is to weaken economically those whom Miliband calls “the settlers.” In fact, there are 750,000 Israeli “settlers” in Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem, and their economy is deeply intertwined with that of the people who live in Israel behind the Green Line. It will be very difficult for the UK enforcers of this new policy to know which oranges, or batteries, come from, say, Ma’ale Adumim in Judea and those that come from a town a few miles away that is in Israel. In any case, many goods from Judea and Samaria can easily be relabelled. And when products produced in Judea and Samaria are identified, that can lead to consequences that Miliband apparently does not comprehend. When, a few years ago, some BDS-minded importers of Israeli goods decided to refuse to accept Sodastream products because they were built in a factory in Judea, Sodastream’s owners decided to move the factory inside Israel. As a consequence, hundreds of Palestinian workers lost their jobs. How many more Palestinian workers will lose their jobs because of Ed Miliband’s policy, that will cause some manufacturing plants to move out of Judea and Samaria?

While there are many reasons to deplore Ed Miliband’s policy, and his ridiculous accusation that Israel may have committed “ethnic cleaning” and that its settlements in Judea and Samaria constitute a “violation of international law,” here’s one more: Hamas is delighted with his remarks. That’s right: the mass-murdering terror group responsible for the atrocities on October 7. 2023 is well pleased with Ed Miliband. More on his Hamas admirers can be found here: “Hamas terrorists praise Ed Miliband over sanctions on Israel but tell Labour ‘they’re not enough,'” by Ed Griffiths, GB News, September 10, 2026:

Hamas has welcomed the sanctions imposed on Israel by Ed Miliband and described the Foreign Secretary’s description of “ethnic cleansing” as a positive development.

The proscribed terrorist organisation, responsible for the October 7 attacks that killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals, also demanded that Israeli leaders face war crimes prosecution.

Basem Naim, a senior figure in Hamas’s political bureau, said: “The imposition of sanctions by Britain and other European countries and Canada on goods imported from the settlements of the occupied West Bank, and the London foreign minister’s use of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to describe the crimes of the settlers, are important steps in the right direction but they are not enough.”

Mr Naim also demanded “the prosecution of war criminals in Israel in a manner similar to the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in Germany”.

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Miliband declared the occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful” and accused Israel of undermining the viability of a two-state solution.

Ed Miliband is wrong. Judea and Samaria are not “Palestinian territory,” but belong by right — see the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, and the territory to which it applied — to Israel.

Or does Miliband not know about the Mandate, or about the UN’s commitment, in Article 80 of the UN Charter, to bring that Mandate to its intended end — a Jewish state?

He told MPs: “The British Government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.

“And all too often, the Israeli Government has turned a blind eye to this.”…

Ethnic cleansing in the “West Bank”? What is Basem Naim thinking of? In 1967, when Israel won by force of arms Judea and Samaria, the Arab population of the area was 600,000. Today, there are two million Arabs in the area, which is more than a tripling of the 1967 population. If Israel is carrying on ethnic cleansing in Judea and Samaria, it’s doing a terrible job of it.

Israel responded by denouncing what it termed “outrageous lies” from Mr Miliband and swiftly enacted a series of retaliatory measures against Britain.

The first “outrageous lie” is that Judea and Samaria are “Palestinian territory.” They are not. Instead they form part of the territory allocated to the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, which was then eventually intended to become the Jewish nation-state, the state of Israel.

There are two ways that Palestinians in Judea and Samaria will suffer from Miliband’s policy. First, those who work for Israeli businesses in those territories may lose their jobs if plants are moved back to Israel behind the Green Line. Secondly, the UK consulate’s closure in Jerusalem will make it harder for the UK to monitor the situation of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, to provide humanitarian aid, to arrange for transfers to the UK for medical reasons, even to make it possible for some Palestinians to migrate to the UK. Did Ed Miliband really think that Israel would not retaliate in this fashion?

And finally, is Ed Miliband the least bit ashamed by the praise that Hamas has just lavished upon him?