Daniel Levy on Ed Miliband’s speech

Daniel Levy on Ed Miliband’s speech

Early on Owen Jones played this extract from Ed Miliband’s speech:

I do not believe the British people want us supporting the occupation by accepting products from settlements in our shops and supermarkets. So I can announce today that we will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. To do so, we will introduce a new comprehensive sanctions regime, working with my right honorable friend, the business secretary, with appropriate religious exemptions. And as part of this regime, we will go further. We will take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion.

So to those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this, you will face the full force of UK sanctions.

The significance of what Ed Miliband has done

Owen Jones: … some people might have gone, why are we trading with legal settlements in the West Bank in the first place? …

Daniel Levy: First, I would agree. But then my second sentence would be, and yet for decades, that is precisely the reality that they/we didn’t win the argument. We couldn’t bring a politics to bear that would shift from absolute impunity into something else, into chipping away at that impunity, into generating degrees, layers of accountability that changed the cost calculation for Israel. For decades, the Israelis somehow, you know, with their supporters, with their lobby, with their friends, with the, anyway, embeddedness into, into our systems, … And it just keeps relentlessly magnifying until you get to the situation that we saw in Gaza, until you get to the situation, that we see in terms of what they say, who’s in government, of having an election next month in Israel where the entirety of the Zionist political spectrum rejects two states.

That’s where impunity has taken us. There is not one Zionist political party running on a platform which says, hey, maybe we exaggerated in Gaza. Hey. Maybe there’s some humanity in these people that we need to recognize, let alone peace, withdrawal, and occupation. Two states. Every Zionist party running has said we will not endorse two states in the next, parliament of Israel.

So after decades of impunity, when you do get a set of measures, I think it probably counts as strategically incorrect to say, ah, too little too late, even though that is the most human reaction.

... What [Miliband] did, I think, was send a signal to all of those who have taken to the streets, who have not said there’s nothing we can do, who have marched, who have mobilized, who have cared, who have sent a letter, whatever any of you have done.

And [Miliband] said, we’re listening, and it’s moving the politics. Now, you know, I don’t think there were many people who took to the streets in order to have a limited set of measures targeting settlements only. Okay? But this should send the signal that the political reality and space has been created where despite this whole backlash, and we’ve seen… just how mad the counter backlash is. Despite all of that, the government has announced a set of measures, and, also, they didn’t go for the lowest common denominator.

Now they led. They got other countries, France, Canada, a number of European countries to come along with them, but those countries didn’t sign up for everything the UK government announced. And, yes, they’ve announced it. It needs to be implemented. I’m there.

But now our marching orders are get it implemented, get it deepened, move to the next phase.

[T]hey actually announced not just trade ban on goods, but they put the financial services sector into the mix.

They said, and now we’ve got to see it implemented, there’ll be a double lock on arm sales, any arms sales that materially contributes to the occupation, and it won’t be removed until the end of the occupation.

They endorsed as now British legal policy and positionality two years after it happened, two years of the Starmer government ignoring it, the International Court of Justice ruling from July 2024, which designates the entirety of the occupation as being unlawful.

And there were other things there. So that’s why the immense frustration that it’s taken this long to get here, from a perspective of political strategy, we have to understand that we’ve managed to get here, and now we march on from here.

And we’ve done that because the political calculus has changed thanks to so many people. And you move on from here…

Of course, there are those who wane say, okay. Ed had his moment. Can it go away now? We’ve ticked that box. Now anyone who doesn’t come back to Labour and think we’re the greatest thing is just being churlish. Of course, there are people like that.

Now it’s everyone’s job to say, no. We’re gonna get behind showing you that we can be appreciative when you do the right thing, but you have to carry on. Don’t think you can park it here.

And that’s why I think that the goal has to be to build a head of steam behind this, show them that it lands well, but show them that they need to do more.

[Owen Jones talked of those like him who are sceptical and added:] the bit that people may have missed is the plans to place sanctions in any company that finances or facilitates settlement expansions…

Daniel Levy: Yeah. Because, as you say, when it comes to actual products, some agricultural products, some Dead Sea, you know, care products, that’s inconsequential economically, very fungible. It does place the onus on Israel to continue to adhere to rules of origin designation. This is quite boring. And one of the counterarguments, by the way, is, well, practically, you can’t do it. You absolutely can do it. The Coop have written a very detailed paper on how you can do it. It’s done elsewhere. It’s been done with Israel…

What Ed Miliband announced, as you say, was that we will take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate. So to those who finance (I’m quoting here because I think this is crucial) so to those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, you will face the full force of UK sanctions. Now translating that into reality, as you just noted, that’s where things get interesting.

That’s where you place a choice in front of, potentially, in front of the Israeli system. Are you going are you Israeli bank X? You provide loans, investments, mortgages. Without this stuff, those settlements can’t exist. And, if we want to, we can come onto it. Of course, there’s no such thing as a settler economy. Of course, it’s Israel. None of this exists without Israel, confiscating Palestinian land, displacing Palestinian people, building the infrastructure, the roads, the linking things to water, electricity, sewage, putting the army there to then protect the people you’ve illegally put there in the first place, etcetera, etcetera.

But it’s the embeddedness of the Israeli economy, of the Israeli banking system, of the Israeli finance system in all of this, which begins to create potentially very consequential choices if we go down this route. And that’s what we haven’t seen others do. That’s what we now need to see happen. …

And so the theory of change is that if Israelis begin to see there are costs and consequences, and those should go well beyond the measures announced yesterday, but those measures are very important beginning in in my reckoning if they’re implemented, The average Israelis begin to have a different incentive structure, and that that kickstarts a different conversation, inside Israel.

… And Europe is where Israel has about a quarter of its financial assets parked, Europe including The UK. And, you know, one of the benefits of not being in Europe is we don’t have to come to a consensus with the rest of the EU in order to announce yesterday’s measures. But in so doing, we can show leadership. And that kind of happened yesterday where other countries swung in behind these measures or at least some of them. So if The UK steps out, then this might lead others to follow suit.

It might increase the pressure in a place like Italy where continuing regular relations is not popular in other places. So the second part of this is it doesn’t just become The UK if we can build those coalitions and if we can show, that this is meaningful, that this is sustainable politically. And thirdly, you send the signal to Israelis that we are not normalizing your government’s criminality. If you want to elect these people or a different set of people, which essentially, don’t change the policy, then we are not going to treat that as normal, as acceptable, because it’s a violation of international law of what we stand for.

…, I don’t want to go from zero to a 100 myself in saying yesterday’s announcement leads there, we’re on the rose -petal-strewn path, and what could possibly go wrong now? There’s a heck of a lot more to do, but that’s the theory of what we’re setting in motion here…

So what we have seen is a move that itself could become consequential. …

Weakness of Miliband on Israel as a Jewish state and on BDS

… [Owen Jones was critical of certain parts of Miliband’s speech e.g] where he denounces anyone who kind of, you know, opposes Israel in its current form, essentially as a kind of what people would say as an ethnonationalist state. And, you know, I mean, a majority of Jewish Americans, according to one poll, support replacing Israel with a binational state. It’s not exactly, you know, that’s something outrageous as a …

Daniel Levy: Yeah…, I think that part of what was said will age far less well. I really think that is not going to age well. What you could do politically now is to do so within the framework of two states in that paradigm, in a paradigm which, still embraces the idea of, ethnonational state. And I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable. [T]hings are moving fast. I’m not even sure if it’s sustainable … in the life of this government.

[So, too, with Miliband’s] unnecessary pop at BDS, I think was part of keeping this within the parameters of a debate that they thought they could win and probably comes from a certain conviction in in some quarters as well. What I would say is that the analogy with anti-apartheid ANC is not entirely accurate. This is not to take away or diminish the significance in civil society of BDS and the work they’ve done.

But you do not have, and this is, your Palestinian responsibility. It’s also a highly successful Israeli and allies operation to play, divide, and rule, and divide, conquer amongst Palestinians, which is not exactly new to colonial or settler colonial projects. But what you have is the absence of a Palestinian national liberation movement with enough of a consensus, with enough of a representative, nature, with discipline politics because the PA does not endorse BDS. So you have a problem here, and it’s one that probably that side of the equation needs to be sorted out before we can win the other side of the equation.

I think if you did have whatever Palestinian equivalent of the ANC and they were saying, actually, we want equal rights, we don’t want this partition that you’ve tried to impose on us. It’s failed. It’s one state they’ve created. We thought that was how we got our rights all along. We need to see, the sanctioning being applied in ways that are more meaningful. Then I think it would be much harder to defend that position. But it’s much easier to defend when you can say, well, BDS is a civil society movement, but the position of the PLO, the PA [is different]. So just to just to point that out.

British Jews and the legacy communal institutions

Owen Jones: … the response is focused on claiming that the imposition of these sanctions is threatening the safety of Jewish Brits…The chief rabbi has said this is truly a dark day for British Jews, and says that this is amounts a little more the political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour dangerous obsession with the Jewish state. It will bolster the very extremists and they seek to target, And it will further embolden those at home and abroad who use hatred as a weapon against Jews. The Board of Deputies, the kind of official Jewish communal organisation has denounced it, so has other official Jewish British institutions. As well as that, let me just play a clip which is on BBC Radio four’s Today programme, and it features Justin Webb, who I should emphasise is not Jewish, who was interviewing Ed Milliband, who is Jewish and the son of two holocaust survivors.

Let’s just listen to this clip.

Ed Miliband: What I’m not going to do is sit by and watch the suffering of the Palestinian people, both at the West Bank and in Gaza, and stay silent or act in a way that is powerless. And I think this is the really important point, Justin, is that we have agency here. We have a view, a legal view that the occupation is unlawful. We then have a choice. We can sit on our hands. We can say, let’s just have normal economic relationships with the occupied territories, pPretend it’s not happening, or we can act. And we chose to act. And I and I think it’s not only do I think it’s the right thing to do Right. I think the vast majority of British people will also think it’s the right thing to do.

Justin Webb: Just we’ll get to the the practicalities of it in a second, but just focusing finally on on what Efraim Mirvis is saying about Jews here being less safe. You’ve made much of the fact that you yourself of Jewish heritage. I don’t know whether you’re intending to go to a synagogue this weekend as many British Jews will be, many of whom will feel less safe. What what do you say? Not to Ephraim Mirvis, but to them, to individuals. Are you going? Are you gonna be in

Ed Miliband: I I don’t go to synagogue, but look, I really Isn’t

Justin Webb: that isn’t that then the point? No. That actually, for a lot of British Jews, they really feel this. They have to have security duties at synagogues. They know that there have been violent attacks. And that is why when Ephraim Mervis uses those words, they mean an awful lot to them, and perhaps, frankly, less to you.

Ed Miliband: No. I don’t agree with that, Justin. And we all have a responsibility to call out an act on antisemitism. And I could not be clearer, I could not have been clearer yesterday, about our responsibilities as a society. Antisemitism is a scourge and an evil, whether it happens on the streets, in our schools, online or in workplaces. And I totally accept our responsibilities as a government and indeed as a society to counter antisemitism.I want Jews, I want people of all faiths and none to feel safe in our country, and we will we will pursue that with the utmost figure.

Owen Jones: Just firstly, that what Justin Webb said there about the Jewishness of Ed Miliband. That’s what he was talking about. What what’s your what’s your response to that?

Daniel Levy: Let me first go back to that point about the Chief Rabbi. He is the Chief Rabbi of the orthodox community. He carries the title of Chief Rabbi, but he is not recognized by what’s called Progressive Judaism, the reform liberal conservative. In addition to reform liberal conservative movements, he’s certainly not recognized by the ultra-orthodox, by the Haredi groups, some of whom are explicitly anti-Zionist. All of those exist as well as well as Jews who are of none of those denominations.

All of those exist in the community. His strand of orthodoxy represents perhaps a third of the British Jewish community. But he is the go to guy for extreme pro-Israel politics, and he’s not on his own. By the way, his predecessors were, I think, figures of quite some stature…

[Mirvis] has made himself relevant by basically becoming a political figure. I’ve  never heard him, you know, cover himself in, religious glory, but he’s great at going out and being political, directly political, who people should vote for. I think it’s one of and this is a subject that causes me huge pain. I think this is one of the darkest days for the Jewish community in this country to witness the response of the legacy institutions of the community to this, to basically align British Jewry… with the Israeli settlement project. For me, it doesn’t get less ethically Jewish, and it doesn’t get more stupid in terms of communal well-being than doing that. And then you have BBC Radio four, the Today program. What? Applying the synagogue attendance test to Ed Miliband? That interview, Justin Webb spent the majority of that interview quoting the rabbi at Ed, challenging his own Jewishness. I thought Ed handled himself with significant accomplishment, by the way. It was he was put in a horrible position.

And if I think about Jewish security, I understand, and I’ve been there, and I understand why they do it, that the State of Israel instrumentalises Jewish communities, whether in this country or elsewhere, to serve their own statecraft… They’d rather be having a debate about antisemitism than having a debate about their own criminality and what they’re doing to the Palestinians and their ethnonationalist state. Of course, they would.

Why anyone, let alone the hub of legacy institutions, would think it’s in the Jewish British interest to align with that, to be in lockstep with that?

Not to say, look: we’re the Jews of Britain, we can make our own calls. So, look, this is I’m I’m gonna pause here… – this is a fight for many of us to have inside the Jewish community…  You don’t have public intellectuals who’ve taken on this challenge. They’ve done an appalling job. Simon Schama has cloaked himself in troll-like garb to come out and defend Israel. And I honestly think people who are sensible humans, if you have to defend the indefensible because you insist on not applying your critical faculties to what is happening in Israel and the ideological project behind it, then you find yourself going where Sharma and others go. Okay. So we have to do a better job, those of us who don’t think like that, in demonstrating our presence, in organizing…

Tommy Robinson goes to Israel. Tommy Robinson proudly flies the Israeli flag. That’s not a threat. But Ed Miliband is?

We are in an unprecedented ethical, moral, strategic crisis in the British Jewish community, and it coincides, yes, with actual security threats given what we’ve seen at Heaton synagogue in Manchester, given what we’ve seen in Golders Green. But are the legacy communal organizations pouring fuel onto the fire, or are they helping? I think it’s quite clear where I am on that question, and we need to do better.

[Owen Jones: we should all agree that holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel is antisemitism…]

Daniel Levy I do not know where one goes from here having seen how the legacy institutional establishment and its leadership have comported themselves over the last years and the last days and on this occasion because there’s something really cynical, I think, also going on.

And, again, it takes me back to, as an act of statecraft, how Israel uses and instrumentalizes antisemitism. Sometimes it looks like you’re trying to stir it up. And I would actually say that what Miliband did … was grating to some people. But what Ed Miliband did in owning his own Jewish heritage, his Holocaust survivor family, his status as a refugee here as a consequence of that when the family came, in owning that as the prelude to the rest of the statement he made, I think he probably did more to combat antisemitism than what the collective institutional legacy groups have done …

Forever, we were told, don’t conflate Jews with Israel. And now we’re being told you can’t say we’re collectively responsible, but everything we do will be about Israel. Ah, but we’re not collectively responsible. Yes. You’re not collectively responsible, But you are responsible not for Israel, but for your own conduct and how you comport yourselves and what battles you choose to fight and how you choose to align yourself with that country when it is engaging in criminal acts. Desist from this.

And that, I think, is an intentional inversion that is designed to wrong foot people. And, you know, … I can understand why this was unleashed as a political weapon in this country by the right. How it became the, the smart thing for Jewish organizations to adopt is where this this all collapses for me.

And, again, it collapses around, having lost our identity, our sense of purpose as a community distinct from, the state of Israel. And look, Owen, there are every day, in collective ways, there are Jews in this country … who are deeply troubled by how the Jewish legacy leadership are dealing with this question.

But what has not happened yet is for that to come to the fore…The media is also not helping, all those usual things. But, yes, the onus is on us to not allow this to be, with all the obstacles in our way, for this not to be allowed to be considered the authentic or singular Jewish voice.