The Anti-Israel Zealotry of Britain’s Foreign Secretary

It takes a special kind of zealotry to look at 22 Arab states across the Middle East, all of which are authoritarian and most of which harbor jihadism, and conclude that the root of the problem is the sole stable democracy in the region.Yet that is what Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, did this week when he pushed through sanctions on Israel. The character of the man was already clear from a video released just before he announced the sanctions. Mr. Miliband vaguely accused Israel of blocking medicine from entering Gaza, causing the deaths of children.Israel flatly denied the charge. Despite my challenging the foreign secretary repeatedly to provide evidence for his claims, he remained silent. Thus the British government endorsed “baby-killer” smears, shouted against ordinary Jews around the world every day.In the speech Mr. Miliband made to Parliament unveiling the sanctions, he stressed his Jewish identity. “I would like to make a statement on Israel and Palestine. I do so as a proud British Jew,” Mr. Miliband said. “I am proud of my Jewishness … there is absolutely no contradiction between this and my support for the State of Palestine.” Mr. Miliband’s grandmother found safety in Israel after she lost her husband and 60 relatives in the Holocaust. Britain’s chief rabbi reckons that the foreign secretary has created “a dark day for British Jews.” It is ordinary Jewish people, in other words, not the “settlers,” who will feel the cost of Mr. Miliband’s posturing, which will also damage Britain’s economy and security. Then, again, Mr. Miliband has become synonymous with ideological zealotry. Before he became foreign secretary, he was energy secretary, making a name for himself by pursuing “net zero” while trashing the economy. Mr. Miliband’s energy tariffs and restrictions on oil and gas extraction damaged the labor market, absorbed vast sums of government money, offshored industry, and saddled Britons with some of the highest electricity costs in the developed world.Mr. Miliband was blinkered by his almost religious belief in green dogma. When he was moved to the Foreign Office, he turned to the same playbook. This was his sweet spot — ideology meeting politics.With a by-election approaching in Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat of Holborn and St. Pancras, where Labour is threatened by the hard-left Green Party, Mr. Miliband fast-tracked his package of sanctions to win votes.Regardless of Labour’s political advantage, Britain’s new hostility to Israel would leave the U.K. poorer, less secure, and with diminished influence overseas. Bilateral trade ran to some $8 billion last year; Mossad tip-offs have saved countless British lives; new British tanks are protected by Israeli missile shields; and one-in-seven of our medicines are produced by Teva, an Israeli pharmaceutical firm. Yet when it comes to foreign policy, Mr. Miliband has always had notoriously terrible judgment. After all, his last big call helped embolden the Kremlin. In 2013, President Bashar al-Assad gassed 1,400 of his own people in Syria. President Obama’s “red line” was the use of chemical weapons; British MPs voted on whether to support military action against the Syrian tyrant.Mr. Miliband, then Labour leader, led his party in revolt, forcing the Commons to vote against. Mr. Obama, watching his closest ally back off, shelved his own plans, proving that American red lines meant nothing.The civil war ran another decade, with Mr. Assad lasting until he was finally toppled in late 2024. Tyrants everywhere, from Tehran to Caracas, took note and sharpened their knives. President Vladimir Putin drew his own conclusions, then invaded Ukraine. Such are the consequences of placing zealotry above common sense. But then, zealotry is Mr. Miliband’s inheritance. His father, Ralph, a prominent Marxist academic, was a refugee from Nazism who thought democracy was a confidence trick played on the working class by its own ruling elite.Ralph may have been a leftist, but he was no anti-Zionist. On the eve of the Six-Day War, he fell out with fellow Marxist Marcel Liebman after supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. Those were the days when progressives could like Israel. No longer.In 2010, Mr. Miliband ran against his brother, David — a seasoned former Foreign Secretary and the runaway favorite — for the Labour leadership.David Miliband was backed by most members, but by tacking to the left and gaining a bloc of union votes, Ed Miliband won. David Miliband’s supporters felt he had ruthlessly cast his brother as a member of the Blairite establishment and mobilised the trade-union vote against him.As we have seen, Mr Miliband’s idea of “making the world a better place” has so far involved protecting the Bashar al-Assad regime, impoverishing Britain in pursuit of green dogma and emboldening antisemites by targeting his own homeland. It has also included stabbing his own brother in the back. What next?

The Anti-Israel Zealotry of Britain’s Foreign Secretary

The Anti-Israel Zealotry of Britain’s Foreign Secretary

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