My Word: Sanctions and silver screen slanders - opinion

I think of it as a blast from the past. Ahead of Yom Kippur, which starts on Sunday night, I was reminded of the British Mandate period when the authorities, fearing Arab protests, banned the sounding of the shofar at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. 

British cowardice was met with Jewish courage, and every year a ram’s horn was smuggled to the holy site and the traditional blast of the shofar was sounded at the end of the Neilah prayers, although it usually resulted in the arrest of the person brave enough to blow it.

The Old City, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall, fell under Jordanian control during the War of Independence in 1948; but in the 1967 Six Day War, it was liberated, and Jerusalem was reunited. Both wars, it should be noted, were attempts by the Arab world to eliminate the Jewish state and predate “settlements.”

The “settlements,” now labeled an “obstacle to peace,” were a result of the war, not the cause. It was the Jewish presence anywhere “between the river and the sea” that the Arab world objected to. Many of today’s “settlements” are in fact communities where Jews lived until forced out by war or massacres, including Hebron, Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Etzion bloc.

Fast forward to September 2026, and British authorities again seem intent on silencing the Jews and harming their rights in their historic homeland. Last week, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced future sanctions on products from the “settlements,” including Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Jerusalem.

Miliband made much of being a Jew himself. It’s easy to recognize the type: it’s the “wicked son” from the Passover Haggadah, the one who excludes himself from being part of the community celebrating the Exodus from Egypt.

The British move was joined by a chorus of “useful idiots,” France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. It remains to be seen what it means in practical terms, but it obviously was not intended to be favorable to Israel.

The timing was particularly significant. Coming ahead of the Israeli elections next month, the UK, under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, could have waited to see who leads the new government before taking action against the current one.

Sanctions might have boosted Israel's Right

The threat of sanctions to be implemented in the future seems more an attempt to influence voters. It might backfire. Miliband might have inadvertently boosted the Israeli Right.

Acts like this certainly don’t bring peace closer – on the contrary, it encourages Palestinian terrorism and could be devastating for the Palestinians employed in boycotted factories and workplaces, where they work alongside Jews.

Framing the move as a necessary response to “settler violence” is disingenuous at best. Where is the similar boycott on Turkey (holding Northern Cyprus) or China (holding Tibet and eyeing Taiwan)? Or any of the other scores of countries involved in territorial disputes? Where is the action against other countries where there are localized acts of despicable violence? Should the Israeli government act against every foul incident of anti-immigrant violence taking place around the globe, let alone acts of antisemitism?

This is a de facto boycott of Israel, the Jewish state. It is also an attempt to redirect attention away from the real violence – the invasion on October 7, 2023, and subsequent missile attacks from seven fronts. It’s easier for the UK government to resort to its standard policy of sanctioning Israel than to take real and meaningful action against Iran and its evil axis, which still launches rockets across the Gulf states while viciously repressing reformists at home.

The revival of the “two-state solution” mantra is a numbingly naive reward for terrorism. More than half a million Jews live in Judea and Samaria, and more than 300,000 live in “East Jerusalem.” Are they to be ethnically cleansed in the name of peace? If the Palestinians can’t tolerate living with Jews among them, how will there be a peaceful state alongside them?

In the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion and mega-atrocity, 1,200 were murdered, 251 abducted, and thousands wounded. It took place 18 years after the entire Jewish community was removed from Gaza. The terrorists who proudly filmed themselves as they raped, murdered, and rampaged their way through pastoral communities and small towns in southern Israel referred to their victims as “settlers.”

This is the lesson of October 7 – the terrorists did not attack because of an Israeli presence in Gaza, but because the absence of an Israeli presence emboldened and enabled them.

While the succession of British Labour governments have announced a series of sanctions against Israel, the Palestinians are being allowed to literally get away with murder – the Palestinian Authority’s “Pay-for-slay” policy actually rewards imprisoned terrorists and their families for killing Jews.

One meme doing the rounds on social media shows Burnham calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clarify: “We still need the defense systems, life-saving drugs, navigation aids, intelligence-sharing, irrigation advances, and communications technology. It’s just the avocados, dates, and tomatoes that we want to cancel.”

If it were a laughing matter, the joke would be on the UK.

Of the various Israeli responses being considered, the most appropriate was long overdue: closing the British consulate in Jerusalem. Absurdly, the consulate served only Palestinians (apartheid, anyone?) while Israeli Jews used the embassy in Tel Aviv.

Even after the UK last September declared its recognition of a “State of Palestine” (borders unknown), it didn’t set up consular offices in Ramallah to serve it. In effect, the consulate in Jerusalem served as its embassy to the Palestinian Authority. Even more preposterously, the UK and other countries funding UNRWA are ostensibly saying that the Palestinians are refugees in their own state.

It’s possible that the sanctions declaration was intended to be mainly symbolic; the question is, symbolic of what? The answer is the decline of Britain rather than the end of Israel.

I might boycott the movie NAZA, which received a record-breaking almost 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival last weekend and won the Special Jury Award. Who stands for nearly half an hour clapping for a movie? Someone who is entirely consumed by the subject – or someone too scared to publicly say “Enough is enough” after the first few minutes of applause. (Stalin sends regards.)

Produced by the Guardian, the title is the Hebrew acronym for “Collateral damage,” “nezek agavi,” but there’s no need to spell out why filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor chose to keep the Hebrew term, which just happens to look like a certain German word, instead of the English CDE (Collateral Damage Estimation).

The movie isn’t about targeted killings; it’s about the character assassination of Israel and the IDF.

Israelis and Jews are no strangers to blood libels, including movies purporting to be objective documentaries. Israeli Arab filmmaker Mohammed Bakri’s Jenin, Jenin springs to mind. Incidentally, the cinema culture that once flourished in Gaza ended when Israel pulled out, and Hamas took over.

As KAN 11 reporters noted, there’s a certain irony in focusing on “collateral damage” to try to strengthen allegations of genocide and deliberate mass killings. But Abraham and Szor must have realized they had a winning formula – attacking Israel without context – after their movie No Other Land, made with two Palestinian directors, won an Oscar last year.

NAZA’s interviewees hid behind the protection of anonymity, and there is no way to check their claims, real positions, and what level of knowledge they had – the greater picture rather than the cinema sound bite.

The interviewees could be arrested abroad for “war crimes,” by the way, for having served in the IDF. Israeli filmmakers critical of the government, including Nadav Lapid, who made Ahed’s Knee, have ended up suffering from the sanctions they themselves helped promote.

IDF Chief-of-Staff Eyal Zamir has asked to see NAZA, to take measures if any verified claims require it. The IDF is also looking into this as a possible intelligence leak, where modes of operation might have been revealed.

No other military makes such an effort to evacuate civilians before an operation. Hamas’s strategy is to operate among civilians, and in tunnels under homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques, thereby endangering the local population.

October 7 wasn’t collateral damage; it was genocide – against Jews. Fighting terrorism is never easy, but it’s even harder when terrorists are encouraged by international applause.