Let’s be clear: we are suffering from a crisis of courage. A number of British MPs, no doubt jostling for the moral high ground in an increasingly unanchored political theater, have written to the prime minister, urging him to recognize the State of Palestine.
Now, one might admire the symmetry of the sentiment, if not its timing. The ink has barely dried on intelligence briefings detailing how agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps plotted to attack Israeli targets on British soil. Hamas flags have been paraded within a stone’s throw of synagogues. British Jews have been assaulted for wearing Stars of David, their children intimidated, and their places of worship defaced.
And yet, as these shadows lengthen over the Diaspora, we are told by the self-appointed architects of “balance” that the time has come for Britain to extend the laurels of sovereignty to a regime, or regimes, that cannot even recognize their own culpability, let alone Israel’s legitimacy.
Let’s call this what it is: not compromise, but capitulation. Not diplomacy, but dereliction.
We are urged to believe – sweetly, naively, as children might believe in the tooth fairy – that recognizing a fragmented, terror-glorifying, rejectionist, pseudo-state will “send the right message.”
Yes, it will: to Tehran, to Gaza, to the basements of Brussels, to the salafist mosques of Luton and Tower Hamlets. It will say, “Keep going. Britain rewards persistence. Britain rewards pressure. Britain rewards blood.”
I write today not as an analyst or even a director of Britain’s leading advocacy group for Israel, but as a woman scandalized by moral cowardice parading in the finery of statesmanship.
These MPs speak of a two-state solution as if it were a sacred chalice stolen from the altar of peace. But there is nothing remotely sacred about extending statehood to an entity whose leading factions lionize the murder of civilians, whose educational materials teach that Jews are pigs, and whose internal politics are governed less by the ballot than by the bullet.
Let us not be deceived by the fiction that these calls are benign. That they are about “restoring balance.” Because radicalism does not stop at one appointed target. Today, it is the Jews. Tomorrow, it will be the Christians. The Hindus. The LGBTQ+ community. The unveiled woman. The opinionated student. The journalist. The teacher. The father who says “no.”
The character of radicals
RADICALS ARE not known for nuance. They do not discriminate in their hatreds. When the knife is unsheathed, it does not ask about the victim’s politics. The bullet fired from a tunnel in Gaza or from a terrorist’s weapon in Vienna does not pause mid-air to consider intersectionality.
These MPs have, in fact, offered the illusion of compassion to those who, given the chance, would tear down every institution that grants them the very right to speak so sanctimoniously. It is not peace they advocate but appeasement. And appeasement is not virtue. Appeasement is cowardice dressed as reason.
The Torah, that ancient moral compass too often ignored by those keen to moralize at Israel’s expense, reminds us: “Do not pervert justice by showing partiality to the poor or by favoring the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Leviticus 19:15). And again, “Do not stand idly by while your neighbor’s blood is shed” (Leviticus 19:16).
No verse says, “Turn a blind eye to murder if the murderer has a grievance.” Nor is there a commandment that reads, “Reward the violent, lest you be seen as unkind.”
In fact, the tradition is far clearer on the inverse: “He who is kind to the cruel, ends up being cruel to the kind.” Compassion for the guilty, when exercised at the expense of the innocent, is not compassion at all. It is treachery dressed in virtue’s robes.
So I ask those who have signed this missive to the prime minister: Which part of the innocent are you defending? The kidnapped Israeli child in a tunnel? The Jewish teenager too afraid to wear a Star of David on the streets of Manchester? The family hiding behind CCTV and mezuzahs that must be glued on with trembling hands?
Or are you now content to let the pendulum swing so far toward performative parity that you’ll leave those communities to the wolves?
The answer is clear. Recognition now – before peace, before disarmament, before even a basic reckoning with reality – is not a gesture of hope. It is a dog whistle to the very radicals you claim to stand against. It will not protect the innocent. It will not strengthen the West. It will not quiet the storm. It will feed it.
To recognize a Palestinian state today, under these conditions, is not only premature. It is grotesque. It is to enshrine terror. It emboldens those who hate and betrays those we claim to protect.
So I say to those who still possess a spine in this Parliament: speak now. Refuse this moral betrayal. Defend those whose voices are growing fainter under the din of ideological theatrics. If you remain silent, the time will come when there is no one left to speak – not for the Jews, not for the vulnerable, not even for you.
The writer is the executive director of We Believe In Israel.