Comments

Andy Burnham says political leaders must take clear positions quickly. He has certainly found time to take one on Gaza. First came the pre-recorded apology for Labour’s response to the war. Then came yesterday’s conversation with Gary Lineker, released through Lineker’s production company, in which Burnham again presented himself as the man prepared to say what his party supposedly previously lacked the courage to say.

Burnham appears to have calculated that the gullible or malicious parts of his party and the electorate must be placated

His choice of interlocutor tells us almost as much as the answers. Lineker, a former footballer and presenter whose interventions on Israel have hardly established him as a searching authority on Middle Eastern affairs, left the BBC after sharing a post about Zionism illustrated with the image of a rat, imagery with an obvious and repellent history. His apology was rejected by leading Jewish representatives as belated and inadequate. Burnham nevertheless decided that this was the setting in which to discuss Gaza, international law and Britain’s future policy towards Israel.Burnham could spend almost seven weeks in Downing Street without facing MPs, Prime Minister’s Questions or an Urgent Question. Against that background, an agreeable exchange with Lineker looks weak and calculating.Burnham’s weird Gaza statement video last week deserved interrogation. He accused Israel of violating the ceasefire, expanding the territory it controls and allowing too little aid into Gaza. He spoke of increasing evidence that war crimes may have been committed. He backed further sanctions and restrictions on trade. He apologised for Labour’s supposedly inadequate initial response, meaning its response in the immediate aftermath of the massacre of 7 October.But what of the Palestinians? He barely mentioned them, beyond painting them as helpless, without agency, almost child-like. Yet Hamas has repeatedly violated the ceasefire terms with attacks and also by refusing to disarm – a key commitment it agreed to in order to achieve the ceasefire. The savage Palestinian attempts to expand their territory on October 7th were apparently not worth describing in those terms.When Burnham spoke about food failing to reach civilians, he directed the accusation towards Israel, completely ignoring Hamas’s role. For him, it’s simple: Israel acts, Palestinians suffer, judgement begins with the Israeli response and its inaccurate representation by a credulous and dishonest media. The massacre, the hostages, the tunnels, the armed men inside civilian institutions and the systematic diversion of aid, all become marginal details.This selective account has shaped a large part of the Western argument since October 2023, to the extent that this man – who almost nobody even elected to be an MP, let alone our prime minister – now seems to think the most important topic for him to keep revisiting even before he takes office is how dreadful Israel has been in its defensive actions following a horrific invasion of its territory.If Burnham really took an interest in these things, he’d have known that only three days before his interview the UN’s own deputy coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Dr Ramiz Alakbarov, reported that Hamas forces had stormed a food distribution point in Jabalia, raided a World Food Programme warehouse and assaulted two aid-truck drivers. Alakbarov described this as an ‘increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction’, but Mr Burnham nevertheless spoke of ‘too little aid getting in’ as though Israel alone stands between food and civilians. He had available to him a current UN account of Hamas physically obstructing aid, but he chose to leave it out.A sizeable portion of the electorate has been trained to consume the war in precisely this form. It is lied to through omission, repetition and moral simplification. Many of its loudest activists then carry those distortions back into British politics, presenting them as established truth and demanding ritual declarations from anyone seeking office. Andy obliged.Meanwhile, assertions once dismissed as Israeli propaganda by the ‘free Palestine’ left have steadily been corroborated by Hamas’s own notices, captured evidence, United Nations statements and open-source material. The corrections, though, rarely travel as far as the original accusation, if they are even made at all.Endless reports that Israel was targeting journalists in Gaza prompted outrage from broadcasters, politicians and press-freedom groups. Israel’s explanation, that a significant number of those presented simply as reporters were also Hamas operatives using journalistic cover to support terrorist activity, was largely brushed aside. Then the Palestinian obituaries began to appear, praising the same men as martyrs and recording their formal ranks, command posts and operational roles within Hamas. Oh well.Compilations of Hamas martyr posters and related organisational material have similarly revealed these dual roles for individuals publicly described as nurses or clinical staff, who were also identified as commanders or operatives within Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Separate Hamas material has documented the recruitment and deployment of minors, who Palestinian terrorists have long used to fight – a war crime itself in both international and non-international armed conflicts, under the Rome Statute.Burnham appears to have calculated that the gullible or malicious parts of his party and the electorate must be placated. He may believe that apologising for Labour’s earlier caution, punishing Israel more aggressively and performing moral anguish over Gaza will recover Muslim voters and quiet the party’s extreme left. Even that cold political calculation is probably mistaken. Activist movements built around escalating demands rarely reward partial compliance. Starmer’s reward of recognising ‘statehood’ following the Palestinian massacre of Israelis didn’t help him survive in office. And Burnham declined to accuse Israel of genocide – though he let Lineker use the word with no challenge – prompting the Greens and the harder left to immediately complain that he had failed their test. Faced with a hungry crocodile, he has decided to feed it a banana.British Jews, meanwhile, are being shown where they stand. Some years back, Burnham once suggested that his first foreign trip as Labour leader would be to Israel, a gesture of solidarity with the Jewish state and with British Jews who feel connected to it. His has now moved with the political weather. That raises a larger question about him. Which of his convictions will survive outside pressure? Which promises will endure once another faction becomes louder?Finally, his claim that Benjamin Netanyahu has made a two-state solution impossible also avoids the event that truly transformed Israeli politics and public opinion. On 7 October, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists crossed the border, murdered families, raped, kidnapped and carried hostages into Gaza, to torture, deliberately starve and kill many of them there. Any serious account of the collapse of the two-state fantasy has to confront what that assault did to it. Burnham speaks as though the obstacle were located almost entirely in Jerusalem, not in the repeated, rehearsed and preferred actions of the Palestinians.Britain under Burnham therefore looks set to deepen its irrelevance in the Middle East: another round of sanctions, rebukes, solemn statements and theatrical concern, all delivered from the safety of London (or maybe Manchester). An authentic ally would provide support, exert leverage on Palestinian politicians including Hamas and its sponsors, and confront the Arab and international forces prolonging Palestinian misery. Burnham seems ready for something easier: more political and verbal attacks on Israel, accompanied by the familiar pretence that concern amounts to action.