A Paradoxical Prejudice

In September 2023, news of the Sycamore Gap Tree’s felling echoed around headlines, seemingly putting an end to the question “if a tree falls, and there is no-one to hear it, does it make a sound?” The answer, at least according to the BBC, would be an unequivocal “yes”. Listening to the cries of outrage up and down the country, the BBC recorded how the tree's destruction was met with an “outpouring of anger and astonishment”. 

I wish this was an article about tree chopping. 

It would be far easier to write. 

Instead, the news that the government has sanctioned Israel’s access to military hardware is currently reverberating around the 24-hours news cycle. Though the UK supplies only a fifth of a percentage point of Israel’s weaponry, what the suspension of (less than 10% of) arms export licences lacks in material consequence, it more than compensates for with its geopolitical significance. Indeed, the Government’s rhetoric around suspending the licences raises an uncomfortable advance on the question posed at the start of this article: has a fallen tree made a sound, if no-one present cares to listen?

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the government’s deliberately obdurate decision is so disconcerting because the sanction illuminates the prejudice militating against Israel within government policy.

Three key paradoxes, at the heart of this prejudice, demonstrate an unwillingness of the incumbent government to listen.

The first contradiction reveals the seeming inability of the government to understand the impossibly precarious position Israel finds itself in. On the one hand, the suspension is framed as a logical response to British arms being used for 'internal repression or international aggression,' a view endorsed by the Foreign Secretary as a 'sober assessment” designed to mitigate the ‘clear risk’ of international law being violated. Yet the gulf between the theoretical basis for the government’s sanction and the practical, real-world conditions facing Israel is contradictory: how can Israel be an aggressor fighting an enemy whom the Foreign Secretary has acknowledged is bent on the “annihilation” of the State, as evidenced by October 7?

Separate, but closely linked, the second paradox reveals a readiness to censure Israel at every turn of this all-too-horrific conflict. On the one hand, Lammy’s decision was borne from “concern at the horrifying scenes in Gaza”, which compelled the foreign secretary to act “immediately” to suspend the arms licences. According to Lammy, “Israel’s actions in Gaza continue to lead to immense loss of civilian life…and immense suffering”. On the other hand, Lammy goes on to state that Israel is “fighting an enemy in Hamas whose appalling tactics endanger countless civilian lives”. This subsequent caveat, which is by no means a novel observation, undermines Lammy’s reasoning for imposing a partial arms embargo. Indeed, he goes further and states that “it has not been possible to reach a determinative conclusion on [such] allegations” of “serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Clearly, Lammy’s logic is faulty. Whilst Palestinian suffering is undeniable, the Foreign Secretary’s “talk”, empathising with Israel’s position, comes across as a genuflection, a meaningless piety, whilst his “walk” punishes Israel for the very enemy they are fighting. Whilst I could mention countless examples of Hamas inflicting suffering on the Gazan population, whether by frequently hijacking aid deliveries or embedding military installations within civilian infrastructure, such examples fall on unreceptive ears.

The final paradox is revealed by a closer examination of the suspended licences themselves. According to Lammy, licences for components of “military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters and drones, as well as items that facilitate ground targeting” are under sanction. On the one hand, Lammy rather confusingly obfuscates that “there is a clear risk” that they “might be used” to violate international law. On the other hand, Lammy, playing up his credentials as a “liberal, progressive Zionist” celebrates Israel’s “right both to exist and to defend itself”. Whilst I could elaborate further on what paradox two reveals of the nature of Hamas’s tactics, in modern warfare, the utility of helicopters and drones cannot be understated. Indeed, on October 7th, the 161 Squadron of the IAF used 450 Zik drones, constructed with the aid of British components, to both gather aerial intelligence at the Battle of Re’im and defend the Kibbutzim in the Gaza enclave from Hamas. 

This slew of contradictions are as terrifying as they are revealing. The aim of this article is not to suggest that Israel has acted without error or that Palestinian civilians are not suffering. Instead, the aim of this article was to examine not just the effect of, but the paradoxical causes of the partial arms embargo. The contradictions in Lammy’s reasoning answers the question: people present do not guarantee that the fallen tree has been heard. The cries of Israel for international support, the return of the hostages and solidarity with other democracies has started to fall on deaf ears.

By Arieh Ben Moshe