“On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace, ‘ said U.K. Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said of the British measures against Israel.
Israel has announced countermeasures after British foreign secretary Ed Miliband announced on Tuesday a ban on products from Judea and Samaria.
The British Consulate in East Jerusalem will be closed, UK personnel will be removed from the Gaza coordination centre in Kiryat Gat and Britain’s programme training Palestinian Authority security forces will end.
Israel has also barred 12 British nationals from entering the country, accusing them of anti-Israel or antisemitic activity.
Miliband told Parliament on Tuesday that the United Kingdom would ban imports from Israeli “settlements,” impose more sanctions on “extremist settlers who have supported or incited acts of violence against Palestinian communities” and target companies and people involved in “settlement expansion.”
The United Kingdom plans to ban advertising “illegal settlements” in the United Kingdom and restrict exports of goods that it says “materially contribute to the occupation,” Miliband said.
“Settler terrorism is rampant,” Miliband said. “The U.N. reports an average of six violent settler attacks against Palestinians per day this year, the highest on record.”
“The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists,” he said. “All too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.”
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters at U.N. headquarters, that the ‘’so-called sanctions” that Miliband announced are “shameful” and “not helpful.
“We’re an independent country, a sovereign country,” Danon said.
He said he “met with the U.K. ambassador when she came in.” ‘’Don’t expect to dictate your ideas on us,” he told her. “You know, the British Mandate of Palestine is over.”
U.K. Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis spoke of a ‘’truly ark day for British Jews.’’ “Today our Government has chosen to ignore the deep concerns expressed by so many of us. “The measures announced amount to little more than political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour a dangerous obsession with the Jewish State. These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target.’’
He added: “On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace. Nor do they make anyone safer – quite the contrary. “Gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel, and the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.”