A few bad actors

My parliamentary successor but two, Mark Seward MP (the constituency is now called Leeds South West and Morley) has the distinction of being an ‘Honorary Chair of Labour Friends of Israel’ and has just written an article for LabourList in which he trots out the well worn line about the ‘two state solution.’ It barely needs reiterating that the Israeli government (as a whole, not just one or two rogue rightwing ministers) is fanatically opposed to the ‘two state solution’ and is doing all within its power to make it a practical impossibility. But it suits the Israeli government to see innocent consumers of the idea to spout it around where they believe it will help tame the opposition to their rapacious policies. Netanyahu’s government has made it plain with its Jewish state law that even Arabs still living in Israel are de facto second class citizens dwelling under an apartheid regime. As for the West Bank, this has long since ceased to be a contiguous entity and violent evictions of Palestinians from their land continue at an alarming pace. Mr Seward thinks that boycotting Israel is wrong (trotting out the usual ‘what aboutery’ line which suggests e.g. BDS is more about anti-Semitism than anything else). I think if he did his research he would find that boycotts happen all the time, indeed I read only yesterday in Canada’s Globe and Mail that many Canadians are boycotting the United States (and the Canadian government stopped selling US products in state-run liquor stores). In Mr Seward’s assessment if there is any issue with Israel’s approach to the Palestinians it just comes down to a few bad actors (some of whom he approves being sanctioned). He fails to see the institutional issue. This blindness lies at the root of the problem.