The Labour government’s censuring of the far-right Israeli ministers doesn’t stop the UK’s aid for Israel’s war, but is a victory for the Palestine movement, argues Zahid Rahman

Gaza has faced a war of annihilation for the last twenty months. More than six Hiroshima bombs’ worth of ordnance has been dropped on Gaza, a territory barely bigger than east London. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, nearly every hospital and school has been destroyed or severely damaged, and Gazans are still being starved behind the cover of humanitarianism.

On 10 June, foreign secretary David Lammy took the ‘concrete actions’ he had threatened, and sanctioned two members of the Israeli government: finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and the national-security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The two Israeli ministers, both illegal settlers in the West Bank, are notorious for their unashamedly vile rhetoric that they spout to their equally bigoted following within Israel. The sanctions include travel restrictions, asset freezes, and prohibit any UK-based financial dealings with them. These sanctions have been coordinated with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.

Hamish Falconer, the minister for the Middle East and North Africa, who is constantly wheeled out to take the onerous questions on behalf of the government, claims the sanctions are in place due to Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s ‘incitement’ of violence that has caused the ‘deaths of Palestinian civilians’ and ‘displacement of whole towns and villages’ in the West Bank. The killings and displacements Falconer mentioned have been happening in the West Bank since 1967. It seems astounding that the Foreign Office suddenly now cares about West Bank residents exactly 58 years after the Six Day War. The narrative about settler violence is part of the wider, passive narrative used by the government. It frames the settlers as a fringe of Israeli society incited by a few bigoted leaders. This framing of settler violence ignores the complacency, protection and participation of the IDF and the Israeli state in the creation of the context in which settlers carry out their violence.

The measures taken by the British Labour government are inadequate. The leniency in putting these sanctions on only two individuals is grotesquely disproportionate to the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir may not be able to ride the London Eye any time soon, but Britain still enables the mass murder of Palestinians. The F-35 multirole jets have been a central part of Israel’s air campaign in Gaza; Britain still supplies the spare parts necessary to operate them. That’s not even mentioning the almost daily spy flights the RAF conducts over Gaza from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, as reported by Declassified UK. The government has yet to take any action on those whatsoever.

Nonetheless, the government’s narrow move signals a significant shift within political circles. Israel’s genocidal actions are becoming impossible to defend, forcing the establishment to retreat from earlier positions based on Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’. This phenomenon is also present in the UK media with countless editorial and opinion pieces condemning Israel’s war crimes. This is a sign that the argument is being won.

The colossal and consistent demonstrations that have drawn hundreds of thousands of people from all backgrounds have played a major part in the government’s shift in stance. The political demands of the demonstrators haven’t changed but the government has been forced to change position. The sanctioning of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, although insignificant in real terms, is a major political victory for the movement; marking a key turning point in the breakdown of UK-Israeli relations. In October 2023, the then leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, told national radio that ‘Israel does have that right’ on the question of a blockade of Gaza, and then the Labour Party attempted to gaslight the public by claiming that was not what Starmer meant; the Labour government’s current line (in June 2025) is that the blockade is ‘intolerable’.

This is why the mobilisations for Palestine have to continue. The British political class have shown little evidence of ethical concern in response to the genocide. An appeal to a non-existent moral consciousness within Starmer, Lammy or any other minister is fruitless. The demonstrations have to continue to push the government to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on the apartheid state.

No matter how radical the government makes its sanctions sound, they are merely a slap on the wrist for Israel’s heinous actions. After over a year and a half of backing Israel’s carnage in Gaza, the consensus within the political establishment has begun to crack. This new announcement comes after one of the largest sustained movements based on mass mobilisations in British political history; a campaign that continues to bring hundreds of thousands to the streets of London in support of the Palestinians.