Miliband Tells Labour Conference Palestinian Campaigners ‘Were Right’

LIVERPOOL (VINnews) — British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Labour Party conference delegates Monday that people outraged by the suffering of Palestinians “were right,” drawing some of the loudest applause of his speech as the government defended a harder line toward Israel.​

“I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: We hear you. You were right,” Miliband said.​

He described the hardship inflicted in Gaza and the West Bank under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as “a stain on the conscience of the world,” while saying Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre “cannot justify” that suffering. He also said Britain’s argument was “not with the people of Israel but with the actions of its government.”​

Miliband, who is Jewish and has previously spoken of family members murdered in the Holocaust and relatives who found refuge in Israel, framed the remarks as part of a “reset” under Prime Minister Andy Burnham. He said the government now “call[s] out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” cites “evidence of war crimes in Gaza,” and treats Israel’s presence in the West Bank as an “illegal occupation.”​

The speech followed Britain’s Sept. 8 announcement that it regards the occupation as unlawful and will ban imports of goods from West Bank settlements, while targeting finance and construction tied to settlement expansion. London has said the measures are aimed at settlements, not at Israel inside the pre-1967 lines, and that it still supports a two-state outcome: “a secure Israel and a secure Palestine.”​

Israel has sharply rejected the policy. After the sanctions were announced, Jerusalem closed Britain’s consulate in Jerusalem, restricted some British activity connected to Gaza coordination and barred a group of British officials. Israeli officials have accused London of damaging a long-standing alliance and of ignoring Palestinian terrorism. Some British Jewish communal leaders also opposed the settlement measures, warning they could blur the line between criticism of Israeli policy and hostility toward Jews.​

Miliband has rejected that charge. In earlier statements he called himself a “proud British Jew,” said questioning Israel’s right to exist is wrong, and described blaming British Jews for Israeli government decisions as antisemitism. A year after Britain recognized a Palestinian state, he has argued the two-state formula is being eroded by facts on the ground, including settlement expansion.​

Delegates in Liverpool cheered the Middle East passage more loudly than other parts of the address, which also called for a “stronger, deeper partnership” with the European Union. The remarks mark one of the clearest public validations yet of intra-party pressure that accused the previous Labour leadership of moving too slowly on Gaza and the Judea-Samaria Region.