Ed Miliband calls out Israel’s illegal settlements

0:00Best thing that's ever happened to you financially, go. Easy! Sold my car on Carvana! Amazing offer! Really? I hit 200 on the scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No. How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once. Okay, that's fair. It's like the lottery except you always win. Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly! Inexplicably good. Offer's worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana. Think of these may apply. This is a global production. I don't think you'll hear better callers to a conversation about the sanctions introduced on illegal Israeli settlements than the ones you are about to hear, Edmila Band. Describing the UK has been ready to call out the settlement, the illegal settlement activity in the West Bank before it was too late. Only time will tell whether that last bit is correct. And the importance of separating Israel from Judaism

1:02or Jewishness is often referenced by defenders of Israel who then, in my experience, very quickly go on to do it themselves. How do we deal with that? How do you react to this news? That the United Kingdom is imposing sanctions on illegally occupied territories in the West Bank because of the actions of what are foreign secretary Edmila Band chose to describe as Israeli settler terrorists. And already the first problem appears. Well, not the first problem. The first, what word would you use? The first punctuation mark in my own thinking, do I mention that Edmila Band is the son of a Holocaust survivor? Do I mention that Edmila Band is Jewish? Does it matter? Because I have spent a long time being told that it is borderline evil to conflate Israel with Judaism and therefore to bring Judaism into any element of this conversation is wrong.

2:03I think it is awful to conflate Israel with Judaism but the people who seem to do it the most are people like Benjamin Netanyahu and yesterday the chief Rabbi. I don't know. Is a short answer to the question that's forming in my mind? Should I mention it? Edmila Band did. I think so. That is his prerogative. That is his right. I've already heard people try to argue that because he doesn't go to synagogue every week, he's somehow not fully Jewish, which I mean, if you've got even a cursory understanding of the Holocaust is a position to adopt or a point to argue so fundamentally stupid and sick that I frankly can't believe people can do so and breathe at the same time. I can't believe that they're intellectually capable of walking and talking simultaneously to argue that because he doesn't practice, he must somehow be detached from the horrors or not fully invested in the historic plight of Jews or the current situation in Israel. Here is Edmila Band in the House of Commons yesterday. I'm proud of my Jewishness

3:04and I'm wavering in my support for the state of Israel and there is absolutely no contradiction between this and my support for the state of Palestine. Yes! Indeed, quite the opposite. The two-state solution is based on an explicit belief that the only route to security for both peoples is to live side by side in peaceful coexistence with freedom, security and self-determination. It's pretty uncontroversial, right? Here is the, while he'll describe himself, is the Conservative MP Edward Lee, a little later in Parliament yesterday? What is happening in the West Bank is absolutely violent and egregious. It is worse than stopping the two-state solution. It is ethnic cleansing. So will he agree that actually the Israeli government could quite easily differentiate between general trade and trade to these illegal settlements? Would he agree that there's no reason when our country fully supports the right of Israel to defend itself that this should affect

4:06our intelligence relationship? So I say to him now, I am proud to say as the longest serving member of the Conservative Friends of Israel that I absolutely and fully support what he is doing today. Because it is about standing up for freedom, for morality and justice of all people in this world. So freedom, morality and justice are generally considered to be quite good things. Not, I concede by everybody. And they are essentially principles. It reminded me of the late Robin Cook actually, elements of that speech will be that they sat on very different sides of the House of Commons, because what we're seeing at Miliband in Act, in his own mind and in mind, is an ethical foreign policy. So immediately, the idea that, well, it's not going to make any difference or it's going to damage this or it might undo that, becomes pointless. Symbols are really important to human beings. The idea that something is merely symbolic is ridiculous. What do you think religious festivals are?

5:07The symbolism here is, up with this, we shall not put anymore. So of course, the criticism that it has come to late is probably valid, but I think probably diffused by the old adage better late than never. So I played you those two clips, because Miliband is a Labour foreign secretary and the son of a Holocaust survivor who found shelter in Israel. I speak of his mother, his late mother, whereas Edward Lee is the longest serving member of the conservative friends of Israel. And I play them to you because on the program yesterday, it was the son of a rabbi. Described his university experiences as his first exposure to left wing people, as if having problems with the conduct of Israel in the Middle East was a left wing position. And we reflected on that together for a moment. And the fact that so many of the great left wing thinkers of the 20th century from Karl Marx to, I know he's sort of blotted his copy books somewhat subsequently, but from Karl Marx

6:07to Noam Chomsky, you know, left wing thinkers. In the United Kingdom, it would be on Ralph Miliband, actually. And so you know, you have this extraordinary, what would you describe it as? A movement in rhetoric, as Israel became more aggressive and really peaking under Benjamin Netanyahu, the support of the right wing became much, much greater than the support of the so-called left wing. And I don't know that I either understand that or buy the narrative that we've all sort of subscribed to, and Edward Lee reminded me of that. I mean, unless your right wingness is so ignorant and so shallow, that it just means you support power, whatever power is doing. If you're looking at oppression, then you support the oppressor, rather than the oppressed. And yeah, okay, you've got a right wing left wing divide here. But Edward Lee's words, possibly for the very first time ever, are really resonated with me. Two heads, you could say, the two heads. And that's why I think an awful lot of the analysis

7:08and response is both deeply mistaken and quite dangerous. You are going to be accused or certain people, including the chief rabbi and the board of deputies of British Jews are going to argue that this is fueling anti-Semitism. But not that, for example, ethnic cleansing or genocide would fuel anti-Semitism. I mean, it's becoming an accusation that is applied whatever anybody does in the context of Israel, except stay silent or agree and applaud. If you say anything, if you say, please stop killing people, you're being anti-Semitic. Or indeed, you're fueling anti-Semitism by pointing it out. I get that in the inbox, you know. I can't believe you're covering this. You are encouraging Jew hate by describing what Israel is doing, by reading out death tolls, by reflecting upon atrocities, by describing ethnic cleansing, by sharing what the plurality of genocide scholars have described as genocide, what human rights organizations in Israel and beyond have been describing as genocide now for a long time.

8:10And by simply telling the truth about those things, you get accused of encouraging Jew hate. And it's a horrible thing to be accused of, but you've got to be big enough to understand whether it's true or not. And imagine any other context in which telling the truth would see people seeking to silence you for bringing, for theoretically bringing negativity down upon them. So separating Israel from Jewishness is a task that we should all be committed to. Every single one of us who's interested in peace or harmony should be absolutely dedicated to pointing out that the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu's regime are in no way the actions of or supported by every Jew in the world, let alone every Jew in Israel or every Jew in the UK. And yet who is it that constantly tells us that by criticizing the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his regime, you are encouraging Jew hate, it's Israelis.

9:11It's Benjamin Netanyahu, it's, they're spokespeople, he's spokespeople in this country. It doesn't make sense. And you get a little bit frightened sometimes of pointing out how little sense it makes because it's such a hefty accusation to have leveled out you. I don't expect any sympathy for that. I'm just pointing out that it's really difficult to tell the truth sometimes. And it's been made incredibly difficult, very, very deliberately. So these sanctions are ethical. These sanctions, as Edward Lee the father of the house just said, speak to freedom, morality and justice. The question of whether or not they achieve much or whether or not they have negative side effects is absolutely irrelevant. I don't care how many big cajunas you bring on to your program to explain that it's gonna do this or it's gonna do that in terms of economic impact. It's irrelevant. It's, this is literally diplomacy. This is literally international relations. This is literally saying to an ally, although they haven't behaved like allies of the United Kingdom recently. And they certainly didn't when they supported General Galtieri

10:13during the Falklands War. But you are saying to an ally, we cannot tolerate this any longer, please stop. And they respond by accusing you of lying when you're telling the truth. And the question that we started asking not long after the October the 7th or atrocities terrorist attacks was why won't they let journalists in? Why won't they let journalists in? And we know the answer, we'd know the answer for years because the truth is the enemy of the oppressor. You let the journalists in, then the dog sees the rabbit, the people see the truth and they can't have that. So we don't let the journalists in. And you remember for ages you were entitled to question the casualty rates or the death toll because it was the Hamas controlled health ministry. And then very quietly a year or two later, the Israeli regime conceded that the death toll was accurate. It wasn't being manipulated or inflated by Hamas, the people who would message me on an almost daily basis to say, I can't believe you're repeating Hamas propaganda went suddenly silent.

11:14Here is a question that everybody should reflect on. I've begun with the first, which is that if you are truly interested in peace and harmony, then you have to absolutely detach the Israeli regime from Judaism. You have to absolutely come down on anybody who claims that a criticism of Israel is an attack upon Jews. That's hideous rhetoric. And the second you do the same for anti-Samites as well, the idea that you get to attack all Jews because of what Benjamin Netanyahu has done is disgusting. It's mad, isn't it, that three things can be true at the same time? Anti-Semitism is absolutely disgusting. And so is ethnic cleansing. So if the people doing the ethnic cleansing happen to be Jewish, then anti-Semitism is still disgusting. And so is ethnic cleansing. It's not difficult to sustain these two positions in your mind if you bother to think for 10 minutes or if you're free from some of the historic shackles that I have enormous sympathy for that inform your view of the world because Israel is the place that you go to when it starts happening again.

12:15And the second thing is, I've had, I think, two occasions. It made me more, but I've been doing this job for a very long time. And very, very rarely do I find myself thinking, I'm not sure I want to go on air today. I just want to sit with the horror for a while before I actually have to offer up views and opinions on it. I know that I felt that way after the Manchester arena terrorist attack at the Ariana Grande concert because my children were of an age when they were going to a lot of concerts and I couldn't separate the personal from the professional. But we got through it, you helped me through it. After the October, the seventh terror attacks, the feeling was similar. It was as if the carnage was so great that I didn't know where to start the description of it. But again, we got through that again with your help. And there have been moments since, not long ago when the girls called in Iran was blown up by Donald Trump's ludicrous military ambitions.

13:18I didn't have the same visceral reaction because I didn't see the footage, I didn't see the pictures, I didn't have. The sounds in my ear, but when we followed the story of the little girl in the car on the phone begging for help and we've subsequently discovered that she was killed as well in circumstances that absolutely nobody could defend. You have those moments as well where you think, why didn't I become a music DJ? Why didn't I become a sports club? Why do I have to talk about this stuff immediately? Why can't I have 10 minutes to process it or two days to get through it? If you're not familiar with that story, by the way, Hinder a Jabs death, then it's for the same reasons that much of the coverage in the British media today is amplifying and disseminating the idea that an ethical foreign policy decision to tell an ally that what they're doing is disgusting and must stop. Somehow encourages Jew hatred or puts Jewish people in danger, attacking the son of a Holocaust survivor

14:20for speaking out in favor of humanity and decency. She was five years old. She spent hours trapped in a car pleading for people to rescue her and the IDF killed her. Her aunt, her uncle, our cousins that were already dead, they tried to escape in the same car. Israeli forces fired on the vehicle, instantly killing six of her relatives, including her 15-year-old cousin who'd managed to call the emergency dispatches, which is why the phone line was open. She spent hours, this little girl, this five-year-old girl talking to the Palestinian Red Cross. Sorry, am I encouraging Jew hatred? Or am I critiquing a barbaric act by the Israeli regime? Or by representatives of the Israeli regime? Because if you don't know the answer to that question, you're lost. Am I being anti-Semitic at the moment? Because if you don't know the answer to that question, or if you think the answer is yes, then you've surrendered something really valuable. You've surrendered intellectual freedom, you've surrendered agency and you've surrendered honesty.

15:22All for Benjamin Netanyahu, hours on the phone to the Palestinian Red Cross and society, whispering desperate pleas for help. So they sent an ambulance, two medics, all cleared, all coordinated, and then it got hit by an Israeli tank round. That killed the paramedics, instantly. The line to hind went down and her body was discovered the following day after Israeli forces withdrew from the area. I tell you what I'm doing here. I'm encouraging fact appreciation, true sack knowledgement. How, when you think about the aftermath of October the 7th, and you think about how we sat here, I don't think I had sympathy for Keir Starmer when he appeared to offer support to putative war crimes committed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the cutting off of energy and water. But I understood why he'd done it, whether he misspoke or whether the... I don't think he's a man who gets overtaken by emotion very often, or any of those things.

16:23But the horror of that day was so immense. I found myself harboring terrible feelings towards anybody getting in touch with the program with a yes but. Yes, it's awful but Israel has been doing this. Yes, it's awful but Israel has been doing this. Yes, it's awful but go back to 1948 or let's go back to the 6th day war. And I had no patience for those people because it seemed to me that that was a moment where you just report and reflect the pain and the horror. And then the world began to turn. And very, very quickly you began to see that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to use that terrorist atrocity undertaken by Hamas. Because look, I'm going to get messages saying that you never mentioned Hamas. You never mentioned terrorist atrocities. That is brainwashing. You're hearing me say these words and you're sending me messages saying you never mentioned this or you never mentioned that. It was one of the darkest days I can remember in my life. That October the 7th terrorist atrocity. It was absolutely hideous.

17:24But what has happened since is equally hideous in an emotional sense, in a moral sense. And if you want to measure human suffering in units of human suffering, then what has happened since is worse. And it has been done by an ally of the United Kingdom with whom we will continue to trade even after these sanctions are brought in. So how can anybody argue that by talking about things that have happened, you somehow encourage attacks on people who share a faith with the man who has ordered the atrocities or the cabinet members who cheer them? And I just don't really see it. I mean, if you were to think about it in a slightly different way, then if reporting the atrocities encourages anti-Semitism or attacks on Jews and calling for the atrocities to stop encourages anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews,

18:25then what are you actually allowed to do here without being accused of causing anti-Semitism or attacks on Jewish people? And what are you actually allowed to say? Nothing. You're not allowed to say anything, which means you have to live with the allegation. You have to live with the accusation. You have to live with the label. Because I'm not in the business of looking the other way. Nor are you. Time for a short break now. Afterwards, your response is to Ed Miliband's speech yesterday and the announcement of those sanctions. I welcome it, as you know. And well, you can hear for yourself what people listening make of this moment. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

19:30I don't like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly inexplicably good. Offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up, these may apply. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Rebecca is in Baselton. Rebecca, what would you like to say? I guess I'm encouraged by it. And if I can tell a bit of personal background as to why. I was brought up in East London, went to a Jewish school. My family in Israel. And we were taught two things. Very intensely taught about the Holocaust quite rightly. And the slogan of never again was, every year we do a whole term on it. And we went to Auschwitz and Treblinka. And had a really harrowing week of this awful thing that happened. And it is awful. And it was terrible. And the words never again, never again, never again. And then my grandma loved Israel. She was a, she sadly passed. And it was a whole, look, it's a love affair she had with it. And we went on a school trip, amazing country.

20:31And I always assumed I'd lived there. And Till went to Auschwitz. And we were standing in a circle and my teacher was praying. And it was like, how can this be a thing? This is awful. I lost all my faith in that moment. And God was a complete turning point for me. Because how could God allow this to, I mean, it's one of the great philosophical questions of the human rights, isn't it? But how can, like, I kind of, religion is a whole one. I know that's a messy topic. It's how can we live in, you know, how can we, how can that be a thing where the visual Jewish, this is a thing? Yes. So then again, so then you've got this love affair with it. Oh, you know, I do, it's an amazing country. What a shame. I'd love to take my children there and I don't think I ever will because of all of this. I just think because of what Benjamin Netanyahu has done. Yeah, but my grandma lived in fish. She used to say to me, it happened again, Sarah. It'll happen again. And that's my sister, that's my Rebecca. She used to say to us all the time, you know, you're going to, you know, this is going to happen again. I don't say that.

21:31I want to have children, please don't. Yes. And she's right, but she got it wrong at the same time. And it breaks my heart because I'm like, why was this strung into me at school just for you to go and do it again? That's how it really feels. That's right. And that, and that, because I see the pictures, and it makes me furious because, you know, it wasn't a waste of time. The story you just told of the little girl in the car. And this is one of the reasons I felt compelled to call in. I've been to Jerusalem, in some way in Israel. There's a Yad Vashem, which is a Holocaust museum. And you go in a very beautiful dark room and they read out every child that died in the Holocaust. And they asked you to remember one name and walk out with that name. And then you tell that story and you just think, what, what, what we're doing? And so when Ed Milibar, and I do think it's pointing to his former Holocaust survivor, he's saying, what you're doing this is too far. I kind of feel like saying, like you said, two little two, like, no, but a better late than never. Yeah, you know, and I just, the whole conflict,

22:31I kind of got a bit new on it because I don't feel like I fit in the Jewish community anymore, but I equally understand why anti-Semitism is the way it is. And because I can't, I just can't comprehend it, but I also feel like, and I'm the Jewish people that I have to go to. You are compranding it. You're helping other people listening to this comprehend element of it, but your perspective is obviously very personal. Yeah, and I do speak to Jewish people, and there'll be, and I understand why they, there's a lot of fear, you know, there's a lot of trauma that it feeds through, and I know that's my experience. I feel, I feel, I'm saying, it's not like, oh, you Jewish, and I go, oh, no, no, I won't be. Because they automatically presume you're in favor of what has happened in Gaza and the West Bank, if you do say yes. Yeah, but then if you speak to someone that's Jewish and you don't, that it's discussed, the response is discussed, and I understand it is fear. I understand it is fear. Well, it's your grandmother's fear. It's your fear of it happening again. And therefore, I think, and you'll know more about this than I do, but I've spoken to a lot of people over the years. I think that that, and I do understand this completely.

23:35That fear morphs into support for whatever is done by whoever is in charge in Israel, when they either dress it up or don't even bother dressing it up as an act of self-defense. Everything is justified. I discovered that, doing phonons about it years ago, and then it came back like an express train in the aftermath of October the 7th, because people move very quickly to nibbling at the edges of the assertion that I don't care how many Palestinians die, it's justified. And that is why you suggest that your grandma got it the wrong way around. Yeah. And like I said, the thing that really, and I kind of, I remember being at school and was going in the Balkans and stuff. And this idea of never again has always battled me. It's like, I feel like they need to add on never again to us. And then we can all go, oh, that's what you meant. And I feel like that's where I get really stuck in the throat, if you like, where I just think, would you mean never again? You know, why have memorials like Auschwitz, for example, if we're going to be, I've got this name,

24:37but you put up a video, didn't I? And I have a video of going over to do that again. But we get really, get really museums in, you know, and I don't think that. Oh, you mean, Ben Gavir putting up the AI video of Palestinian people going down a sort of conveyer about looking happy and well fed and then going into an Israeli facility and coming out looking emaciated and broken. Yeah. Why have I had to grow up learning about the trauma? I think, and it does impact me a lot. And I've learnt about it. I can tell it, don't I? And then to see it, I just, and that's why I think it, I don't understand why this doesn't happen soon now, but I'm glad, I'm hoping, you know, obviously with the changing leaders again. Hopefully we're onto something brighter in terms of more action. That's what, that's a genuine hope. I don't know how much I've backed that up, but that's why hope. And this is a start off that. And hopefully we'll see another area as well. But yeah, I just, I felt compelled to say thing because I do understand why you disanti-semitism, I do. And obviously that, anti-semitism is real and it's vile.

25:38No one knows more about it than Ed Miliband's mother or your grandma. And yet to use it every single time somebody says, please don't kill little girls like Henry J. Please don't kill anybody else. Please stop killing. And, you know, the same way that after October the 7th, you looked at Hamas and said, you are despicable, you are a bit inhuman stop. And the idea that that makes you is lammophobic or that criticizing Netanyahu makes you anti-semitic. I think it hurts people like you more than it hurts almost anybody actually. Yes, because I don't view myself as an Israeli. And then to be brushed with that, and at the moment I wouldn't even say I view myself as Jewish because not because that's a lot to do with what happened when I was in Auschwitz and stuff. But that's a separate thing. But if someone taught, you know, I would find it baffling and I admire the people that go, the Jewish people that go on protest and say, no, we're actually, we've done a great anti-Srail protest, like credit to them, because I think there needs to be that differential. It's mad that there isn't.

26:40But that kind of, I was like, it's that kind of a, just reading the headlines, isn't it, that short-sightedness? And man, people like Swela Bravaman and many others actually, not all as far out as her. They're calling them hate marches and trying to get them prescribed because if you allow criticism, it just spreads, the understanding of what has gone on that you've articulated quite brilliantly. It just spreads and spreads and spreads, which is why they have to say it lies and it's why they have to say no journalists allowed because quite quickly, people could see that the response to the October 7th terrorist attack was not a response to the October 7th terrorist attack. It very quickly became something much bigger and much worse. Yeah, and it's almost no, in a way, it's no different to what was happening the Nazis filming the concentration camps because they want to go, look how good we are, look what we did. That was the plan. And they used clips of it, you shouldn't have seen the things like that. And you sort of, it feels like that. It feels like they're going, we don't want you to tell

27:40your version of it, but when it works, we'll tell you our version of it and look how good we are. And it just feels really, you know, just hard-disgusting. I don't try to think of a fancy word, but it's not. It's really bleak and I think we're setting it to be anything other than like, use it ethnic cleansing. And I just don't know what we're doing. And I'm so pleased that Edmila Van hosted there and gone, no, we're done with this now. Because the alternative is continuation. And this is just so blindingly obvious that you wonder where 80% of the commentary this morning is coming from. What is the alternative? Nobody's offering an alternative. Either we carry on or we don't. And our allies have so far not done a lot to make sure that we don't carry on. And Edmila Van and Andy Burnham, let's remember this will be on his watches, is on his watch. They have a, can ask you a weird question. Of course. Thank you. Because you've spoken a lot about your personal background. And I understand your battle with your relationship with faith. Everything you've said has been really, really inspiring to me.

28:41Do you think that somebody who wasn't Jewish could have made the speech in Britain in 2026 that Edmila Van made yesterday? I think yes. But me personally would have had as much weight, no. They could have made it. But I think it maybe would have been the antisemitism might have been amplified. You can almost disqualify some of that. You go, well, Hitler, well, they do say it's and must be true. Do you know what I mean? I do. But I wonder if it did come from them that wasn't Jewish. People would go, there's another one. Doesn't like us either. And I definitely would. And that's why I think that it would have probably not been delivered in quite the way that it was yesterday. Thank you for that. I can see that this, the news is not something, especially when you've got personal investment like yours that you can just turn off like a film. Is it stays with us all the time sometimes? And this issue, perhaps more than any other for you. Yeah, and I do. And I, I mean, this is first time, I guess,

29:41I've spoken out loud about it, if you like. But my brother and his wife, David, saying, oh, we've been to Trip to Poland and they're going to go to Auschwitz. And this is the first thing that comes to mind, this, what's going on now, not what happened all those years ago. Because I said it was powerful. And I think everyone should go there. And it's all for what's one of the worst things I've ever done, but best things I've ever done. And I was up 15, you know? And I think about it all the time. I'm never seeing a rabbi. The thing that most point it to me is that seeing a rabbi just break down. He just fell apart. And that for me stood out so much. And I just think that you say, it's kind of that, I don't know, let's do something with what we're learning. And we're just not. And I think I have kept to myself throughout all of this. Because it just feels so helpless. Yeah. It's escalating. Every time I listen to a show or read the news or whatever, it's escalating, it's escalating. But no one's doing anything about it. You feel like you're going mad? But we know what this looks like. So why is no what? Why is it what we're doing? And I've been doing a good job.

30:43But you know, I kind of just feel like it was not, it maybe this, it's this could have been on three years ago, brilliant, but a lot of two years ago. A lot of not. Yeah, it was always hard to pinpoint the moment at which the response became disproportionate. But as we've discussed it, it moved into something much more than response pretty quickly. 12 nations, including France and Canada now announcing it. And it looks to me as if this has been masterminded by the British government, this shift in our position after a summer of intense diplomacy. And you're right, it's the scariest thing, though, isn't it? Hope. Yeah, yeah. Cleaning onto it. All the time, Rebecca, you take care of it. Thank you. And thank you for that. A lot of love for you coming into the studio. Some criticism from a man called Nick, but otherwise love coming in for you and the position that you have made. Time for a quick break now. Then more contributions on this question, busy switchboard today, which was a bit annoying, because I had even more to say than I did.

31:51Johnny is in Bristol to continue the conversation about Ed Miliband's speech yesterday. Johnny, what would you like to say? Yeah, I wanted to call because Rebecca had the similar emotions towards what's going on. So I actually managed to crack, well, I got into name crant. Hello. And thank you. You're the guy that turned me into a kind of, I thought, wrapper. Yeah, kind of wrapper, I suppose. I'll share some links later in the video. I'll share some links later in the video. Yeah, well, I'll share some links later in the day, but thanks for that. It's nice for me to put a voice to the name. Well, there's more to come. It's just been a bit of a difficult journey in recent times, but we can get on to that. No, there's so far the reason is, I chose the name crant because of my Jewish heritage. I've never been religious. I used to just like going to Hebrew classes, immensely. I was very aware from a young age that it doesn't make sense, like much like Rebecca, how can God exist, when certain things happen in the world. But I had very positive experiences through the induced part of my social life

32:53when I was younger. I had went to the Macabee Games twice, but then I knew people know what the Macabee Games is, but it kind of like a Jewish Olympic, I guess, in Israel. And I also managed to get to play football in Hawaii because I played football for a club called Wing Bay in Finchley, which gave an opportunity for let's say aspiring footballers for today sort of semi-professional. Wow. So I've had some great experiences. The last time I went to Macabee Games was 13 years ago, and just a go on what Rebecca said about Yad Fashep. I went there, and although, like I said, not being religious, not believing in God, it was a profound experience for me. And it's so profound that we went there as a group as a football team, and the squad that you actually went there together. And I was so long in there, they thought, I'd gone. I came out of Yad Fashep and every good gone. Because I walked through, took in everything, reveled the scriptures, listened, watched the horrific videos because my grandpa and granny escaped. They were actually warned, well told by a soldier, because my grandpa was a pianist, much like I am.

33:53But he was a pianist, and he was very entertaining, and he was quite charismatic, not a very nice man, in the end, but at the time, very charismatic, and they escaped, and he managed to bribe some German soldiers on a train, and they managed to get his Brits. So I've worn that story, or told that story many times, although it's getting not being religious. And I'm at this point in an hour where I chose the name Cran, as sort of a heritage, because it should be my surname. My grandpa, my grandpa, I'm a grandpa. Just the people who don't know. That's your sort of the artist's name that you use. That's your name as a musical artist, who makes what I believe are called banging tunes. So just the people who aren't following that bit of what you're telling us, but the rest is easy to follow. Yeah, yeah. So I just, as a heritage, because I've always worn that I'm Jewish, but I'm not really a Jew, so I've always very much felt that, I don't know if part of a race, I don't know if that's the right way to put it, but I have a history. It doesn't matter. The thing is, it doesn't matter how I view myself, whether I view myself as Jewish or not, people will view me as Jewish.

34:53Well, I'm going to say this carefully, because I didn't say it to Rebecca, and I know you all know it, including the SS. So it wouldn't matter to the SS how Jewish you were, or whether you went to synagogue, or whether you were observant, or devout, or any of those things. You would have been rounded up regardless. So I always think that gets sometimes, perhaps overlooked by people whose family history is more like mine than yours. Yeah, I had a discussion with someone recently, he said, well, if you don't think you're Jewish, you're not Jewish. Yeah. And I was like, wow. And then he did, honestly, he's someone who's reasonably bright, and I was like, mate, it doesn't matter. Yeah. It really doesn't matter what my opinion is, and that's why I have to speak up. So I have to try to be one of these people, so I am not Israeli. I am Jewish. Even though I'm not religious, I'm Jewish. There is a separation, and it's been so hard for me, because I've had some really big arguments in my family. Unfortunately, my dad died earlier this year. That's right. So thank you. We had, you know, you're arguing to bad it. I'm not talking to my brother as much as I used to, by any means.

35:56Because I saw things at the start, I watched certain people. I want to give a shout out to Carl Kalinsky of Secular Talk. I think he's incredible. And he's always been very factual, driven. And there was a lot of information that came out that I saw that I believed to be sort of true. I tried to share this with my family, and don't want to listen, thought to me. Is it that any critique of what Netanyahu's regime is doing is wrong? I mean, it can't be allowed. Whether or not it's anti-Semitic or not, we'll probably get onto. But is it simply the case that you can't have a conversation that is not one-sided? Yeah, I think it's Israel. Whether it's Netanyahu, I think it's just Israel. OK. I think that now, you know, for growing up and... It's weird, though, because Israel under Yetsat Rabin is an unrecognizable country compared to Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu. If we're going to use the word as a sort of synonym

36:58for what the regime is doing and what the regime represents. But that's the... That's where we go if it happens again, mentality. It doesn't actually matter who's in charge. Yeah. Israel itself supersedes humans as the place of refuge and the place of safety. So we can never criticize, is... Ah, I get it. You can never criticize Israel. It doesn't matter what is happening. You just can't criticize Israel, because it's where you go when it starts happening again. Yeah, but even though how can it be safer when you have missiles doing so? I mean, I'm always like, I live in London, well, now I'm Bristol. I live in London, I live in Bristol. Yes, I had a knife held up to my throat when I was younger in Edgeware. But you know, things happen. You know, I don't dance tarnished every single non-Jewish person as someone who's been a hold of knife up to my throat, right? And I tell you that incidences in Bristol when people said someone's also being Jewish and I'm like, women are on Jewish, and they're like, no, you're not. I'm like, what? Because I don't have long cyber hands and I'm not wearing something on my head. And I think the problem is, is that it's Israel as a whole. I don't think it matters. There's this whole ingrained Israel's the safe haven

38:00and Israel's where they sent Jews to be safe. And I'm like, oh, sorry. How do I cancel that? How do your family account for critiques like, or I mean, like mine or like yours? Or for someone who's not Jewish, is why I'm fascinated by the question of whether or not somebody who's not Jewish could have made the speech that Edmund Abadmeier just did. But how do you offer? Do your family think that everybody who criticizes Israel is being anti-Semitic? Yeah, I mean, yeah, in a way. Yeah, I mean, when I spoke to the one, one of my sisters, I don't know, listen to this, but you never know. I said to me, I was talking about what happened to both villain and all this sort of scenario around that, saying how I didn't feel was anti-Semitic. And I said about, well, you know about rabbis criticizing Israel, as she was like, no, that's bull. I'm out of weight. And I'm like, yeah, she literally said that's rubbish. And I'm like, and what can you do? I mean, I can show footage, I can show video, I can show you seen this. I spoke about the animal directive literally

39:01about a month after it happened. I tried to talk to my brother about it. I said, there's footage, I've seen footage. Of course, we don't definitely, definitely know, but again, the sources that I watch in this until have always been both consistent. And have generally been correct, if not, they say, look, we can't verify. But I mean, it's a weird one, this. And just for people who don't know, it was rabbis like Charles Baganzki and George Levy saying that Israel's direction poses an existential threat to Judaism. That's the UK's leading progressive rabbis warning about that in a way that got covered. So carefully and so fairly by the British media that your system managed to be entirely unaware of it. And there are plenty of other examples of this as well. But here's the thing. I get it. I actually get it. I've always got it. And I always will get it. And I don't want it to sound like it's sympathy for ethnic cleansing apologists or anything like that. But the Holocaust, and maybe this changes with the passage of time. And we spoke to somebody yesterday who felt that it was another Jewish man

40:02who felt that it was already changing. But that, and I know that the foundation of Israel was not a response to the Holocaust, although it's often perceived as that for a whole bunch of reasons. But that line, it's where we go. When it starts happening again, you and Rebecca have both talked about the, your experiences at Auschwitz and at the memorial. That, I get that. I get how that would, if it, you know, you're trying to imagine what you'd be like if you were someone else. If my granddad had died in the Holocaust and Israel was the place of safety in this world when the whole world turns on us again, I think I could easily have been one of the people who will see no evil here, no evil, and speak quite a lot of evil. So the thing to me is I'm a humanist. I can't, this is what I don't care. I'm someone who looks and goes, yeah, that's, you know what, that's my history. But like that's so many other people's histories as well. Yes, it was in a con, you know, it was a huge amount of people and, you know, it's not that long ago. Before I was, that continuing now in the past,

41:03if it's happened, I'm a humanist. I don't take a Jew or a Palestinian or a Christian or anybody differently, I do them as human. And when people separate it, although yes, of course I understand like my brothers got to, I think it goes to a Jewish school and they have security there. This doesn't help. Like this is what I'm trying to say. I said, from the start, you're making my life now more in danger because of what you're doing. You're conflicting is on juice. And the chief rabbi doesn't definitely does not talk on my behalf. 100% does not speak to me and say that has a British Jew. I have this, I'm sorry, I'm on my own individual. I like I said, I'm a humanist. Everybody's life is equal. And I posed this question to my brother, my dad, a few years ago. I said, but you do see a Palestinian baby and a Jewish baby is his equals, right? Don't you? And I think people don't. And my brother said something to me and whether people here in this will recognize my voice, recognize me. I said to my brother, we spoke about it. He said, well, some people just do other people's lives as not as much. And well, that would also be true of Hamas, wouldn't it? On October the 7th and other, I mean, an anti-Semitism

42:06involved seeing a Jewish life as being worth less than other lives as well. But that's the beauty of humanism, is that you reject both of those positions very with equal value. Because I understand that. I understand that, you know, but I've said to my brother for years, can you read the Balfour Declaration? I don't know. You don't want to go back there. But I said, years, can you please read it? It changed me. But I was having a debate on Facebook. And a guy said, well, how do you know the Balfour Declaration? And I was like, hang on, I don't. I went and read it. I came back and I said, thank you. Because I didn't know about it. I was like, I want to know more. Yeah, I might be a very opinionating human, which I am. But I'm willing to take information that I don't know. Then if I just can see, like, well, what opinion can I have now? And that changed me. And I remember when I was in agreement, it was so in place that it's not being held. And these factors got worse and worse. It's just sad. It's saddened me. It's just sad. Yeah, it's saddened me so much. It's all sad. It's sad on an international level. It's sad on a moral level. It's sad on a human level. For you, it's sad on a family level. You know, I don't know.

43:06Fractures in families are terrible things. Talked about them a lot in the context of the far right rising in this country of Brexit and Farage. But for Jewish families, you've got this. Entirely different dimension. This entirely different experience. And it is just really, really sad. Maybe that's the starting point, Johnny. Everyone who feels sad can come together and begin the process of decoupling. Because this is Jonathan Portes, who's a brilliant academic at King's College, London, where he's a professor of economics and public policy. I'm a big admirer here. He referred to that statement by the chief rabbi that he spoke about a minute ago by saying, the chief rabbi speaks for Netanyahu, Ben Gavir, and their apologists in this country. At Miliband speaks for me and many other British Jews. And I think we need to hear more of those voices, don't we? And 100%. 100%. And that's why I'm grateful to you for being here today. Chris is in five. I was slightly shocked to hear for almost the first time I can remember the British government

44:07in its official position take such a stance. Yeah. It reminded me not only of Cook, but also of the wonderful speech by Tony Ben, when we were thinking about attacking Iraq again, I think in 1998. That's the speech I still go back to that can bring me to tears. I believe this speech by Ed Miliband will go down in those same annals. It was powerful. It was very considered. And it crystallized that the United Kingdom cannot have the stance that there should be a two-state solution and continue to go on as normal within this really regime that has made it abundantly clear that they do not believe the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination. I mean, that dedicated to dismantling any prospect of a two-state solution to this. And that is, I think that the point that many people are missing about the two points that many people are missing. The first of course is that if this is really no big deal and it's not going to have any major impact and what on earth are they playing at, then why is everybody responding so violently,

45:10with such verbal violence from the Israeli government right through to commentators in this country, so they know how significant it is. They're just desperately trying to persuade people that it isn't. You've got the US ambassador to Israel describing Ed Miliband of hating Jews, which is an extraordinary thing to level at the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, but how could he be? He's going to, how could he be? And the other... No, I know, I know. But we still have to talk about him as if he's a significant figure in this conversation because he's the US ambassador to Israel. This is the world's Donald Trump built. It is, but the significant people have to be those on the end of such catastrophic abuses of international law have to be. Yeah, and the other point that people miss is the one that you make. It's that this is a straight choice between sitting on our hands, sitting on the British government hands, while Netanyahu and Ben Giver and Smotrich and the rest of them continue their expansionist ambitions, despite being in direct and recorded contravention

46:12of international law, absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the government has any desire whatsoever to stop it. So you either sit by and watch it happen or you do something. And Ed Miliband has done... I was delighted. As well as delighted to hear it. And I thought he gave the speech very well. And it did remind me that had he been better at eating bacon rolls, we could have had a very different history in terms of prime ministers, but it was a joy to hear. Well, there's nothing joyous about the situation. But a joy to hear the foreign secretary in his official position. This is not a bank venture. This is not somebody resigning from government. This is the government saying we do stand for a two-state solution, which has to be the only way to go forward. And as I said, Israel in its official position has made it more clear than ever before in the last three years that they do not consider such a thing viable. The right to the self-determination of a people is enshrined in international law. We have to stand up for that.

47:14We haven't stood up for much in that regard. But if we can, then we place ourselves again on the right side of oppressive versus oppressed. I do have some concerns about anti-Semitism. Because there are always concerns with that. And the thing is, it could be true. Anti-Semitism is an evil mindset. And of course, you might watch events in Gaza and attack Jews as a consequence. You might watch sanctions be introduced and attack Jews as a consequence. And that makes you disgusting. And it makes you criminal. But the conflation cannot be policed on one side of the argument and not on the other. You can't have Benjamin Netanyahu claiming biblical justification for what he's doing and then saying, oh, don't bring Jewishness into it. You just can't. It's ridiculous. But he quite likes both sides of the cake. Well, he's also accusing everybody of lying at the moment. Not just ours, of course, and Ed Miliband, but also the UAE president who Horat's reported yesterday, her cold Netanyahu in September of 2023

48:16to deliver a harsh warning that Hamas were planning an atrocity of exactly the kind that was subsequently perpetrated. And as far as I can tell, Netanyahu has responded by this by threatening to sue. But you're unlikely to see much mention of that coming out of the mouths of people who are currently dedicated to attacking Ed Miliband. Time for a short break. Now afterwards, we've heard from some of the commentators and clerics in this country. Why don't we hear from some of the charities charged with bringing help and aid to this blighted part of the planet. So George Graham, the executive director for Global Impact at Save the Children speaks for his and 15 other humanitarian organizations after this. We know what the chief Rabbi thinks about the British governments. For many people, belated in position of sanctions on illegal settlements, occupied in part by people he described

49:19as terrorists. We know what quite a lot of British newspaper editors or British newspaper owners or British newspaper columnists think about it. I thought it might be helpful to find out what action aid UK, Save the Children UK Quakers in Britain, Amnesty International, Carbou, Medical Aid Palestinians, Christian Aid, War Child, Women for Women International, War on Wants, Islamic Relief, Global Justice Now, Cafford, Oxfam, Muslim Aid. Find out what they think about it. And happily George Graham, who is the executive director for Global Impact at one of those organizations, Save the Children, is with me now. So that's 16 charities that I can count. And today you speak more or less as one George? Yeah, that's right. I think all of us are pleased to see that the government has moved to a position that more clearly clarifies that the Israeli settlements in Palestine are illegal.

50:21And from our point of view, humanitarian organizations, the issue is less to do with illegalities, to do with the impact. And I represent Save the Children and the impact on children of having often violent settlers disrupting their lives, attacking them, making it very, very hard to do things like getting education and also really quite severely affecting their mental health. That's what we're concerned about. And this is a clear signal that the UK agrees with us that that's not a really attendable position. I mean, that's the point. It's a clear signal that the UK is deeply unhappy about this. There's not much prospect in the short term of the lives of the children you and your colleagues look after, measurably improving, is there? Or is there? Well, the politics are very, very fragile, obviously. And, you know, I'm not any better equipped than anyone to sort of guess

51:22what the future's going to hold and what impact this UK government is going to have. But the reason we think, or a reason we think it's really important, is because all children around the world, or people around the world, regardless of who they are, regardless of their race or their religion, or anything about them, they should have the same basic rights. And for those rights to be upheld, there needs to be a sort of consistent international approach to everything. And in our view, what the UK is doing today is just being more consistent. It's applying the same basic standards that it applies in lots and lots of other conflicts around the world. And that's a good thing, because it means that those children who have the misfortune of growing up in an occupied territory, have the misfortune of, you know, being the children of the enemies of a state, their lives don't have to be harmed, as the consequence of that, they get the same chances to have a thriving childhood as any other child. And it's not just the UK, of course. Yeah, I think that, you know, that was notable that the French, the Canadians, and other governments are doing the same, they're making the same signal.

52:26I mean, I don't really want to talk about politics, because I'm a humanitarian. Well, let's talk about that. And so, you're on that, but... No, give me an idea of what the difficulties representatives of organizations like, save the children face when they're on the ground in places like that the West Bank and presumably Gaza as well, if you can get in. Yeah, well, let's start with Gaza. I mean, it's basically impossible to overstate the catastrophe that has happened in Gaza, and 21,000 children have been killed. And just over the weekend, 73 children were buried. Children who'd been killed in airstrikes were under rubble for years, in years, in years, they were dug out and they were buried. And we know there are many, many more still under the rubble, but we can't get the equipment in to clear that rubble in order to give them a decent burial. So that's Gaza. In the West Bank, you have a different situation where children are trying to live normal lives. They're trying to go to school and access hospitals when they need to and so on. But the whole terrain is cut up by these Israeli settlements,

53:29and we've had this problem that we've heard a lot about in the last few days of very, very violent settlers attacking groups of Palestinians, attacking Palestinian villages, killing children. And from what you asked me, what the impact is for representatives of organizations like ours, it means that it's very, very hard to move around. Endless checkpoints, endless disruption. And the result is kids not going to school for weeks and weeks or months on end, because they just can't get to school, or because the quiz takes two, three hours to get there, and they risk being beaten up if they try. So that's the sort of thing we're dealing with. And I mentioned at the start about the mental health impacts of this. And we often think about physical health, and that's obviously a serious concern in some way, at the West Bank. But the mental health impacts are shocking. I mean, these kids are dealing with this every single day, and it's having very obvious impacts on them, insomnia, anger, agitation, fear, insecurity, all the signs of poor mental health. It's a really serious issue. Did you think this would happen?

54:30I mean, I suppose in your line of work, you have to be an optimist, rather than a pessimist, don't you? Because you have to believe that you can turn back these tides of misery. Did you take them by surprise personally? By the end? Yeah, I really like what you just said there. I mean, I am an optimist, actually. That's all you might always think that we can do better as a species. And we do do better. There's lots and lots of progress that we see in the world. And it's a real privilege to get to work in an area where we make a difference for people. And to answer your question, yeah, I was actually really surprised. I mean, I've worked all around the world in many different war zones. And one of those has been Palestine. So I've been thinking about Palestine for maybe about 20 years and thinking about different governments' responses to it. And you always get the same line. You always get people say, yes, we know it's a very difficult situation, but there's really nothing we can do. And finally, we have a UK government saying, actually, there are some things we can do. And let's start doing them. And that sends a very, very powerful signal.

55:34And although, as we were saying earlier, no one can predict the future and the politics of really uncertain, we're optimistic. We're optimistic that the tide is turning. But you and I presume your sort of fellow organisations for the purposes of today's conversation would like to see more as well. And actually, British public opinion is largely behind you, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, this is the start. And I think the game changer is the British government now acknowledging that the occupation is unlawful. And so that then has a flow of consequences. Because once you've said what the current situation is unlawful, then it becomes untenable not to take actions as needed to make that situation come to an end. And it should be possible for Palestinian kids to have roughly the same freedoms as Israeli kids, or indeed, British kids, any kids, not to be living in fear, to be able to go to school and safety and so on. And this is a step towards that. And I really hope that that vision of a future,

56:35of a happier future that I've just described, does come to pass, and it's possible, I believe. I probably have to believe that. In a way we all do. George, thank you. George Graham, the executive director for Global Impact has saved the children at UK there, speaking on behalf of his own, saved the children and 15 other organisations. I'll run through them again in a moment, welcoming. The Forest Secretry's announcement in Parliament yesterday, which they say brings the UK closer into compliance with its legal and moral obligations to uphold international law and protect Palestinians. They describe that every day their staff and partners witness the intolerable suffering inflicted on Palestinian communities made possible by the impunity that has been granted to the Israeli government for its ongoing atrocities, and those 16 organisations once again, Carbu, action aid, UK, medical aid, Palestinians, save the children, UK, Quakers, Embrit and Amnesty International, Skiaf, Christian Aid, War Child UK, Islamic Relief UK, Women for Women International, UK, these are all the UK branches of

57:35the Charities War on Want, Global Justice, now Muslim Aid, CAFOD, that's the Catholic Charity, I've put plenty of money in there, envelopes over the years, and Oxfam GB. Amazing show today, actually. Johnny and Rebecca calls that will stay with me for a long time, and I'm sure it will with you as well. And we will return to this conversation again very soon, but it's the first time in a while that we've explored this territory with a sense, with some sense, perhaps, of optimism, cautious optimism. I'll be back on LBC from 10 AM tomorrow, and right here shortly afterwards, until then, do take care. This has been a global production. Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyers remorse.

58:36More like buyers rejoice. Ugh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See your seven day return policy at Carvana.com.