By Stuart Littlewood

This week Michael Gove, the Cabinet minister responsible for local government, will introduce legislation banning councils from imposing boycotts on Israeli goods. 

The Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) bill was first set out in the Queen’s speech in 2022 after a commitment in the 2019 Conservative general election manifesto. Documents released with the speech last year said the government has “zero toleration” for discrimination which pits different communities against each other. So, presumably the government abhors the Israeli regime which, as everyone knows, discriminates cruelly and violently against Palestinians under Israel’s military jackboot in their own homeland.

Gove says:

It is simply wrong that public bodies have been wasting taxpayers’ time and money pursuing their own foreign policy agenda. The UK must have a consistent approach to foreign policy, set by UK government. These campaigns not only undermine the UK’s foreign policy but lead to appalling anti-Semitic rhetoric and abuse. That is why we have taken this decisive action to stop these disruptive policies once and for all.

Of course, our public bodies are not inventing their own foreign policy. They are simply exercising their God-given ability to discriminate between right and wrong and ensure they deal (on behalf of their public) only with ethical organisations that do no harm.

Why this fuss about BDS anyway? The BDS movement uses nonviolent means to persuade Israel to comply with international law by meeting three just demands:

Ending its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantling the Apartheid Wall declared illegal by the International Court of Justice nearly 20 years ago.

International law recognises the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights as illegally occupied by Israel. Israel uses its military occupation to steal land and force Palestinians into ghettos, surrounded by checkpoints, settlements and watchtowers, and an illegal Apartheid Wall. 

Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality

One-fifth of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians who remained inside the armistice lines after 1948. They are subjected to a system of racial discrimination enshrined in more than 50 laws that impact every aspect of their lives. The Israeli government continues to forcibly displace Palestinian communities in Israel from their land. 

Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194

Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine, Israel has set out to control as much land and uproot as many Palestinians as it can. As a result, there are now more than 7.25 million Palestinian refugees denied their right to return to their homes simply because they are not Jewish. 

So, what is the UK government doing to persuade a criminal and violent regime like Israel to change its ways? And how does a self-proclaimed Christian like Gove become at the same time a self-proclaimed Zionist? Zionism is a political movement tasked to establish in Palestine a homeland for Jews and force out the indigenous Arabs, regardless of whether the incoming Jews have any right to the land or any ancestral connection to it. It is incompatible with Christian values.

A likely reason is provided by Wikipedia:

Gove has described himself as “a proud Zionist”… In 2019, he reiterated “One thing I have always been since I was a boy is a Zionist” and spoke of his desire to “celebrate everything that Israel and the Jewish people have brought to the life of this world and hold it dear to our hearts” and that “For as long as I have breath in my body and a platform on which to argue I shall be on your side, by your side and delighted and honoured to argue, powerfully I hope, on behalf of people who have contributed so powerfully to the life of this nation”.

Gove is, like the great majority of UK Conservative Party MPs, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. He has said that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel is anti-Semitic. Gove said that jihadist terrorists “hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people’s home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is – free, democratic, liberal and Western.”

The idea that Israel is free, democratic, liberal and Western would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerously silly. Israel’s policies since its inception in 1948, and reinforced by recently enacted nation-state laws, make it a criminal apartheid enterprise in open defiance of international and humanitarian law; and it continues to illegally occupy and steal Palestinian territory and resources. In any event, why is somebody like Gove allowed to use the UK Parliament to promote his private attachment to a disreputable foreign enterprise that causes such grief to the rightful inhabitants of the Holy Land and unrest to the whole region? 

Zionists have a dream of returning to the ancient land of Israel and reclaiming an “inheritance” promised to Abraham. But is such a dream legitimate in the modern age? The Jews were expelled by the Roman occupation in 70AD, when the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed; then again in 135 AD. These days return is regarded as an inalienable right but it should be exercised as soon as the reason for expulsion (e.g. foreign occupation) ends. In the Jews’ case an opportunity occurred in the fourth century AD when the Roman Empire collapsed. But they didn’t take it. They can hardly expect to change their minds 16 centuries later. 

By comparison, the Palestinians’ right of return, after being ethnically cleansed in 1948 and the crime continuing to this day, is much stronger because the enemy occupation is ongoing and the UN has endorsed their right.

Although Zionists claim Jerusalem is theirs by heavenly decree, this holiest of cities was already 2,000 years old when King David captured it. Historians say that, in its “City of David” form, it lasted a mere 73 years. In 928 BC the kingdom divided into Israel and Judah, and in 597 BC the Babylonians conquered the city and destroyed Solomon’s temple. The Jews recaptured it in 164 BC but finally lost it to the Roman Empire in 63 BC. 

Before the present-day conflict the Jews, in total, controlled Jerusalem for some 500 years, whereas it was subsequently ruled by Muslims for 1,277 years. Before the Jews it belonged to the Canaanites. And for nearly 90 years it was also a Christian kingdom. A lot of competing claims, then, which is probably why the UN declared it should be independently administered as an international city.

In 1187 Saladin restored the city to Islam while allowing Jews and Christians to remain. Today Jewish religious groups want control of the city for their spiritual centre and for a third temple to be built in accordance with ancient prophecies. The plan to make the Israeli occupation permanent threatens especially Muslim but also Christian holy places and serves to keep political tension boiling. It is no surprise, given Israel’s reliance on “black” propaganda, that when former Iranian President Ahmadinejad quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying the unfriendly regime occupying Jerusalem “must vanish from the page of time”, he was immediately accused of wanting to wipe Israel off the map.

In any event, DNA research shows that only a small proportion of Jews who flooded into the Holy Land are actually Semitic with ancestral links to the place.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006, deals firmly with the Christian-Zionist absurdity that afflicts Gove and others.

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon, we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

The declaration insists that “Christian Zionists have aggressively imposed an aberrant expression of the Christian faith and an erroneous interpretation of the Bible, which is subservient to the political agenda of the modern State of Israel…”

We must demand that Michael Gove declares his interest whenever he open his mouth on plans to outlaw BDS.