It seems few Lib Dem MPs can open their mouth on Israel without being offensive, and Ward and Russell’s recent outbursts are just the latest.
With a track record that includes Jenny Tonge, Simon Hughes as well as Russell, and now Ward, the Liberal Democrats have a history of taking a very one-sided view of this inherently complex issue. What is it about the Lib Dems that often leads them into hot water over Israel and Palestine?
Shouldn’t a party so named support the only liberal democracy in the Middle East?
Part of the problem, particularly at a grassroots level, is one of confused ideology. The party has a long and proud history of supporting human rights across the world. Quite reasonably, MPs and activists from it want those rights to be extended to the Palestinian people.
The problem is that many too easily forget the basic right of Israelis to protect themselves, and to live without fear of a rocket coming through their kitchen window. Or their child’s school. Nick Clegg tried to redress this balance when he spoke at a lunch organised by the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, but clearly there is still work to do.
Indeed, despite recent efforts from Clegg and those around him, the party leadership has previously failed to punish MPs who cross the line, and say something offensive. One party colleague told me that “people don’t get stamped on like they ought to.”
In the past I think some have not been corrected when the ought to have been, due to a confused interpretation of the key liberal value of free speech. People have a right to cause offence, but a line is crossed when an elected representative goes beyond legitimately criticising a government to besmirching a race, ‘the Jews’.
In the saga of Jenny Tonge, the situation was allowed to rumble on for far too long. Again she went beyond making criticisms of a government. That she was allowed to do so under a Lib Dem banner for so long discredited the party and encouraged others with similarly unpleasant views to express them.
In removing the Whip first from Tonge, and now Ward, chief whip Alistair Carmichal and Nick Clegg are taking a clear stand.
Thanks to their own history, Liberal Democrats instinctively love an underdog. The clear perception amongst many Lib Dems is that Israel is a great military power, rampaging through the region, and that the residents of the West Bank and Gaza are therefore oppressed.
That is just a perception though, and a very simplistic and ill informed one at that. While Israel may have a highly trained army, it is a country so geographically small that it fits into Wales, and requires conscription to survive.
It’s mere existence is continually threatened by far larger nations and nearly unstoppable individuals willing to end their own lives to blow up a pizza parlour or a bus – who really is the underdog in the region?
Constituency demographics also clearly have an influence in comments made on the Middle East. David Ward has a large Muslim population in his constituency, and George Galloway as a parliamentary next-door neighbour, so there is a large element of playing to the electoral gallery.
After David Ward’s infamous statement that has now cost him his place on the Lib Dem benches, a friend from Leeds told me that with such vitriol coming from the elected representatives of nearby Bradford, many in the large Jewish community in his city thought that that Bradford was becoming a no-go zone for them.
The issue is not just one of foreign policy then, but effects people here too, and such comments really do matter.
Jewish members like myself, and others that support the state of Israel, can often question whether we are in the right party. I have many Jewish friends who simply could not bring themselves to vote Lib Dem as they believe the party to be anti-Israel.
Ultimately many members and Parliamentarians need to realise that supporting a peaceful two state solution, and a liberal, democratic state in the Middle East, is far more in keeping with they party’s principles than they current one eyed view held by far too many in it.
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Updated: July 18, 2013 at 11:39 pm
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