Sky News reports:
The sanctions announced by the UK government on West Bank settlers this week "played straight into the right-wing coalition's hand" in Israel, a prominent Jewish Labour peer has said.
The peer claimed:
"Israel's opposition parties have clearly indicated a change of direction in respect to the West Bank, including settlement outposts and extremist violence, and across a range of other issues."
To which the correct response is: so what?
Israel has had decades to sort this issue out and has done nothing so why assume that if an opposition party gets in at the next election that anything will really change without external pressure?
Are extremist Israeli settlers just going to roll-over and give up? Stroll on!
The real problem with this sort of 'unhelpful' observation is that you can't worry about poliitics when it comes to doing the right thing.
It's either the right thing to do or it isn't.
Imagine if everyone said that trying to stop illegal immgration in the UK plays straight into the right-wing's hands?
Imagine if everyone said that trying to sort out Germany's many economic problems played straight into the right-wing's hands?
Nothing would ever get done. At all. For fear of the 'right-wing'.
Which is really what this kind of comment is designed to do: stop anyone doing the right thing, by making doing the right thing a 'right-wing' issue rather than an issue to do with Israeli behaviour, and preserve the status quo.
Shame on people who are exploiting UK Foreign Secretary Miliband doing the right thing for their own political purposes.
As a high-status Jew (in the UK) Miliband should be commended for being one of the few politicians showing any backbone in the face of Israeli lobbying.