Braverman criticises UK’S regressing support for Israel
Former home secretary begins four-day tour of Israel to confirm her support for its people
SUELLA BRAVERMAN has criticised the Government for “backsliding” on its support for Israel and singled out the Foreign Office for allowing a “pro-palestine” prevailing view to take hold.
On a tour of sites attacked on Oct 7, Mrs Braverman insisted this was not the time for Britain to “walk away” from Israel. In a broadside at Lord Cameron, who is reportedly threatening to cut off arms supplies, she said she had received reassurances that Israel was not in breach of international law and was allowing aid into Gaza.
Mrs Braverman, the former home secretary, also told The Telegraph she was “ashamed” by levels of anti-semitism that had gripped the UK in the wake of the massacre. She accused the BBC of “bias”, warned against anti-jewish attacks in the workplace and on campuses, and said that if she had remained home secretary she would have passed legislation to prevent “hate marches” taking place every week.
Amid the distant rumble of Israeli artillery fire, Mrs Braverman criticised the UK for helping to pass the first UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the near six-month conflict between Israel and Hamas. The US abstained in last week’s vote. She said: “I am angry when I see the backsliding by countries like the US and UK. This is not a time for walking away.”
Describing Hamas as a “death cult”, she added: “This is a time for strengthening our support for Israel... [Hamas] said themselves October 7 was only a rehearsal and they will stop at nothing to destroy Israel. Hamas must be eliminated. They must be totally degraded. If we don’t destroy these evil forces of terrorism which are not just here but presenting themselves in many forms around the world, then Western civilisation faces a real threat itself.”
Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, has faced a backlash from some Tory MPS over his support for the UN resolution but Mrs Braverman’s intervention will likely cause further rifts at a time when the Foreign Office and Downing Street are reportedly at odds over how to deal with the crisis.
Mrs Braverman said: “I want peace and any civilian death is a tragedy. But we cannot have any form of ceasefire unless the hostages are released and unless and until Hamas releases itself from controlling Gaza.
“Anything else is pie in the sky. And so I was disappointed about the UK stance regarding the resolution at the UN Security Council last week.
“There are over 100 innocent Israelis who are still held captive by Hamas. And for the West to somehow appease Hamas, and to facilitate Israel’s surrender will be totally unjustifiable.”
She praised Lord Cameron for bringing “a lot of experience to the role” of Foreign Secretary but said: “What I am very concerned about is a Foreign Office establishment view taking hold of our foreign policy. And by that, I mean, an anti-israel sentiment, a propalestine approach to this conflict. And I think that that is very concerning.”
She said there was a tendency inside the Foreign Office to “attribute an equivalence between Israeli defensive measures and the terrorism of Hamas”. She said the Oct 7 attacks and the Israeli response “cannot be compared” and insisted Israel was using military action “in legitimate self-defence”.
SUELLA BRAVERMAN breaks down in tears amid the ruins of burnt-out houses in Kfar Aza as she surveys the carnage wrought by Hamas on Oct 7.
Amir Zini is telling the former home secretary how his son Nirel died as he attempted to flee with his girlfriend through the window of their safe room but was gunned down. His corpse was badly burned.
His head was missing, presumed to have been taken back to Gaza as a macabre trophy.
“How does a parent begin to grieve for the loss of a child killed with such brutality?” asks Mrs Braverman.
This is the first day of her four-day tour of Israel, undertaken to better understand what has been happening here over the past six months and as a platform to give her backing to its citizens.
The first leg is a trip to the Gaza envelope – the part of southern Israel that surrounds the Gaza Strip and suffered at the hands of Hamas terrorists. The background rumble of Israeli artillery is a near constant.
Mrs Braverman is perhaps the toughest of the current Right-wing Conservatives, not known for her compassionate side. She once declared that her dream was to see a Telegraph front page with a “plane taking off to Rwanda”. But the horrors of Oct 7 make her cry.
She tells Nira Shpak, a 57-year-old grandmother who spent 22 hours in Kfar Aza hiding from marauding gunmen: “You have friends, you have allies around the world, and we will not forget you.”
Another kibbutz house, bulletriddled, has been turned into a shrine for a dead son by his grieving parents.
“An unspeakable tragedy,” Mrs Braverman writes in the visitors’ book at its entrance. “A heartbreaking waste of life. We will never forget the pain you have endured, and we work to support Israel and the Jewish peoples around the world. With prayers, love and solidarity.”
In the aftermath of the attack, Mrs Shpak, a reservist colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, went house to house identifying the dead.
A few doors from where Nirel Zini’s burnt corpse was discovered, she found the headless body of Aviad Edri. His head was found 300 yards away, in a field and with a knife next to it, dropped before it could be taken to Gaza. Six of the 64 people murdered in the kibbutz were decapitated.
Mrs Braverman has become one of Israel’s staunchest defenders. After she arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, a British citizen approached her and thanked her for her support.
And yesterday, at the site of the Supernova massacre, another Briton shakes her hand, thanking her for the stand she took against propalestinian marches in London. “It’s great we have people like yourself standing with us,” says Jonny Daniels, 38, asking for a selfie with the politician he calls “the next prime minister”.
At the Supernova site, Mrs Braverman comforts Mazal Tazazo, a 34-year-old Israeli woman of Ethiopian descent who shows her a board of photos of those murdered there, including two of her closest friends.
Ms Tazazo was hit across the head, blood soaking her body. A Hamas terrorist tied ropes around her ankles and began to drag her away, but she played dead and he gave up.
She later found cover in the undergrowth and in a car, her survival a near miracle.
On a road nearby, Mrs Braverman visits a bomb shelter used to protect Israelis from rocket attacks launched from Gaza, less than a couple of miles away. Fourteen people were killed as they sheltered inside it, and a further five died just outside.
Hamas militants threw in hand grenades on seven occasions, each one thrown back by Aner Shapira, one of the heroes of Oct 7. The eighth blew up in his face, killing him along with those he was protecting. The shelter has become a shrine.
Up the road in Sderot, the Israeli town whose police station was overrun during Israel’s 9/11, Ms Braverman breaks down in tears as she watches a video of a a father being shot in his car by Hamas gunmen. Two children, aged four and six – not far off the ages of her own children – were orphaned.
“Being here meeting survivors, meeting heroes, has been very powerful for me. It has reinforced in my mind that this is not about Arabs versus Jews or Palestinians versus Israelis,” she says. “This is about right versus wrong. This is about Western civilisation fighting terrorism in the form of Hamas.”
She has, she says, been struck by the survivors’ “doughty resolve”. The stories are inspiring. Mrs Braverman, like Israel itself, will keep on fighting.
‘We will never forget the pain you have endured, and we work to support Israel and the Jewish people’