Miliband: Palestinian suffering is ‘a stain on the conscience of the world’

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the Labour Party conference that the suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “a stain on the conscience of the world,” telling campaigners outraged by their plight: “We hear you. You were right.”

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband used his speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to sharply criticize the Israeli government, describing the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank as “a stain on the conscience of the world.” He condemned Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack but said it did not justify the atrocities inflicted on Palestinians.

“I want to say to the millions of people in this country, and indeed elsewhere, who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: we hear you. You were right. And under Andy’s leadership, we have reset our approach,” Miliband said, referring to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, to a large round of applause.

Miliband said Britain would ban the import of goods from illegal settlements and disrupt the supply lines of British finance, construction and services for them, describing the entire occupation as unlawful and criticizing “settler terrorists” and the Israeli government that indulges them. Miliband, who is Jewish, has previously spoken about family members murdered in the Holocaust.