Young Communist League Statement
On the Terrorist Settler Violence in the Occupied West Bank and the Foreign Minister’s Announced Measure
We Will Not Accept Words in The Face of Ethnic Cleansing
The Young Communist League, in solidarity with the Palestinian Democratic Youth Union, our fraternal youth organisations and the Palestinian people, unequivocally condemn the fascistic attacks of terrorist settlers in the Occupied West Bank, the apartheid, genocidal State of Israel which arms and supports them, and the British government which is wholly complicit and actively involved in this attempt to destroy the civil, economic and political existence of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, which has been illegally occupied and colonised in breach of numerous international laws and UN resolutions.
The period January to October 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the second Intifada, and this trend has increased dramatically in the years to date. According to UN statistics, over 76 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank from January to August this year, with more murders reported locally since. This has included over 18 children murdered either by settler terrorist or IDF forces. These are among the 174 children murdered in the West Bank since January 2024. These attacks are part of a larger trend that has seen more than 5,300 violent settler attacks on Palestinians since January 2023 – around 3,000 of those have occurred since January 2025. These settlers have been emboldened by the Israeli government and in particular Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, over 4500 settler attacks have been recorded this year, an average of 18 per day. These attacks involve ‘killings, including of children, as well as assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property destruction, and theft.’ A single house in Qusra has been under siege by settlers since the 7 th of August with full IDF support, soldiers even clashed with anti-Zionist Knesset member Ofer Cassif in his attempt to provide protective presence. This is in addition to IDF raids, demolitions and murders. Since January 2023, over 130 Palestinian communities have been ethnically cleansed, including the refugee camps of Tulkarem and Jenin. This number will, without major preventative action, undoubtedly spike in the olive harvesting season and in the lead up to the Knesset elections, both periods that are annually marked by the spilling of Palestinian blood for Israeli political ends.
The terrorist settler gangs and Israeli state do not just work hand in glove in regards to inflicting death and destruction on Palestinian communities, but concurrently and indivisibly linked in colonisation efforts. From the protection offered to settlers expanding onto Palestinian land by the IDF to the official recognition of over 39 of 363 outposts. The Israeli state also approved 9,972 housing units in the Occupied West Bank since January 2026, already approaching the 10,958 of 2024 and 2025 combined. The most insidious plan however is the tenders for the long touted E1 settlement block. This aims to both link the illegal settlement of ‘Ma’ale Adumim’ to illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, cut the final artery linking the North and South of the West Bank and further erode the possibility of establishing a sovereign Palestinian state as is openly touted by Ministers.
The West Bank is under assault from North to South, by settler terrorists and the IDF, from hilltop outposts to real estate developments. These actions constitute an ever accelerating ethnic-cleansing campaign under the cover of a genocidal assault on the Gaza strip. These policies of the Israeli state cannot be separated, as they share the same objective – the complete liquidation of the Palestinian people on their land. Britain’s Young Communists disregard out-of-hand the liberal and apologetic elements for Zionism that try to distance the settler movement from the ‘only democracy in the middle east’ as some sort of aberration. We are clear in stating that the settlers are the face of the settler-colonial
project of Zionism and always have been – from the village-by-village appropriations of the mandate period, the massacres of the Nakba to the blockade of Gaza, these all are differing elements that seek to expel Palestinians from their land.
The perverse policies of arch settler-terrorist Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to hang exclusively Palestinian prisoners is directly comparable to Nazi laws of fascist Germany, and the parallels do not end here. Where Nazi Germany signed the Haavara agreement to coerce Europe’s Jews to leave Germany at gunpoint, Israeli ministers like Bezalel Smotrich offer ‘transfer, relinquishing of national rights or military defeat’. Where the Nazis perused ghettoisation in occupied cities, Israel terrorises isolated Palestinian families and forces them into villages it opens and closes at will. Where Nazi Germany employed the barbarian Einsatzgruppen, Israeli forces video themselves abusing prisoners, wearing looted lingerie or executing hospital patients disguised as medics. Where the Nazis colonised Western Poland after cleansing it of its inhabitants with a claim of Lebensraum but seeking economic resources, the Israelis colonise the West Bank under ‘Eretz Israel’ to boost the coffers of Western Imperialists. These settler-colonial enterprises from this and the last century are united in their goals to displace or exterminate an existing population to maximise profit. Just as Partizans in the Warsaw Ghetto, the forests of Belarus and the hills of Yugoslavia resisted their occupier, we reaffirm the right of the Palestinian people to continue to exercise their right of resistance by any means they deem necessary, including armed struggle in line with UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43.
Amid these deteriorating conditions, during a meeting on the 13 th of August with the British Consul General Helen Winterton, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine politbureau member Majida Al-Masri affirmed that Israel is ‘waging a war of extermination targeting the Palestinian presence […] the hands of Netanyahu’s fascist government, which seeks to resolve the conflict with our people through annexation’. She further put to Consul General Winterton that ‘the pressure exerted on Israel remains weak and limited to verbal expression’ and ‘Britain in particular, must continue to exert real pressure and take measures against Israel, which is flagrantly violating international law in the occupied Palestinian territories.’ Going completely unreported in British media, Consul General Winterton could only admit that ‘Britain’s current position is insufficient and pledged to exert further pressure on Israel, despite the ongoing debate within the British government on this matter.’
This admission is understatement to the point of deceit, as this and previous governments have continued to place the interests of the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel above concerns for basic humanity, international law and indeed the safety and wellbeing of British people. It is estimated over 1,300 British citizens have served in the IDF since October 2023, taking part in all the crimes from Rafah to Jenin this has entailed. The British state has refused to prosecute these war criminals either in British courts or extradite them to the Hague, allowing these sadists and terrorists to walk our streets freely, live in our communities and pose a direct danger to working class men, women and children. These men and women are not a potential threat, they have been trained in and deployed by an armed group that prides itself on terrorising and murdering undefended civilian populations. Furthermore, an estimated £28 million has been funnelled to illegal West Bank settlements from Britain, with tax rebates subsidised by the taxes of a British working class that has spent the last 4 years facing price hikes in energy, cost of living and stagnating wages. In contravention of British law, charities registered with the Charity Commission in England and Wales continue to funnel money to organisations breaking international law, publicly available information shows:
- The UK Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron – A UK registered charity who donated over 200,000 to the named Yeshiva in occupied Hebron/Al-Khalil, a building which inhabits stolen Palestinian land and is at the centre of the urban apartheid in Hebron. Charity number 1118370
- The British Friends of Yeshivat Hakotel – A UK registered charity that supports a Hesder Yeshiva in occupied East Jerusalem, amounting to over 37,000 in their last published accounts in 2023. Hesder Yeshivas combine religious and military studies, with formal links to the IDF and provide soldiers equally trained in shooting and religious extremism. Charity number 1117836
- Shivat Zion – A non-profit organisation which arranges for British citizens to move to the illegal settlement of ‘Efrat’ in the occupied West Bank among others and encourages donors to apply for UK Gift Aid using the platform ‘Jgive’.
- Israel Magen Fund – A UK registered charity which has given over 100,000 in the previous two years in support of Israeli soldiers and terrorist militia ‘emergency response teams’ in the occupied West Bank, who openly boast about funds being directly used to military equipment. Charity Number 1202788
These are just several UK Based organisations that directly fund illegal settlements, and the war-criminal residents and soldiers inside them, subsidised through gift aid by your taxes. The British state has no money to provide decent jobs, education or training to the 16.2% of Britain’s youth without work, but will happily shell out to continue the policies of bloody Balfour.
Following the accession of Andy Burnham to the British premiership, his government has failed to materially distance itself from the genocidal governments of Starmer and his Tory predecessors. The words of Burnham and now-Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband fail to commit to any significant action, most egregiously in Miliband’s 8th September statement, announcing a so-called sanctions package against goods emanating from illegal West Bank settlements. In announcing these measures, the Foreign Secretary made clear that the government ‘wholeheartedly oppose the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions or BDS campaign’ and any trade with Israeli goods from within the green line will not be affected. This completely disregards the extensive interconnectedness of the settlements into the wider Israeli economy, and seeks to draw a demarcation which the Israeli government is actively erasing – given Israeli policy of labelling goods from these territories, the occupied Syrian Golan or occupied West Bank as simply ‘Made in Israel’, he has simply given carte blanche for producers to continue to export to Britain. The additional caveat of ‘with appropriate religious exemption’ opens the door to Kosher wine products from the estimated 3,200 acres of settler vineyards from settlements such as Psagot again to have an exemption from these already feeble measures – a 2011 report from ‘Who Profits’ has already established that all
major Israeli wineries use grapes from occupied territories in their produce.
It is abundantly clear that the British government intends to continue to fly in the face of international law in spite of the binding articles of the UN Genocide Convention and the ICJ’s interim ruling. Instead, it rewards a genocidal power with free trade agreements and takes no meaningful measures against it for its policies in the occupied West Bank or in Gaza – in fact, again, the Foreign Secretary refused to join the majority of the British public or the world in labelling the world’s first live-streamed genocide as such. It only took 59 years and 2 months, from 10 th June 1967 and 8 th September 2026 for the British state to
finally recognise the illegality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
There is no distinction to be made between hilltop youth, the IDF and the government that supports them – all of which underpinned by the settler-colonial ideology that is Zionism. Once again, a British government has put imperial interests above the interests of the British working class, with even less regard given to the Palestinians who endure these horrors every day. On the 8th of September, this government attempted to offer the minimum distraction to a British public that demands answers and actions, whilst putting no real pressure on the Israeli economy or war-machine – Miliband plays smoke and mirrors over the ashes of homes and bones of children. The responsibility remains with us, the British
working class and youth, to act to pressure our government to follow international law.
For as long as the arms sales, Zionist charities funding settlements and the material and economic cooperation between the Israeli and British states remain, the call of Palestinians and Britain’s anti-imperialist youth remains for full and extensive sanctions of the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel, a call we will not relinquish for token, unenforceable gestures.
The Young Communist League reaffirms our full commitment to struggling alongside our fraternal comrades and organisations leading the Palestinian struggle for victory, liberation and return, and continue to raise their cause across Britain and in our working-class movement. We renew our calls, in full cooperation with our fraternal comrades in Britain and Palestine, for the following:
- A full and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel
- The end of all trade agreements between Israel and Britain
- An end to all charitable status recognition for organisations who have funnelled money
to illegal settlements and the investigation of all relevant persons for fraud - The investigation and imprisonment as war criminals for all British nationals who served
in the IDF since 2023The evacuation of all Israeli settlements and occupying forces from the West Bank; - The establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the borders of June 1967 with the right of return for refugees.
Long Live the Palestinian Struggle! Long Live the Struggle of Britain’s Youth!
Right is our weapon, and we will resist!
International Department
Young Communist League of Britain
Wednesday 9th September 2026
