Alistair Burt, the UK’s Minister of State for the Middle East, has made a shocking series of tweets where he appeared to accuse Israel of targetting children, treated the terror group Hamas as a partner for peace and failed to label Palestinian terrorism as Palestinian terrorism.

Alistair Burt openly accused the IDF of targeting children

After a 12-year-old Palestinian child was killed during Friday’s protests, Alistair Burt tweeted, “Another child killed by Israeli fire during protests in Gaza. Children should not be targets.”

This is a disgraceful smear from our Middle East Minister. Israel is an ally of Britain and does all it can to protect the lives of Palestinian children. It is Hamas who should be condemned by Alistair Burt for using children as human shields and placing them on the front lines of a battleground.

Pictures from Friday’s protests clearly show that Hamas, the terrorist group that is orchestrating these attacks on Israel’s border, are using numerous children as human shields which the terrorists are hiding behind to fire projectiles, including the firing of guns and use of explosives, at Israeli soldiers across the border.

This is not a peaceful protest. No child should be anywhere near it, but Hamas uses children because they do not care for their own people and, unfortunately, they see a dead child to the bullet of an Israeli gun as being far better for their cause than to treat that child with love and care. Alistair Burt has fallen into this trap as too many politicians do. He is condemning Israel when he should be condemning the terrorists of Hamas.

Alistair Burt makes a second mistake in this tweet when he treats Hamas as a partner for peace when he wrote, “Real efforts are needed to break this cycle of violence – Hamas must engage in reconciliation for the sake of the people of Gaza”.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist group in the United Kingdom. Support for such a group is a criminal offence. Our government has designated this group as such because their sole purpose is the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jewish people and Israelis, no matter where they are in the world.

This terrorist group is not dissimilar to ISIS, a terror group that our government has repeatedly said we cannot negotiate with and that we must defeat. However, Alistair Burt is calling for Hamas to “engage in reconciliation”. This is the kind of wishful thinking that lead to Chamberlain to go to Nazi Germany for the Munich Agreement and declared “peace for our time” just months before the world’s worst war broke out.

Alistair Burt is another politician who is engaging in the tactics of appeasement. He displays in this tweet a complete lack of understanding for the radical ideology that Hamas holds. This ideology is being force-fed to the population of Gaza and there is not going to be any change whilst this ideology is in power. To ask terrorists, hellbent on the destruction of Israel and Jews to reform and reconcile with their sworn enemy is nothing short of absurd.

It is also important to point out that the reason this shooting took place because of violent Hamas protests which are part of the “Great March of Return”. Gaza is the land designated to the Palestinians under UN agreements. Therefore Hamas has all the land they were promised. If they were truly about peace they would simply accept the land they have, put down their weapons and live as peaceful neighbours with Israel. The March of Return, however, is to take back the whole land of Israel as “Palestine”, which fully shows their intention is not peace with Israel, but the destruction of Israel. Hamas will never agree to Jews living in any part of Israel.

Alistair Burt shows a double standard as he fails to point out Palestinian terrorism

In his second controversial tweet of the weekend, Alistair Burt used the type of wording we have come to expect from politicians when he appeared to condemn an attack whilst also being careful not to offend the perpetrator of the attack or those who support his motives.

He tweeted, “Strongly condemn the murder of two Israelis in the West Bank today. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families”.

On the one hand, it is good that Alistair Burt has even mentioned the atrocious attack where two Israeli civilians were shot dead and another was wounded by a Palestinian terrorist. It is a shame, however, that he simply called it “murder” and failed to condemn the terrorist.

You’ll also notice from the first tweet that Alistair Burt was brave enough to condemn our ally, Israel, with the accusation that the child was “killed by Israeli fire”. He wasn’t so brave to point out that the Israeli victims were “killed by Palestinian fire” or “murdered by a Palestinian terrorist”.

The word “murder” for many people will conjure images of a domestic dispute or violence between two civilians. This was not the case in this instance. The victims of this terror attack were killed simply because they were Jewish. One of them was tied up and assassinated from close range. The attacker, a Palestinian terrorist, used a gun manufactured by terrorist groups in the so-called West Bank for the sole purpose of killing Jews and he was motivated to carry out his attack by the indoctrination of Palestinian leaders.

Not only did Hamas support the actions of this terrorist, but Fatah also appeared to do the same.

On Fatah’s official Facebook page, Mounir El-Janoub, a spokesperson for the party, seemed to gloat that the “Israeli occupation” was unable to protect its civilians, naming the victims as those “raping Palestinian land”. He went on to say there was nothing Israel could do to “bring security to its citizens” unless Israel gave in to the demands of the Palestinians.

The Fatah spokesperson did not condemn the terrorist attack. He did not give condolences to the victim’s families. Instead, he mocked Israel, said the victims deserved it and that attacks like this would continue until Israel gave in to their demands. That sounds like support for terrorism to us. If the motivation for the attack was over land, this was not murder, it was terrorism. If Fatah is condoning the attack, they should be condemned as a terrorist organisation.

Unfortunately, Alistair Burt appears to be both unaware of accepting the truth of Palestinian terrorism, both from Hamas and Fatah, and unable to stand up for what is right. This is another shocking example of the British government failing to deal with terrorism whilst condemning a trusted ally. And it needs to stop.