Tory MP Robert Halfon’s damning verdict on pro-Israel organisations has to be heeded.

As he says, they are “outclassed and outgunned by an Olympic mile” and stuck in a 1970s time warp.

The decision to abstain from any involvement in the Commons debate on recognising a Palestinian state was a complete miscalculation, based on the too-subtle-by-half idea that it would allow the result to be dismissed as illegitimate.

In the real world, it simply meant that the House of Commons appeared to be overwhelmingly in favour of unilateral recognition — a tactical blunder that will have consequences for months and years to come.