The new research from the anti-extremism campaign Mainstream shows the state in which Jeremy Corbyn’s terrible leadership left Labour: obsessed with Israel, blaming one side for a complex conflict and hardly a word to say about Hamas.
No one thinks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not important, but with more than 200 territorial disputes going on around the world, why does this one attract so much attention from Labour’s frontbench? Over 233,000 people have died in Yemen’s bloody civil war and twice as many — including thousands of Palestinians — have been killed in Syria. Iran has played a major part in prolonging both and threatens not just Israel’s existence but the whole region with its nuclear weapons programme.
Despite all that, Labour’s shadow ministers have tweeted about Israel and Palestine more than Syria, Yemen and Iran put together.
Some of the tweets – those by Lisa Nandy and her team, for example – are fair and balanced, but so many of the others are a complete disgrace in the way they demonise Israel and hold it to standards never applied to other countries or conflicts.
Where is the widespread condemnation of the genocidal terrorists of Hamas who run Gaza the way Isis ran its caliphate in Syria, fire thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians and are the biggest barrier to solving the conflict?
And look at the recent conference. It was good to see Louise Ellman get a standing ovation, but why could all the senior MPs applauding her not stand up for her two years ago when she was being bullied out of the party by racists?
Each year grassroots delegates vote on topics to debate. Obviously one had to be Israel.
The motion itself was disgusting. It backed BDS, accused Israel of apartheid and described the establishment of Israel as a catastrophe. The delegate who moved it compared Israel to fascism in Franco’s Spain and talked about settler colonialists. Labour Friends of Israel chair Steve McCabe MP made an excellent speech, but it was to no avail against the hostile conference floor. No one was surprised when it was passed overwhelmingly but the leadership did make clear they did not support the motion.
To be fair, they have tackled some of the worst anti-Jewish racism that poisoned the party under Corbyn, although they could have got going more quickly and taken tougher action, but I always thought they would duck confronting the members and MPs when it came to tackling antisemitism based on anti-Zionism.
They must face up to this because obsessive demonisation of Israel leads to antisemitism here in the UK against British Jews.
Sir Keir Starmer must prevent his shadow ministers demonising Israel and holding it to standards never applied to any other country because Labour will not be able to say it has cleaned up its act until the attention given to individual foreign policy issues is proportionate and the party is an honest broker on Israel-Palestine.
Lord Ian Austin is a life peer and chair of MainstreamUK
