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.
