Mick Hartley

Keir Starmer has made clear his determination to root out antisemitism from the Labour Party after Corbyn. But, with the current Gaza confict, it's raising its head again.

David Rose at the JC:

[A]s the current conflict ramifies, the rhetoric of those living in Britain who back the West’s enemies gets ever more extreme – and continues to attract support from left-wing Labour MPs.

At the anti-Israel demonstration held in London last weekend by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, both these phenomena were on prominent display. For – so far as I know – the first time on British soil, some protesters openly chanted in favour of the Houthis, a terrorist militia that have launched missiles against shipping, plunged Yemen into poverty and chaos, caused countless civilian deaths, persecuted the Baha’i minority, reintroduced slavery and stands accused of war crimes.

But in the anti-imperialist eyes of some at the PSC protest, if the Houthis don’t care for the West, they must be the good guys, and so the chant went up: “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.”

Placards carried by many of the marchers were equally extreme. “Thank you, Yemen” read one, the words decorated with love hearts. “Beware the deadly virus, Israel”, said another, adornedwith the red triangle which has become a signal of support for Hamas. Some carried pictures of the terrorist Leila Khaled, others bore images of the Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely to which red devil’s horns had been added.

One 30ft wide banner carried the slogan “Victory to the resistance! Resistance to Israeli occupation is a right and a duty”; another, “The world stopped Nazism. The world stopped apartheid. The world must stop Zionism.” There were also balloons with the legend “Burn the IDF to ash.”

After the march, speakers from a platform in Parliament Square included Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian writer. “We must reject Zionism in all of our institutions, because to be anti-racist is to be anti-Zionist,” he said. “Zionism is apartheid, it is genocide, it is murder… it is a political ideology rooted in settler expansion and we must root it out of our world. We must de-Zionise, because Zionism is a death cult, Zionism is indefensible.”

Yes, you read that right, he said “root it out of our world”. And he and his allies accuse Israel of trying to perpetrate genocide.

At the front of the march, flanked by the Palestinian activist Adnan Hmidan, who once declared his “love” for Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was one Jeremy Corbyn. No surprises there, and at least we can be confident he will never stand again as a Labour Party candidate. The dark era of his leadership has been consigned to the past.

However, also marching were Corbyn’s deputy leader, John McDonnell, who is still the MP for Hayes and Harlington, and Streatham’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Claudia Webbe from Leicester East accompanied them though, like Corbyn, she has been deprived of the Labour whip after she was convicted of harassment. Two serving Labour MPs spoke from the platform they shared with el-Kurd: Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) and Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse), as did Corbyn. In her speech, Begum called the British and American airstrikes against the Houthis “shameful and deplorable”….

Oh dear. Will Starmer root out these antisemitic demagogues? I'm not holding my breath.