Their reaction to conflict in Israel has shown the complete Corbynification of the Left 

When Jeremy Corbyn was cast into well-deserved political oblivion at the 2019 election, those of us who considered that he posed an existential threat to Britain’s Jewish community breathed a sigh of relief. And when Sir Keir Starmer used his first speech as Labour leader to apologise and promise to make rooting out anti-Semitism from his party his priority, we listened.

But facts have an awkward habit of getting in the way of spin. And the last week has shown that Sir Keir’s fine words are just that: spin. The existential threat Corbyn posed was dependent on his winning power. In Israel, Jews – and Israeli Arabs – are being actually killed by rockets fired by a terrorist organisation, now. And what does Sir Keir have to say about the kind of anti-Semitism that murders Jews? Nothing.

On Monday, as Hamas rockets rained down on Israel, he posted a tweet that was positively Corbynesque: “The violence against worshippers during Ramadan at the al-Aqsa mosque was shocking. Israel must respect international law, and must take steps, immediately, to work with Palestinian leaders to de-escalate tensions.” Sir Keir did not consider it relevant to mention that it is those very Palestinian leaders who have been sending a barrage of rockets to Israel with the aim of murdering as many Israelis as possible.

Whatever progress Labour has made under Sir Keir in dealing with anti-Semitism in its ranks – and there has been some – was wiped out in that one tweet. The message was unambiguous: dead Jews don’t matter.

Not that anyone should be surprised. Corbyn did not emerge out of nowhere. He may have been an obscure figure to most people when he won the Labour leadership in 2015 but he was well known within the party. The members who elected him with 59.5 per cent of the vote knew what he thought about almost every major issue, because he had spent decades droning on about them. And for Labour members, and the Left generally, Israel is a major issue.

It is now an idee fixe on the Left that Israel is the cause of most of the world’s ills. In this context, it makes no difference that Sir Keir is plainly neither an anti-Semite nor an extremist – indeed his wife is Jewish. He is leader of a party in which a visceral hatred of Israel is now in its DNA and which has no interest in the murder of Jews.

This is true far beyond Labour. In the US Democratic Party, “the Squad” (a group of six Left-wing members of the House of Representatives) seize every opportunity to lambast Israel and are cheered on by the millennial base to which they pander. Rashida Tlaib, one member of the Squad, said this week that, “What they are doing to the Palestinians is what they are doing to our Black brothers and sisters here.” I wonder who she meant by “they”? The Muslim Brotherhood is in no doubt, praising “Democratic representatives” this week for demanding “the protection of Palestinians from Zionist attacks”.

Israel is defending itself from terror. But to many on the Left, it is those who attack Israel who must be defended.

Stephen Pollard is editor of the Jewish Chronicle