Labour and Gaza: a reply to Denis MacShane

The assertions made by Denis MacShane in his recent article concerning Labour and the Gaza War are so highly questionable, I feel that a point-by-point rebuttal is necessary.

MacShane asserts: “The significance of the rebellion by a quarter of Labour MPs against the leadership […] is the first warning to Sir Keir Starmer of what government is like.” Rather, it is actually confirmation of the top-down anti-Semitism that still pervades the Labour Party, from its MPs through activists to its voter base. The Labour Party, outside of the leadership, has picked a side in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, and it has picked the blatantly anti-Semitic Hamas.

MacShane accuses Binyamin Netanyahu of being an “extreme and corrupt” leader. This is irrelevant, even if true. The internal politics of Israel are as meaningful to the current war as the politics of the Second Polish Republic were in 1939, South Korea’s were in 1950 or those of Kuwait were in 1990. The issue is national security and sovereignty, not the quality of Netanyahu ‘s domestic policies.

As it happened, Netanyahu was a participant in the successful Abraham Accords, the normalisation of relations with Arab countries in the Middle East. It was the consequent ongoing marginalisation of Hamas that precipitated its atrocities against Israelis in Israel.

The agreements were brokered by Donald Trump, for which he should have received a Nobel Peace Prize, were it not the (unofficial) historic policy of the awards committee to exclude Republican Presidents. The most recent US presidential recipient, Barack Obama, was awarded his prize barely 10 months after assuming office, and probably only because he was not George W Bush. In this context of the Abraham Accords, MacShane’s assertion of Israel allegedly losing “the support of many in the world’s democracies” is meaningless and clearly wrong.

When MacShane states that the marches in London are “mainly peaceful”, he is also wrong. They are not. The entirety of the protestors are calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, only using indirect terminology lest they be accurately described as anti-Semitic racists. The fact that the Gaza War has indeed become, as MacShane describes “the number 1 cause of the global liberal Left” (and the use of the word “liberal” is questionable, considering the involvement of the extremist SWP in the protests here in Britain) suggests that the Left, hard or soft, are, with varying degrees of willingness, the useful idiots of genocidal Islamism, or Islamists are being used as a tool of the Left to attain power, or probably both. There is a toxic symbiosis in operation here.

It is a mistake that MacShane makes when he asserts that “Labour MPs have come under pressure from the four million-plus Muslim British citizens.”, as there is no evidence that all 4 million are of one voice on this issue, and that the one voice is anti-Israel. If this were true, it would say rather too much about British Muslims, especially suggesting that they were unable to live in peace alongside British Jews unless these Jews were to renounce Zionism. Not even all the Muslims in Gaza are anti-Israel. Here MacShane makes his only (and quite brief) mention of the biblical-style atrocities committed by Hamas. This is the standard form for any Left-wing commentator on the Gaza War, to reserve one sentence criticising Hamas before carrying on denouncing Israel.

While mentioning “the relentless killing of children and women” by the IDF, MacShane is like all the other commentators on the Left who ignore the more-or-less open human shield military policy of Hamas, which is the true cause of civilian casualties. In the West, our armed forces do not situate missile batteries in built-up areas or in schools. Gaza actually has a lower population density than that of Hong Kong or Singapore, but Hamas still sites its rocket artillery in with civilian infrastructure, places arms caches in hospitals, and situates their bases underneath residential areas. All this is ignored by MacShane and other Left-wing fellow travellers.

MacShane tries to excuse the in effect pro-Hamas conduct of Labour MPs by suggesting that “a tactic Islamist activists use is to threaten to put up a Muslim candidate against a sitting MP”, in order to split the vote and deny Labour seats. Excluding George Galloway’s taking of seats from Labour, this has never actually happened. But if it did, it is possible that the only beneficiary of a split vote would be Conservative Party candidates, and it is unlikely that any victorious Conservative MP in this circumstance would be anything other than an opponent of Islamist terrorism. So this is actually a hollow threat, as it would actually retard the cause of Islamism. If Labour cannot make a decent case to voters in opposition to Islamism, then perhaps Labour should look at the reason why the party exists and whether it can continue into the 21st century.

If Labour MPs are intimidated, as MacShane suggests, by the high volume of emails (some of which could be spam mail) they are receiving on the Gaza War, all condemning Israel, then Labour’s whips and other officials should be able to provide technical support and tactical advice on the matter, rather than have MPs kow-tow to the flow of bigotry in the absence of party support. This is how a political party should function — were it not for the fact that, as mentioned before, large parts of the Labour Party remain anti-Semitic. All reports of Labour’s disputes committee confirm that the greatest number of complaints about members concern anti-Semitism.

MacShane complains in detail about the Government (but also the SNP) playing “low-rent politics” regarding the votes on the pro-ceasefire amendment to the King’s Speech to embarrass the Leader of the Opposition. Considering that the House of Commons is entirely populated by politicians in an adversarial system, and MacShane has first-hand experience of this (having been an MP for a number of years), it is unusual that he objects to politicians actually doing politics in a long-established political arena designed for that specific purpose.

What MacShane describes as Sir Keir Starmer receiving “a shot across his bows”, with his MPs and elements of his front bench rebelling against the whip, is actually a direct consequence of Labour’s internal policy of hoovering up the Muslim vote in the full knowledge that certain sections of the British Muslim community oppose the existence of Israel, and that it is this opposition that informs their anti-Semitism. Under Sir Keir’s predecessors, but also under his leadership, as we saw in the election material used in the Batley and Spen by-election, Labour is gradually — and apparently unconsciously — in effect becoming an Islamist party. It is open to question whether Sir Keir wishes to address this fact, as he may be gaining more votes at election-time than he loses. There are more British Muslims in the UK than there are Hindus, Sikhs and Jews combined, and Labour’s own Clause IV states that it is a party “for the many, not the few”. It may not concern Labour overmuch if other religious groups switch their support to the Conservatives.

In his article MacShane has failed to recognise the central, but thus far unspoken, fact of the street protests, and also of Labour MPs voting against their own party, which is that the ceasefire demanded by so many in demonstrations, in the media, and in Parliament would actually be a unilateral, unconditional ceasefire by Israel, with no reference whatsoever to Hamas.

He also misses out on the obvious fact that it is up to Hamas to ask Israel for terms for a ceasefire, through an intermediary. This is the standard form in any war of this kind.

Hamas sowed the wind and, in its tunnels and bunkers, and behind its human shields, is reaping the whirlwind. If there is to be peace in Gaza, it is up to Hamas to ask for it. Nothing else anyone says or does is otherwise sufficient. MacShane should have worked this out for himself before putting keyboard to pixel.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.