How Britain’s far left won its war against Israel

Following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah by the IDF, Jeremy Corbyn – the Labour party’s former and now expelled leader – commented, "Israel’s genocidal intent and violence in Gaza is being repeated in Lebanon. This is what Islamophobia, dehumanisation of brown lives and total impunity looks like" (Morning Star 30 September 2024).

Corbyn’s words epitomised the British far left’s approach of deflection, deception and omission after October 7. It has continued to react to the reactionaries – and not to the issue.

Nasrallah himself described the Hamas attack as "a big event to shake this oppressive… occupying, usurping Zionist regime and its supporters in Washington and London" (Al Jazeera 3 November 2023). And no one recalls that Hezbollah militarily supported Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war in which half a million people died and over six million were displaced.

The British far left has also failed to make the distinction that British Jews make – between the Israeli state and its government. Figures such as Corbyn simply use the catch-all label of ‘Israel’ – as if all Israelis thought the same. It has studiously avoided any mention of the anti-Netanyahu protests. What matters to the far left is not October 7, but October 8 when the IDF began to attack Gaza.

On October 7, many on the far left were moored in indecision and silence. In one sense, the events of October 8 were a welcome and convenient diversion since the state of Israel could now be demonised for the assault of the IDF on Gaza. The killing of Israelis could now be airbrushed out of the narrative.

A few on the far left argued that the slaughter on October 7 was a justifiable act of resistance – a response to the occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and the humiliation of generations. Others explained that as in past wars of liberation in Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Algeria, civilians unfortunately die – they are mere collateral damage, occurred in the course of the struggle.

The far left also seemed oblivious of the fact that a majority of Israelis just happen to be Jews – and they interpreted this massacre through the lens of Jewish history. On 7 October 2023, Israel joined the Diaspora in this latest episode in the history of mass murders of defenceless Jews. Zion had failed its Jews. Satan had triumphed once more.

Any reservations on the far left about criticising Palestinian Islamists for their bloodbath were quickly overcome as the focus shifted to the assault on Gaza. The floodgates were opened to intimidation, ignorance, distortion and superficiality. A jubilant far left took to the streets in demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in London each week. For some, the epithet ‘Zionist’ became little more than a codeword for a racist slur.

It mattered little to them that more and more hostages were dying in inhuman conditions or were being murdered by their captors. Yet at no time did members of the far left approach Jewish critics of the war in Gaza – those Jews who did not renounce Zionism. The existence of ‘liberal Zionists’ was unwelcome – it spoiled the narrative.

Yet it was far different a century ago. If the agenda of the pre-war generation of the British left had been fighting fascism, the agenda of the post-1945 left was decolonisation and the end of empire.

Leading figures on the old left such as Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service, embraced Zionism and fought antisemitism. Moreover, if socialists were internationalists, it was argued, then socialism could be built anywhere including in Palestine.

The succeeding generation endorsed the Movement for Colonial Freedom in the UK as its standard bearer. It identified however more easily with Palestinian nationalists than with Israeli socialists. While this mindset existed even before the Six Day War, the conquest of the West Bank and the settlement drive accentuated it.

Unlike France, Britain had no far left to speak of. The social democratic Labour party was the voice of the working class – and never the Communist party. Stalin’s policy of the Arabisation of the Palestine Communist Party in the 1920s and the marginalisation of its Jewish members was welcomed by Communists in London. Despite the disproportionate presence of Jews in the ranks of the Communist party in the UK, its anti-Zionism undoubtedly influenced the future direction of the far left. 

In more recent times, the British far left has remarkably allied itself with Islamism. In 1994, Chris Harman, a stalwart of the Socialist Workers Party in the UK, published a pamphlet entitled The Prophet and the Proletariat. He argued that, "It has been a mistake on the part of socialists to see Islamist movements either as automatically reactionary and ‘fascist’ or as automatically ‘anti-imperialist and ‘progressive’. Radical Islamism, with its project of reconstituting society on the model established by Mohammed in seventh century Arabia, is, in fact, a ‘utopia’ emanating from an impoverished section of the new middle class."

Harman aligned the far left with the emerging radical Islamists of the 1970s rather than the Islamic reformers of the nineteenth century who wished to see Islamic thought come to terms with the modern world.

It was therefore of no consequence to the far left that Hezbollah still believes that the Israeli Jews of the twenty-first century are the same Jews whom the Prophet had confronted in the seventh century. Its missiles are named after Muslim victories over the Jews a millennium and a half ago.

Furthermore the far left could never bring itself to mention that Hamas was originally a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or that the Ayatollahs of Iran had executed thousands of Iranian socialists during the 1980s. This did not stop a parade of members of the British far left appearing on Iran’s Press TV to denounce Israel.

And no doubt, there will be those who will perform ideological contortions to praise the Iranian missile attack on Israel last week.

The ANC, a major force in eliminating apartheid in in South Africa, has similarly allied itself with Islamism. In 2015, it had hosted a rally at the University of Cape Town in honour of Khalid Meshal, then the chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau. Two weeks ago, the ANC condemned ‘an African Global Dialogue’ which was being held in Johannesburg. Israelis and Palestinians actually sitting together was seen as a grave danger. The spirit of Mandela, Tambo and Susulu was well and truly buried.

The far left have been successful in mobilising British Muslims who were horrified at the pounding of Gaza and the deaths of innocents. They have attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in large numbers in London – more as an indication of Muslim identity – and propelled several pro-Gaza independents into the House of Commons in the recent general election.

While the state of Israel’s enemies have searched the lexicon for new invectives to hurl at Netanyahu, British Jews clearly do not regard him as ‘a strategic genius’ as his acolytes have continuously proclaimed. Despite the IDF’s success in demolishing Hezbollah, they see him as someone who repeatedly declares that ‘the buck doesn’t stop here’ when it comes to responsibility for the failure to prevent the events of October 7. Even so, a blinded Israeli electorate, grateful for the IDF’s prowess, may yet return him if an election is called.