Labour’s Dangerous Muslim Game

Yesterday saw around 300,000 protesters march in the London rain in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. There were significant protests in other cities across the UK. These were also joined by Jewish groups opposed to the Israeli Government’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, although predominantly they were joined by those in Britain’s Muslim diaspora.

Muslims have, in the past, voted Labour in large numbers, to the dislike of those out there on the right, who have needed no encouragement to spread scare stories about voter fraud, especially with postal votes. Our free and fearless press has also spread these stories, but not in the case of the EU referendum, because postal voting secured the Leave vote.

And the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank sees Muslim populations on the wrong end of bombing, shelling, random killing, and collective punishment, the last visited upon those in Gaza by the Israeli Government cutting off power and water supplies. Those supplies are part of how Israel controls, occupies and humiliates those in Gaza. They are part of the occupation.

In addition, Israel controls what food enters Gaza, its drones hover overhead, monitoring the population, its security forces say who can enter, and who can leave. Now, much of the housing stock of Gaza, such as it is, has been wiped out by Israeli air raids, done attacks and missile strikes, including a Christian church, just to make sure the other Abrahamic religion is not forgotten.

This asymmetric warfare is becoming hard for establishment media to defend, although the Mail titles have splashed on Israeli propaganda for three straight days now. So the protests are becoming larger, as people vote with their feet and join the show of solidarity with Palestinians. And the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims. The same lot who vote Labour in large numbers.

But the current Labour leadership seems unable, or unwilling, to show the slightest degree of empathy with the suffering being meted out. Keir Starmer agreed that Israel had the right to cut off water and power to Gaza, only later rowing back and talking in rather general terms about international law. David Lammy was in the seriously mealy mouthed category on the issue.

And Lisa Nandy, appearing this morning before the inquisition of Victoria Derbyshire, more effective than regular host Laura Kuenssberg, would not answer the straightest of questions: had Israel breached international law by cutting off power and water to Gaza? “This is an extraordinarily complex and fast moving situation” was her first effort. So back came the question.

“Israel has the right to self defence”. No, that wasn’t answering the question either. A third attempt to get an answer was met by the claim that to do so would be “grandstanding”. No it wouldn’t. So let me help Ms Nandy: Israel has breached international law, and is imposing collective punishment on more than two million people - in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

That kind of response might not be what those backing Israel would like to hear, but it is factual and should not be difficult for a politician who does not want to be remembered as evasive. Remember Galbraith’s corollary: “A leader can compromise, get the best deal he can. Politics is the art of the possible. But he cannot be thought to evade”. Labour is evading right now.

For so long, it has been fashionable among the real elites - that’s the press, the broadcast media, and their cheerleaders and hangers-on - not to take Muslims as seriously as other groups, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, agnostic or whatever. Sayeeda Warsi talked of Islamophobia passing “the dinner table test”. But Palestine could and should end the complacency.

That, and the routine downplaying of Islamophobic bigotry in the UK, have the potential to hurt Labour badly. If The Red Team will no longer respond to their concerns, to whom will they turn come election day? The Muslim vote may go to the Lib Dems or Greens, or, worse, may not turn out at all, or in seriously reduced numbers. Alienation on top of bigotry and complacency.

Remember the Forde report’s “hierarchy of racism”? Voters just might.

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