This is the letter I got from the Labour Party in response to my letter to Kier Starmer which began with these words:

‘Sir, I am writing this letter to express my personal disgust at your incomprehensible support of Israel in its war against Palestine and its entire people. Your position does not befit the leader of a party which was established to defend the democratic rights of ordinary people….’

‘Dear Richard,

Thank you for your email to Keir Starmer MP in relation to Israel and Gaza. At this point in time, Keir is receiving an extremely high volume of correspondence, so he has asked me to respond on his behalf. I’m very sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I can confirm your strong views, arguments and observations have been duly noted and shared with the relevant policy teams.

Understandably, Keir’s office has been inundated with emails on the conflict in Israel & Gaza. We know this is a challenging time for many, with communities across the UK shaken by the ongoing events in the Middle East. Keir and the entire office would like to share our deepest sympathies for those who have friends and loved ones caught up in the conflict.

While our office is unable to reply to each individual email, Keir is keen to provide you with clarity on Labour’s position.

Families are grieving, across Israel and Gaza, and here in the UK. Keir knows this is a terrifying and distressing time for everyone.

Keir is concerned about the impact on communities here in Britain. We stand against the worrying rise in Islamophobia and against the antisemitic abuse, threats and assaults that we have seen on British streets. Labour has met with both Tell Mama and Community Security Trust (CST) and we urge anyone who has experienced Islamophobic or antisemitic attacks to report them to the police or to these anti-hate crime organisations. You can find links for these organisations at the end of this email.

At every stage during this crisis, Keir’s approach has been driven by the need to respond to the two immediate tragedies. Hamas’s appalling terrorism against Israel on 7 October led to the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, while the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is playing out on an unimaginable scale, with thousands of civilians dead, streets flattened and more than a million people displaced. Every loss of life in this conflict is a tragedy.

We must recognise that Israel was subject to an unimaginable terrorist attack. They have the right to go after the terrorists who carried out the attacks and get their hostages back, but this is not a blank cheque. Our position has always been that Israel must submit to the rules of international law.

It’s clear that the amount of aid and essential utilities getting into Gaza is completely insufficient to meet the humanitarian emergency on the ground. That’s why we have repeatedly said that we have to get food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel into Gaza, with many more aid trucks across the Rafah crossing. And it is why we are calling for pauses in the fighting for clear and specific humanitarian purposes, and which must start immediately.
Labour is also calling for a coordinated Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) fund appeal with matched government funding to provide essential humanitarian emergency aid in Gaza, and to create a longer-term fund for its reconstruction.

While Keir understands calls for a ceasefire, at this stage, he does not believe that is the correct position now. First, a ceasefire always freezes any conflict in the state where it currently lies. At this point, that would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October the 7th. Second, calling for immediate pauses in fighting for clear and specific humanitarian purposes is the only credible approach that has any chance of achieving what we all want to see in Gaza; the urgent alleviation of Palestinian suffering.

Over time, the facts on the ground will inevitably change in relation to both hostages being rescued and Hamas’s capabilities. And we must move to a cessation of fighting as quickly as possible.

The reality is that neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets. In the long term, there can only be a political solution to this crisis which is why we need to restart the hard work of talks for a two-state solution: a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.

For too long, the international community has put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the ‘too difficult’ box and Britain, on this essential issue, has lost its way. It is intolerable that no government has put in sustained effort towards a two-state solution since New Labour. Recent Conservative governments have, at times, been dangerously irresponsible, leaving the two-state solution out of their recent UK-Israel road map and announcing plans to move the UK embassy to Jerusalem.

The task will be hard and Britain’s influence in the region has limits, but Labour recognises Britain’s historical responsibility. We will appoint a new special envoy dedicated to Middle East peace and recharge diplomacy with all parties in the region to gain maximum influence. Labour will work with international partners towards the recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a negotiated, just and lasting peace.

You can watch Keir’s speech at Chatham House on 31 October setting out his position here, and read his recent statements and questions in Parliament on this matter here. You can also watch Keir clarifying remarks recently made on LBC here.

Thank you, once again, for getting in touch. If you feel you need any further support, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Best wishes,

Alistair

Membership Services and Correspondence  

The Labour Party’

Read this carefully. Sounds good doesn’t it: even-handed, fair to all parties. All good.
But what’s missing? Where is his response to these parts of my letter:

‘ The idea that there are Jews who believe they have the right to treat non-Jews with the same contempt that Jews have met with throughout their history is truly appalling; and I, like a quickly increasing number of Jews, now realise that Israel can no longer claim to be a Jewish state. It is a profoundly unJewish state, betraying every ideal that the Jewish people once stood for.

For Jews to show such a total lack of compassion, such a degree of cruelty, is deeply angering.’

And:

‘…But now, Israel is parrotting the phrase ‘right to self-defense’ as an excuse for punishing the whole Palestinian people, including all those Gazans who oppose Hamas, and all those West Bankers, now facing the assault of settlers, who have never had anything to do with Hamas.

Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps, villages, these are Israel’s military targets, showing that in their supposed pursuit of Hamas operatives they are not concerned with how many innocent lives they destroy.

Israelis complain about the Hamas Holocaust. If the Israeli armed forces are not creating a Holocaust for the Palestinian people, then what are they doing?

What, really, does it mean to be a Jew if this is what Jews think is good?’

In other words, where is the explanation for Starmer’s willingness to encourage a state which has been committing war-crimes for seventy-five years to go on committing those crimes today?

Surely, the way things are going, by the time a Labour government has an opportunity to negotiate for a two-state solution, the potential Palestinian state will have been reduced to rubble and its people into insupportable poverty and total subjugation.

Why is Starmer wasting time on supporting a political process which is losing credibility by the day, by the hour, with every child newly murdered by the IAF’s bombing of Gaza, happening even as I write?

More than that: what is the explanation for supporting a State which is only pretending to be a Jewish state, if only because it is losing the support of an increasing number of Jews because it does not represent what they as Jews want from it?

Why is there such a complete lack of explanation regarding Israel’s violent colonisation of Palestine? Where is the explanation for the specific historical circumstances, created by Israel, which led to the development and growth of Hamas’s extreme militancy?

The Labour Party is doing nothing to prevent the creation of an Eretz Israel, a new Israel being built on the backs of the Palestinian people and the derelict land which was once theirs.

This letter is no more-or -less than a copout, designed to make Starmer look reasonable.

But neither Starmer nor the Labour Party is being reasonable. This letter is an attempt to play its readers for fools.

I refuse to be fooled. I recognise condescension when it’s shoved in my face.

The Labour Party will only regain its credibility in this particular argument when it recognises that what Israel is doing is committing mass-murder, and that it should stop, just stop – the one thing Starmer absolutely refuses to even consider.

I would ask him, as I would ask every other Zionist, to consider the original and true meaning of one of most important and basic Hebrew words, ‘Shalom’, because they’ve clearly forgotten it.

But I don’t see them bothering. I also wonder if they even know there is such a word as ‘Hypocrisy’, such as is at the heart of the crocodile-tears letter I have reproduced here.