Labour hypocrisy over Rafah and Israel is general election based

  • Post last modified:May 28, 2024
  • Reading time:12 mins read


Over the weekend, several Labour Party MP’s took to X to condemn Israel’s barbaric attacks on the refugee camp in Rafah – oddly just as the general election kicked off. 

Whilst Israel have been unlawfully bombing occupied Gaza since October, on Saturday 25 May they took it to a new level. They brutally bombed a refugee camp in Rafah – a designated safe zone. 

Funnily enough, some of the Labour MP’s tweeting to condemn Israel’s actions, are supporters of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). 

Labour Friends of Israel

LFI describes itself as:

 a Westminster based lobby group working within the British Labour Party to promote the State of Israel.

As of January this year, LFI had 73 MP’s as parliamentary supporters or officers of the organisation, along with 37 lords and 4 MSPs. Ironically, LFIs website states: 

We promote a vision of peace founded on coexistence, cooperation, and mutual respect and recognition between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

Given the current atrocities that the Israeli government is committing both in Gaza and the West Bank it is laughable that MP’s have not called out LFI.

Pure hypocrisy amid the general election

Although many Labour MP’s tweeted in support of Rafah over the weekend, some of them received more backlash than others. First up, was Jess Phillips – Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley:

However, people were quick to shut her down. Whilst she was one of 56 Labour MP’s that voted for a ceasefire in November, she is still a parliamentary supporter of LFI. 

David Lammy also tweeted:

The memory of a goldfish

Perhaps David thinks the British public are stupid – or perhaps he conveniently has the memory of a goldfish, because only back in November he made a statement in which he said bombing a refugee camp could be justified, if there was a military objective.

He is also a parliamentary supporter of LFI, and notably, he also abstained on the ceasefire vote in parliament last November along with 140 of his colleagues.:

Not to be mistaken for a man with a heart, the guy is keen to get re-elected. Obviously war crimes can be ignored until there is an election to win:

Many people also pointed out that some of the MP’s now condoning the actions in Rafah have in fact taken dirty money from pro-Israel lobbyists – which Declassified reported on back in November. They revealed that 13 of 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet received donations from pro-Israel lobby groups or individual.

One of these was Angela Rayner. When she tweeted on the scenes in Rafah, someone mentioned that she had previously taken money from LFI. Although it is worth mentioning that she is not a parliamentary supporter of LFI:

Wes Streeting is another MP who’s actions speak louder than his words. He decided to quote tweet his pal David Lammy:

Now this is particularly laughable, when in January he labelled the South African case at the ICJ a ‘distraction’. Again, he is a parliamentary supporter of LFI:

Luckily, their hypocrisy didn’t go unnoticed. 

Labour friends of genocide

It seems that now Labour has a general election to contest, Its position has quickly changed.  But the fact that anyone within the Labour party has ever, and is still supporting a genocidal state is ridiculous:

If Labour really valued Palestinian lives – as it now clearly want us to believe – it wouldn’t have taken the party and its MPs 136 days to call for an ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’.

Waiting 136 days to call for a ceasefire, and then only strongly condemning Israel’s actions when a general election is at stake, shows the utter hypocrisy of our potential future leaders. 

Feature image via Al Jazeera English/YouTube





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