Corbyn to hold event with ‘October 7 was done by Israel’ Your Party activist
A look at the internal election candidates for Your Party reveals rogues' gallery of activists with troubling views on Israel, Zionism and the Holocaust
Jeremy Corbyn is due to appear in conversation this evening with a “Your Party” candidate who has publicly said that “October 7 was done by Israel to justify this war and genocide”.
Hannah Hawkins is currently the North East region candidate for “The Many” slate in the “Your Party” central executive committee elections. Voting began on Monday 9 February to elect a 16-member committee for the organisation.
Hawkins’ claim about 7 October came in a Facebook post in November last year, as she shared a video from a notorious misinformation account called “Shadow of Ezra”, which shared video footage of Israeli MK Na’ama Lazimi speaking in the Knesset. “Shadow of Ezra” said that “Benjamin Netanyahu is now being accused of bearing responsibility for the October 7th terrorist attack in Israel and for allegedly funding Hamas. Israeli Knesset Member Naama Lazimi claims Netanyahu issued a stand-down order and ignored key security protocols before the attack”. Hawkins’ comment said: “I’ve been saying this for a while now. Oct 7th was done by Israel to justify this war and genocide.”
In reality, Lazimi’s speech in the Knesset, which was in Hebrew, apportioned blame to Netanyahu for 7 October in terms of “funding Hamas, turning a blind eye to the existential threat to us and of abandoning the security of the state as a policy”, but said nothing about any stand-down order or ignoring key security protocols. A policy of allowing funds to be sent to Hamas by Qatar was adopted by Netanyahu in the 2010s in a bid to keep the territory functioning.
In another social media post about the release of “One Day in October”, a TV series about the mass-murder carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023, Hawkins responded saying “I think I’ll wait for the prequel ‘1948’ to come out, thanks.” In another post by an anti-Zionist campaigner about how the IDF now omits officer’s name and faces during ceremonies, Hawkins compared Israel to the Nazis, saying “nuremberg 2.0 is coming for them so fast and they know it”.
“Your Party”, set up last year in confused circumstances amidst friction between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has no overall leader. Instead, political slates broadly associated with Corbyn and Sultana – ‘The Many’ for the former. ‘Grassroots Left’ for the latter, are competing for seats on the organisation’s executive.
Another individual standing on “The Many” slate, Terry Deans, described the Labour party as having been “killed by Starmer and his Israel Lobby Zionist masters”. In 2024 he accused “Zionists” of having “redefined antisemitism”. Deans was a vocal supporter of David Miller when the latter was sacked from the university of Bristol in 2021, saying that “conflating Zionism with Jewishness to attack others is the real antisemitism being peddled here.” Miller has since gone on to work for the Iranian regime’s Press TV channel and to regularly post on social media about “Jewish supremacy” in the UK.
Zarah Sultana’s “Grassroots Left” slate also contains some candidates who share similar views to their “The Many” opponents. Last week Sultana held events in both Manchester and Liverpool alongside Chloe Braddock, who is standing on the “Grassroots Left” slate for the North West region. Braddock has previously claimed that ISIS have been “explicitly supported by Israel wherever possible and also have never attacked Israel” – neither of which is true.
Responding to Twitter post relating to Palestinian actions asking what “by any means necessary would include”, Braddock responded saying “the use of organised violence to drive settlers off stolen land and convince them to stop the genocide.”
When asked what kind of violence Braddock meant, and against which targets, she responded saying “guerrilla warfare, as part of a war of national liberation, by Palestinian resistance fighters, against Zionist settlers in Palestine, including both military and non-military settlers who are stealing land and murdering people.” The “Your Party” executive candidate followed up by saying that “such acts of violence are very much protected and justified by international law.” When asked whether she really believed that attacking ‘non-military’ settlers was endorsed by international law, Braddock responded saying: “When they intrude upon Palestinian land to steal and occupy it, yes.” When Braddock’s statements were met by ridicule, she responded further by saying that “You are welcome to look it up and read it yourself.”
In reality, while the question as to whether the Palestinians have the ‘right to resist’ under international law is strongly contested, the notion that such “resistance” does not have to be in accordance with International Humanitarian Law – and that ‘non military’ personnel can be therefore be targeted – is not supported by any reading of the Geneva Conventions.
In January 2025, Braddock also responded to news that the IDF was blurring the faces of serving soldiers in photographs they released by saying that “countries will just have to start detaining each and every Israeli who visits on the chance they’re a war criminal, the risk of not doing so is too great!”
In the East Midlands, Anwarul Khan, standing on the “Grassroots Left” slate, has a policy of “zero tolerance of supporting Zios” – something he elaborated in on a Twitter post in December relating to the Green Party and its leader, Zack Polanski, with Khan saying Polanski “piled in on the antisemitism BS on JC [Jeremy Corbyn]”. On October 2024, Khan stated that “Israel have always planned the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the native population as the final solution. Model They are copying the US model of how the native Americans were slaughtered.” Responding to a tweet by David Lammy in June 2024, Khan said: “Israel lobby gave you money and bought your loyalty”, while he responded to a tweet by Keir Starmer the following month saying; “Who are you serving? Donations from Israel lobby suggest its [sic] not the British public.”
Khan’s fellow Grassroots Left candidate for the East Midlands, Aniona Roy, is a former Labour councillor and the current chair of the Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council. In the latter role, she has previously been regularly involved in Holocaust Memorial Day events. This January, however, shared a post on Holocaust Memorial Day itself comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust. The post claimed that more children were killed every day in Gaza than were killed in Auschwitz and said that “Just like there can be no justification for the Holocaust, there can be no justification for the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Both deserve the same condemnation.”
A source close to Corbyn told Politics Home on Monday that a victory for “The Many” slate in the internal elections was “the only way this party can survive”, while a source close to Sultana told the magazine that the “Grassroots Left” slate was “delighted to have received an endorsement from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and Ken Loach’s ‘Platform for a Democratic Party’”. Wimborne-Idrissi achieved notoriety as a key member of the group formerly known as “Jewish Voice For Labour”, while filmmaker Ken Loach is a long-term critic of Israel and supporter of the BDS movement.
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