Labour shadow minister urges UK Jews to ‘push back’ against new Israeli government

Labour’s Shadow Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Bambos Charalambous has addressed a packed audience at the Jewish Labour Movement’s (JLM) one-day conference.

He said: “the Diaspora has a role to play in speaking out about the approach of the [new] Israeli government”, adding that “any push back would be greatly welcomed”.

The Enfield Southgate MP was in conversation with JLM’s honorary president, Dame Louise Ullman, giving a wide overview of the attitude of a future Labour government to developments in the region. He maintained that his party’s approach would be one of “consistency”, though acknowledging that Labour was broadly in agreement with the series of sanctions imposed by Rishi Sunak’s government on Iran — and hinting that Labour might in fact go further.

Iran, he said, was “a hostile actor” which sponsored both Hizbollah and Hamas and he would be keen both to extend sanctions and punish those who breached sanctions, noting that Iran was helping Russia in its war against Ukraine by providing it with drones. Mr Charalambous urged the international community “to get involved” in sanctions against Iran.

He appeared to be sending mixed messages, however, when he spoke of the necessity of co-operating with partners in the Middle East on climate change — the UAE is next to host the COP summit — but talking of the “need to call out human rights abuses across the region. It won’t make us popular but we need to be consistent”.

The shadow minister’s “consistency” mantra applied to Israel and the Palestinians, he said, when asked about Palestinian violence. Noting that “the religious Zionist parties don’t recognise Palestinian rights at all”, he said that violence would be condemned by Britain whatever the source. With some black humour, he said that part of the problem was that “Israel has too many elections, the Palestinians have too few.”