Lib Dem’s Moran calls Gove’s anti-BDS legislation an ‘awful, awful, grubby bill’

Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran has branded MIchael Gove’s proposed anti-BDS legislation an “awful, awful bill” that has been introduced as a political “trap” for the Labour Party over antisemitism.

Speaking to a packed communal audience at a fundraising event for the Yachad organisation, Moran claimed the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill was “actually the brainchild” of current immigration minister Robert Jenrick, and was a “huge democratic overreach.”

Moran was loudly applauded by the audience as she said:”It’s a purely political bill, it’s an awful, awful, grubby bill, and I wish it didn’t exist.”

“What they (the Conservative government) are doing, they are trying to flush out.. they’ve lost all the other arguments so the only one left is ‘elect us because we are going to stand up against antisemitism’, and this is a trap we are going to leave Labour.”

The Oxford West MP added she was of the view that Keir Starmer had “not actually fallen into the traps” set for him by the Tories, and “had long enough to reposition his party” and “had been partially successful, although that’s not for me to comment on.”

She added:”I don’t think this attack is going to work.”

Moran, who said she would oppose the bill after its second reading in parliament, appeared as a guest at Yachad event on Tuesday night, alongside the Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, in a conversation chaired by the journalist and author Jonathan Freedland.

Explaining further her opposition to the bill, Moran said:”It makes no distinction between Israel and Occupied Territories at all, and that for me is a pure red line.  

“Illegal settlements are illegal under international law, so logically you shouldn’t be wanting to buy from them.”

She said the bill in its current form threatened to stop “anyone saying anything about foreign policy”.

The Lib Dem frontbencher said she believed it was “unlikely” that the bill would get through parliament in time before the next general election.

In further conversation, Moran and Sfard both discussed their own family backgrounds, before moving onto issues around Israel and Palestine.

Sfard, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, whose parents were later expelled from Poland over their involvement in uprisings against the Communist government in the 1960s spoke of his acclaimed work as an international human rights lawyer, mainly representing Palestinian activists and human rights organisations.

Sfard said he was “concerned at the beginning of my career”  that he would come to have an “identity crisis” because he was representing Palestinians and constantly “fight my society, my state, my government.”

But he told the audience at :”The opposite happened. I do the Jewish thing, I rely on Jewish values. I do what I think is best for my society, for my community.”

Sfard said that over the past five days in the West Bank, 15 villages were repeatedly attacked by settlers, and “Koran books were desecrated, there are videos of that.”

He added:”We will have to repair the good name of Judaism for a long time. The people that are fighting against this mutation of Judaism are doing what is good for Jews. That’s what I believe in.”

He said what was now taking place in the West Bank “has implications on Jewish communities everywhere” and Sfard called on diaspora  communities to take a stand against the Jewish supremacists.

Sfard said he had given talks to the American Jewish community for over 20 years. He noted that once it was frowned upon to speak badly on Israel and Jewish values, but said now this was the case if you attempt to say anything positive.

Moran discussed her own family background as the daughter of her Christian Palestinian mother Randa, whose family hail from Jerusalem.

She was asked by Freedland about a speech she gave at the recent Palestinian Nakba commemoration event in London, in which she reportedly said Israel “had a right to exist.”

Moran said:”I was told off afterwards.. One person took me aside and said ‘You don’t always have to say that’.”

She added:”It’s important you are consistent in what you say. If you start saying one thing to one lot and one thing to someone else, how can anybody take what you have to say seriously.”

Sfard also spoke of his involvement with the anti-occupation bloc of activists at the demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms in Israel.

He urged “centrist” protesters to recognise the role occupation played in undermining Israeli democracy.

And he said he understood why Palestinians were reluctant to join demos in which thousands of Israeli flags were waved.  

Around 350 members of the community attended the Yachad fundraiser.

In his speech the group’s chair Simon Sadie noted how the issues raised by Yachad over its 12 year history had become increasingly mainstream ones as a result of the situation in the middle east.