Keir Starmer and senior cabinet ministers launched a charming offensive as they received Israeli Labor officials, including knocking on doors for the local elections in Barnett, north London.
In a bid to highlight the contrast with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Starmer and Raynor are hosting nine officials, including Tel Aviv Deputy Mayor Chen Arieli, party chief executive Nir Rosen and senior officials from the Israeli leader’s office.
The Guardian learned that Shadow Health Minister Wes Street hosted the delegation for dinner, and the group also met with Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lamy to discuss campaign tactics with senior figures at the HQ, including Secretary-General David Evans and Director of the Morgan Maxwini campaign.
Although long “sister parties”, the previous leader, Avi Gabay, severed ties with Corbyn in 2018 to tackle anti-Semitism within the Labor Party.
Once a dominant force in the country, Israeli Labor has also been in political turmoil, enduring some of its worst results in a number of elections in recent years, although it is now part of a volatile ruling coalition with a small increase.
Jonathan Cummings, an international adviser to Israeli Labor leader Merav Michaeli, said it was a “great relief” to have contact with the party and said they had been struck by the time they were given by senior politicians.
“Our main concern has always been anti-Semitism and the Jewish community – anti-Israel, anti-Zionism, this was almost a secondary issue. “We wanted to be on the right side, supporting the community here,” he said.
Cummings said Starmer was happy to see them join in to watch London activists hope to take advice from Barnett, where Labor performed worse in 2018 than their overall performance in London.
Jewish Labor activists have said they have faced significant anger on Barnett’s doorstep in 2018. Party sources hope that any winnings will be the main story of next week’s election results to show how the party is changing.
Starmer has repeatedly said he intends to release the party from all anti-Semitic members, following a report by the equality watchdog that criticized the handling of complaints.
Corbyn was removed from the Labor whip for his reaction to the report, and Starmer fired his shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, in praise of an interview that compared Israeli police tactics to the murder of George Floyd. Both decisions drew significant criticism from the party’s left.
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Starmer has also shown an uncompromising stance on pro-Palestinian activism since he was elected leader. He said he did not accept the findings of an Amnesty International report that Israel was an apartheid country. His report found that there was “institutionalized and continued racist oppression of millions of people.”
Michael Rubin, director of Friends of Israel’s Labor, said the visit was “an important landmark in restoring deep and historic relations with our sister party.”
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