On his knees: Keir Starmer adopts the attitude he has taken to any representative of the Israeli government.

Keir Starmer’s Labour – and particularly his appointment of former Israeli ‘spook’ Assaf Kaplan – has come in for (justified) criticism in the pages of parapolitics magazine Lobster.

In its latest issue, the magazine discusses anti-Semitism accusations against a correspondent. The author states:

“I don’t have a problem with political parties policing their membership. In the 1980s I was a member of the Labour Party and was entirely happy to see it trying to purge members of the Militant Tendency. After all, Militant was a classic party-within-a-party.

“The current Labour Party purge is weirder than that. It is a purge of people with the wrong attitude towards Israel.

“This may have something to do with the current leader, Keir Starmer, having a Jewish wife. It certainly has something to do with fear that the Israeli operation to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader might be cranked up again against the current leadership.

“Whatever the motivation, today’s purge, though formally of members accused of being anti-semites, is also of members who are not enthusiastic enough in their support of Israel – or who express support for other expellees.”

The article goes on to discuss the accusations against its correspondent, concluding:

“As you can see, the evidence does not support the charges.

“The key factor here appears to be that my correspondent expresses support for Tony Greenstein, a prominent critic of Israel, who is Jewish, and who was expelled from the Labour Party in 2018. Yes, the Labour Party is not only purging Jews from its ranks in the name of opposing anti-semitism, it is purging those who support them.

“I presume that the Israeli spook hired by Labour, Assaf Kaplan, is involved
in this particular operation, bringing his skills from his previous work, hunting down Palestinians on social media.

“Hunting down Labour Party members who sympathise with Palestinians is but a small sideways step.”

So this magazine correctly identifies the elements of Labour’s witch-hunt:

It is not a purge of anti-Semites but of people whose attitude to the state of Israel diverges from that of Keir Starmer (and Assaf Kaplan, we must conclude).

It is – or at least may be – prompted by fear that Israel’s successful operation to remove Jeremy Corbyn from the party leadership may be revived to remove Starmer. (And after the Shai Masot conspiracy to remove Alan Duncan from the government was revealed in 2017, can anybody doubt that there was an Israeli operation to achieve this?)

Far from attacking anti-Semites, this purge attacks Jews and those who support them – in the name of opposing anti-Semitism. The slant of the article makes it clear that the author (rightly) considers this to be perverse.

And it seems Kaplan was hired to hunt down – on the social media – party members, including Jews, who sympathise with the plight of Palestinians – a slight sideways step from his previous job hunting down Palestinians on the social media.

It must come as no surprise to you that the ‘correspondent’ to whom the Lobster article refers is This Writer’s brother, the author of Beastrabban\’s Weblog.

“I think I’ve heard elsewhere that Israeli spook Assaf Kaplan has been hired by Starmer to weed out critics of Israel,” he writes.

“This is another case of Israel interfering where it has absolutely no right, just like it did when discussing who should be in Tweezer’s cabinet. I suspect that anyone mentioning this, however, will be accused of using conspiracy theory tropes and thus being anti-Semitic in order to silence them.”

This makes sense. I was so accused when I wrote about the Shai Masot conspiracy – despite the fact that everybody could plainly see that a conspiracy to influence the UK government was exactly what it was. It seems Labour has been more vulnerable to Israeli influence than the Conservatives.

“Starmer is a disgrace and agents of the Israeli or any other foreign state have no place in the Labour party deciding who should or should not be a member.”

Absolutely right. But with Labour policing itself, how can honest, right-thinking people rid it of the influence of this foreign government?

And if such influence cannot be removed, how can the UK electorate allow Labour – the puppet of a foreign state – into government?