Sir Keir must address our community’s questions

As the first prime minister from his party to attend the Labour Friends of Israel lunch in many years, Sir Keir Starmer’s presence at this week’s event was significant. As were his words stressing Israel’s right to itself and, crucially, asserting that “there is no ceasefire worthy of the name which does not, as item number one, include the return of all the hostages.”

But for all the warm words delivered by Sir Keir, it was hard to ignore the growing number of questions facing the government he leads. One of his first actions on taking office was to scrap the UK’s attempt to block the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against the prime minister and defence minister of Israel. Now that the warrants have been issued, Britain has made clear that it would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant if they entered the country. Given the obvious flaws in the ICC ruling and its blatant political motivation, is this really defensible? Sir Keir said at the lunch that he deplored the ICC’s false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, but that was the smaller problem.

Similarly, Foreign Secretary David Lammy sat next to Mandy Damari, mother of British hostage Emily Damari, at the lunch. He hugged her after she had asked the government to demand proof her daughter is alive, and that humanitarian aid be sent to the hostages. But within hours, Lammy issued a statement saying he had “written to the Israeli government to urge action on the unacceptable humanitarian situation in Gaza”, with not a word about aid for the hostages or proof of life.

In opposition, Labour demanded that the then-government proscribe the IRGC. In power, Lammy has so far failed to back this up with action.

Most strikingly of all, despite telling LFI that “item number one” of any ceasefire must be “the return of all the hostages”, Sir Keir leads a government which voted at the UN for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. ​We urge policy consistency from Sir Keir​.