FINALLY, it looked as though the pressure was paying off. In opposition, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party had, of course, legitimised Israel’s genocidal rampage, including the now Prime Minister notoriously backing Israel’s right to cut off water and energy to civilians.

It refused to back a ceasefire for months, and as Gaza was all but wiped from the face of the earth – its people violently displaced, its hospitals destroyed, tens of thousands of people exterminated, many more maimed – Labour stood behind what was termed Israel’s right to self-defence.

The party opposed ending the sale of arms used to perpetrate war crimes, it legitimised the decision to pull the plug on funding to UNRWA during a humanitarian catastrophe, based on a pack of lies, and it cast doubt on South Africa’s case of genocide at the International Court of Justice – the now Health Secretary Wes Streeting described that as a “distraction”.

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Labour suspended MPs who stood against the depravity, while shadow ministers who backed a ceasefire were sacked or resigned, and when predominantly Muslim councillors quit in disgust, a Labour source boasted that the party was “shaking off the fleas”.

It only backed a ceasefire after 137 days of slaughter, and because the SNP forced it into a corner: even then, it stripped their motion of reference to Israel’s “collective punishment”, because that would require action rather than handwringing. What a difference getting a slap from the electorate can make.

Yes, Labour won their landslide, albeit on a paltry third of the vote amidst the lowest turnout in the history of British democracy. But they lost seats to the Greens and five independents standing on anti-genocide tickets, with two shadow cabinet ministers facing humiliating losses.

So, finally, we were making slow progress. Labour restored funding to UNRWA – a welcome move, even though the EU and many European states, including Israel’s staunchest ally on the continent, Germany, had done it many months before.

After dilly-dallying, and briefing that the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, was chickening out, the Government finally announced that it was scrapping a departing gift to Israel from the Tories – an attempt to wreck the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor’s requests for arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It was further reported that the Government would act on legal advice making it clear that Israel is violating international law, which places a legal duty on Labour to cease selling the state weapons.

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All of this was reason to cheer. Yes, it is absurd that we have to cheer the bare minimum – in this case, respecting international law and not directly facilitating genocide – but here is a question of life and death on a mass scale.

So it became something of a disappointment, to say the least, to discover that Labour were only contemplating banning some weapons, with some artificial division made between weapons that could be used for defensive or offensive purposes.

As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade notes, suspending arms sales to Israel is “meaningless” if it does not include components for F-35 fighter jets, which are raining death and destruction on Gaza.

They add that the UK industry makes 15% of the value of every F-35, including key elements such as the rear fuselage, targeting lasers, bomb release mechanisms and critical electronic systems.

But we now discover Labour have delayed making such a decision. According to Jewish News, “senior Jewish Labour stakeholders took part in ‘frank and engaging’ discussions” with ministers, with one leading figure – described as a “key supporter” of Starmer – reportedly expressing concerns about such a move.

Now, clearly like other minority groups with a long history of suffering bigotry, Jewish Labour supporters have the right to organise and make their views heard.

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There should be a strict demarcation between the behaviour of the state of Israel and the Jewish community, however, with many British Jews notably having taken a courageous stance against the horror of the last 10 months. What representations were made here exactly – and were they acted on?

Furthermore, Lammy declared that Labour would only recognise an independent Palestinian state conditional on Israel feeling “safe and secure”, with a “credible” and “viable peace process”.

In practice, that hands Israel a veto, with its Knesset – or parliament – just voting overwhelmingly to oppose a two-state solution. The Israeli state will only ever understand deeds, not empty words – and that means placing pressure on it.

Yet Labour’s refusal to accept the basic humanity of Palestinians remains evident. Lammy tweeted marking 300 days since this horror began, which mentioned the suffering of Israelis – but had not a single word to spare for the Palestinians who have been butchered, maimed, starved and displaced.

Yes, after months of unimaginable hell, any respite for the Palestinian people should be welcomed. But how the bar has been set. On a daily basis, the Israeli state has committed some of the worst crimes of the 21st century, in full public view, with the complicity of the British government, which cannot even bring itself to scrap arms sales.

The lesson here is clear. It is only pressure on Labour which has succeeded in bringing it this far. The answer, then, is to make sure that is only greater.