Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 8 June 2024. © Richard Kemp

Spain’s hard-Left pile-on against Israel is a foretaste of dangerous things to come under a Labour government in Britain. Madrid is the latest capital to join South Africa’s obscene accusation of genocide at the International Court of Justice. This twisted charge comes straight out of the Soviet playbook which denounced the Jewish state for the same alleged crime in the 1970s. It is intended to taunt and vilify a country that was built to a large extent by survivors of an actual genocide, and is today fighting against a terrorist army whose very charter calls for the genocide of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.

Indeed, Hamas demands ‘the full and complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea’, meaning the replacement of the State of Israel by an Islamic state. These words, often heard from the mouth of Yahya Sinwar, the terrorist leader who planned and led Hamas’s slaughter on October 7, were precisely echoed the other day by Spain’s deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz when she herself said ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’.

It is a sign of the depths to which Pedro Sanchez’s government has descended that one of his ministers should be repeating such slogans.

Here in Britain we can expect similar levels of depravity if Labour wins the election in July. The party manifesto is set to include recognising a Palestinian state, in the wake of Spain’s decision to do so along with other European governments. This has been hailed as vindication of its ‘resistance’. But what has Palestinian ‘resistance’ entailed so far? The murder, torture, rape and abduction of Israelis. Just yesterday, Israeli hostages were freed in a reminder of Hamas’ brutality and vindication of Israel’s continued operations in Gaza.

Labour recognition of a Palestinian state will achieve nothing whatsoever beyond mollifying anti-Israel voters and rewarding terrorism. It certainly won’t bring any progress towards the two-state solution Starmer says he wants, something that can only be brought about by agreement between Israel and Hamas.

But it will have immense costs. Contrary to any hope Starmer might have that appeasing Hamas in this way might lead to peace, it will in fact further embolden them to fight on, extending the bloodshed and reducing the prospects for any ceasefire negotiations, including the release of hostages. After all, why should Hamas make any concessions while the international community is piling the pressure on Israel to stop fighting?

Labour might also be tempted to impose an arms embargo on Israel, something many of their MPs and supporters have long been baying for. In reality, that will have no practical effect as UK arms sales are minuscule. But together with Palestinian recognition, such measures will fracture relations between Britain and Israel and undermine our own defences. I know from my own experience in the intelligence world how many British lives have been saved by secret information passed to us by Israel. And our armed forces have benefited from vital equipment supplied by Israeli companies, including missiles, drones and tank defence systems.

If we appease and reward the terrorist organisations, we will find ourselves facing the same debilitating constraints when we next have to fight such an enemy. If it succumbs, as it most probably will, to the anti-Israel venom of so many of its MPs, a Labour government is likely to do untold and lasting damage to our own national security.

Image: Pedro Sanchez. Source: PSOE/Flickr