Partial ban on arms sales to Israel is gesture politics by Labour designed to appease the left - Bill Carmichael

Lammy’s timing couldn’t have been worse, and I find myself hoping it was simply a case of crashing insensitivity, and the sort of gross incompetence of British Foreign Office officials, to which we have sadly become accustomed.

Doesn't the Foreign Office have people keeping tabs on what’s happening in the world? Isn’t that, after all, the entire point of the Foreign Office?

But I am afraid we can’t entirely discount the possibility that the timing was deliberate - a cruel and nasty attempt to twist the knife into our grieving allies at a time when the whole nation of Israel was in deep shock and mourning.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denounced it as a “shameful decision” that “will only embolden Hamas”, and it is hard to disagree with that assessment.

He went on to say: “With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future.”

And this quote illustrates an important point. This grandstanding by Mr Lammy has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians.

Israel has been highly successful defending itself against the genocidal Jew hatred of its neighbours for more than 75 years, and can happily do so without the support of the likes of Mr Lammy and the notorious Arabists of the British Foreign Office. In short, everytime its Arab neighbours have started a war, Israel has responded by successfully defending itself and winning it, and it will undoubtedly do the same with the current conflict.

Even the UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, admitted that Israel’s security will not be weakened by the British arms ban. So what exactly is the point of it? It is gesture politics of the most fatuous kind.

Neither will the posturing of the Foreign Office make the blindest bit of difference to ordinary Palestinians, who will continue to scrape an existence amid grinding poverty, while the families of their fabulously rich Hamas overlords cavort about the fleshpots of Doha like some latter-day Bourbon princelings.

So this gesture won’t harm the Israelis, nor help the Palestinians, so what is the reason behind it? I am afraid it is entirely to do with internal Labour Party politics.

So-called progressive politics in the UK and much of the West is characterised by an unholy alliance of Islamists and Left-wing extremists whose only points of agreement are a hatred of Western freedoms and a deep vein of undiluted antisemitism.

The Jew hatred waxed fat in Labour during the unlamented Corbyn years, and has waned slightly under Sir Keir Starmer.

But it hasn’t entirely gone away, and it is likely to bubble to the surface again during the Party’s annual conference in Liverpool later this month.

But rather than deal with the deep-seated racism and bigotry in the party, the government comes up with pathetic stunts like the arms ban, which is designed purely for domestic consumption, and to protect its MPs from the wrath of unhinged left-wing activists.

In short the arms ban is little more than a craven capitulation to the Islamists and the Hamas fanboys that infest the left of Western politics.

Never forget that we are engaged, whether we like it or not, in a global conflict - and Israel is firmly on the same side as us.

The terrorists who paraglided into an Israeli pop concert last October, and who gang raped and murdered scores of young women, hold exactly the same twisted, bloodsoaked, philosophy as the terrorist who slaughtered little girls attending a pop concert at the Manchester Arena seven years ago, and the men who planned of murder tens of thousands by blowing up a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna last month.

They are our common enemy; Israel is a friend and important ally. We should be backing Israel to the hilt, and not undermining that tiny democracy with pointless and ineffectual arms bans.