The new British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is pro-Israeli and connected to Judaism

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This connection is also what helped him launch a campaign to purge the Labor Party of the multitude of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist representatives who entered it during the time of the previous leader of the Labor Party, Corbyn. “If you are anti-Semitic, you have no place in the Labor Party,” he said when he was running for party leadership. This connection is also behind his extraordinary show of support in Israel after October 7. “We stand by Israel,” he repeated and clarified several times, even though within the party he faced the danger of an internal rebellion – from Labor members from the more radical wing, many of them Muslims. They warned him that the party would lose the Muslim vote if it did not call for a ceasefire. Starmer refused. He continued to try and quell the rebellion even in the last months.

But within his own party he still faces criticism and opposition. A member of parliament promised during the election campaign that the Labor government would “stop the supply of weapons to Israel”, although this is not included in the party’s platform. He is also under increasing pressure to recognize a Palestinian state.

In general, the Labor Party is much less pro-Israel than the Conservatives. Starmer will have to deal with it.

His personal attachment to Jews and Judaism also influenced his approach to Israel – “Thank God, none of my relatives were hurt on October 7, but there is no doubt that the family in Israel was affected by the war.”

He supports a permanent ceasefire, but in the same breath as the release of the hostages and a clarification that Hamas cannot be part of any Palestinian government. In May he said that he supports the recognition of a Palestinian state, but “such a step should take place at the right time as part of the peace process.”

His meteoric rise:

Starmer entered politics late in his life, in his fifties, and since then has enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of the party. After Labour’s defeat in the 2019 election, Labor members chose the moderate Starmer instead of party leader, far-left Jeremy Corbyn.

When he took office, Labor was in deep crisis. It was torn apart by internal struggles, the budgets went to internal investigations and dealing with lawsuits by former employees in the courts, and above all because of the slide to the extreme left under Jeremy Corbyn, it also suffered from a loss of direction. “The party that was established to be a tool in the hands of the workers, has become a means of demonstrating virtues in the hands of progressive activists,” they wrote in “The Economist”. In other words, the party was hijacked by the extreme left and Starmer invested great efforts to bring it closer to the political center.

And one of the most serious scourges in its ranks was anti-Semitism, which served both Corbyn’s people and his opponents. Starmer rolled up his sleeves and went to work. The first action after winning the leadership of Labor was the publication of a deep apology to British Jews and a commitment to eradicate anti-Semitism from the party. Within three days, he already had meetings with the heads of the organizations of the Jewish community. Two months later, he was kicked out of the party close to Corbyn, who published an article with an anti-Semitic conspiracy on the social network.

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