Is Israel wrong to see Labour MPs as hostile actors?

Israel’s denial of entry to two Labour MPs is a truly shaming moment. Not for Israel, which, like all sovereign states, is perfectly at liberty to permit or deny entry to anyone it chooses. No, for Labour. That our ally, the Jewish nation, is so wary of Britain’s ruling party that it felt compelled to banish two of its representatives should generate some serious soul-searching in Labour.

The flap over Israel’s ejection of the MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang has been mad. It’s the hissy fit heard around the world. Leafy London is up in arms. ‘I am outraged’, thundered Emily Thornberry on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Israel will ‘rue the day that they did this to British parliamentarians’, she said. What’s she going to do – write a mean tweet?

The performative tantrums of Britain’s bourgeois left are far more unbecoming than what Israel has done. Israel just decided that a couple of visitors from overseas were not conducive to the public good – something we in Blighty do all the time. Yet the way the fuming commentariat is talking about it you’d be forgiven for thinking Israel is a modern-day Stasi that had banged up a pair of valiant freedom fighters.

There are wordy fits of pique over Israel’s ‘shameful detention and deportation of British MPs’. Can everyone please calm down? Ms Mohamed and Ms Yang were offered hotel accommodation. Israel paid for their return flight to Britain. This was not Midnight Express. You don’t have to write a letter to Amnesty International. They’re fine.

Israel said it denied the MPs entry because it feared they would ‘spread hate speech’. They have certainly made insulting comments about Israel. Ms Mohamed accused Israel of intentionally starving civilians in Gaza. She has agitated for a ban on goods from Israeli settlements. Ms Yang called for sanctions against certain ministers in Israel’s government. If Israel views these MPs as hostile actors, is it wrong?

Some say a truly democratic nation would never forbid entry to its critics. I agree. But is it too much to ask that we take into account that Israel is currently at war with an army of anti-Semites that desires nothing short of its obliteration? I know it’s been a long time since Britain faced such an existential threat, but surely we have enough historical memory to empathise with Israel’s predicament. Wartime Israel is under no obligation to welcome politicians who have petitioned the world to condemn its war for survival as a crime against humanity.

The fury with Israel is such an orgy of cant. Sovereign states, including ours, deny entry to suspected undesirables all the time. Our list of reasons that a foreigner might be considered ‘non-conducive to the public good’ is exhaustive. Everything from previous ‘unacceptable behaviour’ to potentially causing disruption to ‘the conduct of [our] foreign policy’ is enough for a non-Brit to be turned away at the border. Why is it okay for us to keep out troublemakers, but not for Israel?

That Israel feels it must be cautious towards politicians from Britain is mortifying

In 2008, a Likud politician, Moshe Feiglin, was barred from Britain. The then Labour home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said his presence would ‘not be conducive to the public good’. Imagine the industrial-strength gall it must require for the party that barred entry to an Israeli politician to now reach for the smelling salts because Israel barred entry to two British politicians.

What’s more, David Lammy has said he would comply with the ICC’s ridiculous arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. So if the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel were to set foot in our country, he’d be nabbed by the cops, and yet we demand that our politicians be free to waltz in and out Israel to their heart’s content? These are previously unscaled levels of hypocrisy.

All this chattering-class rage is not a principled objection to restrictions on the free movement of MPs. It’s more like the bruised ego of a former imperial power that can’t believe an uppity little state like Israel thinks it has the right to do what we sometimes do.

That Israel feels it must be cautious towards politicians from Britain is mortifying. It speaks to our failure to give the Jewish state the solidarity it deserved following Hamas’s fascistic invasion of 7 October.