The Labour Party has suspended one of its members after it emerged that he was using Twitter to wage a campaign of death threats and antisemitic abuse against other users.

Shereef Abdallah, an Ed Miliband "lookalike" who previously worked as a volunteer at the office of Labour MP Glenda Jackson, has been suspended from the party with immediate effect.

The Labour MP Paul Flynn has apologised for questioning the loyalty of the British ambassador to Israel because he is Jewish.

Mr Flynn said: "Clumsily expressed remarks of mine have caused anger and upset.

A Labour MP has caused outrage by suggesting that Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel has divided loyalties because he has "proclaimed himself to be a Zionist".

Labour leader Ed Miliband used a Labour Friends of Israel lunch this week to emphasise his family connection to the country that gave refuge to his grandmother. In a highly personal speech to mark the publication by LFI of a collection of essays entitled Making the Progressive Case for Israel, he said: "I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the state of Israel".

The MP for Bury South has been given the role of Shadow Secretary for International Development in the Shadow Cabinet shake-up.

Ivan Lewis, who is Jewish and a former vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, has spent the past year as the Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport.

He has been in office since 1997 and as of the last election he held a 3,292 majority.

Ed Miliband has once again referred to his Jewish roots in his party conference address.

The Labour leader, who was chosen for the post on Rosh Hashanah last year, spoke of how his parents fled the Nazis then came to Britain "and embraced its values".

The Middle East peace process is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes.

It is always chastening to bear in mind, for example, that a two-state solution would result in a so-called "apartheid" Israel with a significant population of Arab citizens and a supposedly "free" Palestine without Jews.

The Labour Party should resist pressure to embrace the boycott movement and should remain a staunch supporter of Israel under Ed Miliband's leadership, according to Labour's defence spokesman, Jim Murphy.

He said the party's decision to urge the government to vote for Palestinian statehood should not be seen as a betrayal of Israel, and warned that nothing would be solved by "a one-off symbolic

The Labour leader has taken time out of his preparations for next week's party conference to extend his good wishes to the British Jewish community on the New Year.

Ed Miliband, who won the contest to succeed Gordon Brown on Rosh Hashanah last year, said he hoped the year ahead would be "filled with peace, happiness and success and may your families be healthy and happy".

Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander has said the Labour party backs recognition of a Palestine state this week at the UN General Assembly.

Mr Alexander has written to William Hague setting out his party’s position on the statehood bid.

Labour party members will go back to the polls next Wednesday after none of the four leadership candidates gained the 40 per cent of votes necessary to win Monday's primaries.

For the party that founded Israel and governed it for its first three decades, the choice will be between two avowed social-democrats, Shelly Yachimovich and Amir Peretz, who emerged from this week's vote almost on level

Labour Friends of Israel has selected John Woodcock as its new chairman.

Mr Woodcock, MP for Barrow and Furness, had been a vice-chair since September last year and takes on the role following the death of David Cairns in May.