Prominent political parties often experience embarrassment from their youth members. Last weekend it was Young Labour’s turn.
Labour officially supports a two state solution for Israel-Palestine. The party’s youth wing voted down a motion endorsing it.
It seems clear that their real objection to the proposal, which strongly criticised Israel for its “military occupation”, was that it wasn’t nearly condemnatory enough.
There are Israelis and Palestinians working together for peace, the motion declared, recommending that Young Labour’s conference express support for them. But left-wing students brought up on a diet of BDS appear uninterested in dialogue, or even peace. The narrative they buy into does not consider that there are two groups of people, each with a strong claim on the land. It sees Israel as an absolute evil which needs to be scourged from the map.
If this is the future of Labour, it’s a very bleak one for Israel supporters.