A Labour candidate has insisted she believes her band's song that includes the anti-Israel lyric "from the river to the sea" is not antisemitic.
Alana Bates, who is contesting the Conservative/Liberal Democrat marginal seat of St Ives in Cornwall, played guitar in a band called The Tribunes that performed a song that included the words "from the river to the sea" and said: "Justice should not have to wait, Israel’s an apartheid state, Justice should not have to wait, Israel is a racist state".
The chant "from the river to the sea" is a common refrain by anti-Israel campaigners who advocate the dismantling of the Jewish state. It has long been a Hamas rallying cry.
But Ms Bates told the Sun: "It’s not a political manifesto. I didn’t write it for a start. It’s a song.
