Rachel Reeves: I’m an unapologetic Zionist

Reeves, who was the first Labour chancellor to address the annual LFI event since Gordon Brown in 2007, also attacked the anti-Israel protests that took place in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s assault on Israel on October 7 2023.

While “we all respect the right to protest”, she said, “let's also be clear, that the first anti-Israel protests occurred while Israel was still under attack, that the words, actions and behaviour of some of those who have protested against Israel over the past two or so years have strayed into and even been driven by hate and prejudice and by antisemitism”.

Reeves, a longstanding LFI supporter, who left her position as a vice-chair of the organisation due to her appointment as Chancellor, denounced the slew of anti-Israel incidents in Britain in the wake of October 7, and the subsequent war in Gaza, that has created a hostile environment for British Jews.

Reeling off a list of examples, she said: “Ripping down pictures of children abducted by Hamas; chanting ‘death to the IDF’ and ‘globalise the intifada’; equating the actions of Israel with those who murdered six million Jews; propagating dark conspiracies about the supposed power of the ‘Zionist lobby’; stirring the pot of community tensions to prevent Israeli football fans travelling to our second biggest city; demanding that Jewish musicians, mediums and artists engage in some kind of performative denunciation of Israel before they are even allowed to perform”

“Does anyone seriously think that these are not antisemitic acts?”

She added: “Antisemitism is a crime. Gaslighting Jews simply compounds that crime.”

The Chancellor continued: “We must speak out, because every word has consequences, and every silence does too. That means that we must not tacitly accept the distortion that Zionism is something that has to be apologised for, or worse yet, a label to be surrendered to conspiracy theorists and antisemites. The progressive friends of Israel – whatever their criticism of particular governments – must be willing to say, unapologetically, ‘I am a Zionist.’”

During her near 30-minute address to the gathering in central London, Reeves referenced a trip she made alongside schoolchildren in her Leeds constituency to Auschwitz shortly after she was first elected to Parliament in 2010 with the Holocaust Educational Trust and the group’s chief executive Karen Pollock MBE.

“It was a cold and very bleak February day. It was a very moving day. We paused at the end of the tour for a short service of reflection. We intoned the words that we repeat every Holocaust Memorial: ‘Never again’.”

“And then, two years ago, Hamas inflicted the greatest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Shoah. Hamas’s intent was to murder Jews for being Jews. It murdered young children and Holocaust survivors, pensioners and peace activists. Partygoers at the Supernova Music Festival and young men and women serving on the border attempting to preserve the fragile ceasefire which Hamas had repeatedly broken.”

She added that Hamas “engaged in the premeditated rape, torture and mutilation of Israeli civilians” and said the group proudly “celebrated its pogrom”.

“Those crimes led to a war that has subjected the people of Gaza to two years of hell while Hamas leadership hid in a tunnel network the size of the London Underground. It used the people of Gaza, their schools, their hospitals, as human shields, ‘necessary sacrifices’, in the words of [former Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar”.

The chancellor stressed, however, that the “actions of the Israeli government are not and must not be beyond criticism”, which the Labour government “did not shy away from”.

“The scenes from Gaza on our television are shocking and they're heartbreaking. No parent doesn't feel pain and empathy when they see other people's children suffer”, she said, adding that the fragile ceasefire agreed in October provided a “glimmer of hope.

She also spoke of the “joy and relief” at the scenes of hostages returning home to be united with their families.

Elsewhere in her speech, Reeves announced that the Government would host representatives from Israeli and Palestinian civil society in the new year, in order to “ensure civil society groups are at the forefront of our efforts to advance long term peace and a two state solution”.

She concluded by pledging to “keep up the fight for a politics of moderation” amid rising antisemitism from the far-left and far-right.

“Please be in no doubt. Israel has many friends in the Labour Party … There have always been, there will always be Labour friends of Israel, and I am proud to be among them.”

Earlier in the event, LFI director Michael Rubin told the crowd that many in the room had been “deeply disappointed by some of the decisions made by the Government since it took office”, especially “the timing and manner of a recognition of the Palestinian state”, announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September.

However, he also praised Reeves for her “long-standing and unshakeable” commitment to Israel and the Jewish community.