There was little in the way of argument or dissent among Britain’s political and media establishment when, on Wednesday, the House of Commons voted to declare the political wing of the Palestinian Islamist organisation Hamas a terrorist organisation.

The move means Hamas is, in its entirety, now classified as a terrorist organisation in the UK, something which originally just applied to the Izz a-Din al-Qassam brigades, the group’s armed wing. Professing public support for Hamas—such as by wearing a t-shirt—could now risk you up to ten years in prison.

The justification for the ban, as put forward by Home Secretary Priti Patel, was to oppose antisemitism. Hamas, a group based in the Middle East with no presence in the UK, somehow made ‘Jewish people routinely feel unsafe’ in Britain.

Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds announced Labour’s support for the ban in parliament while Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy, told Jewish News that the ban was ‘absolutely the right thing to do’ and claimed there was ‘no longer any meaningful distinction to be made between the military and political wings of Hamas’.

The actual impact of the ban is debatable. Inevitably, charities and NGOs who operate in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip will run into difficulties—one reason why the original distinction between the two wings was made—while those who desire to disrupt and prevent pro-Palestinian events across the UK will no doubt use allegations of Hamas support, no matter how tenuous, as another weapon in their arsenal.

But the fact is that the ban on Hamas has little to do with politics in Israel-Palestine, and everything to do with domestic politics.

In the UK, as well as in many other countries, Israel-Palestine has become a tool in a right-wing culture war that has been raging for many years.

The roots of this are in America, of course. It has led to the absurd sight of white supremacists and nativists appearing at fundraising events and pushing bills that nominally combat antisemitism and outright antisemites declaring themselves staunch supporters of Israel and attacking leftists as antisemites themselves for expressing pro-Palestinian positions.

For their part, left-wingers’ interest in the Palestinians and their suffering is no more disproportionate or sinister than those who showed primary concern for apartheid South Africa in the 70s and 80s rather than the Mobuto or Idi Amin dictatorships. Attempts to suggest otherwise or insinuate antisemitic intent by supporters of Israel range from being disingenuous to ragingly paranoid and should be ignored.

The real question is this: why do so many right-wingers support Israel?

The issue lies in the Cold War when, compared to other pro-Western governments (such as Saudi Arabia, Zaire, South Korea, or Haiti) Israel’s apparent commitment to liberal democracy, rule of law, women’s rights and press freedom made it a model that could be publicly boasted of by Western Cold Warriors—even as the country continued to oppress, abuse, and subject to military rule millions of Palestinians and allied with right-wing dictatorships in apartheid South Africa, Argentina, Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere.

More recently, the 9/11 attacks have created a widespread perception that the Western world is at war with Islam and Muslims. Though a minority of Palestinians are Christian, this has fed into the Israel-Palestine conflict and created an image in the mind of many of a plucky, embattled Israel standing at the gates of civilisation trying to push back the Islamic hordes.

At the same time, the Left—due to its opposition to post-9/11 Islamophobia, authoritarian counter-terrorism measures, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—has increasingly been portrayed as anti-Western, unpatriotic, and, consequently, antisemitic.

In the UK, the issue crashed into the mainstream when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, and it is this which still remains the main impetus for gestures like the Hamas ban.

As a politician, Corbyn is not only avowedly pro-Palestinian, he was also a leading anti-war campaigner and opponent of Islamophobia, even at a time shortly after 9/11 when anti-Muslim sentiment was largely normalised.

Between 2015 and 2019, large chunks of the media and political establishment (both in the Conservative Party and his own Labour Party) dug up anything and everything, no matter how tenuous, that could be used to paint the Labour leader as illegitimate, even being branded an ‘existential threat’ to Britain’s Jewish community at one point.

Ironically, Corbyn’s views on Palestine do not actually differ much from the position the Labour Party has maintained since long before his leadership, and he is far from the only leader of a British political party to talk with or advocate talking to Hamas. But his willingness to suggest that, perhaps, the Palestinians are the wronged party in Israel-Palestine has been the crucial difference, and the implicit questioning of the legitimacy of the Israeli state that comes with it is what so alarms pro-Israel pundits.

Even as the Conservative government pushed its notorious ‘hostile environment’ policy and became in engulfed in the Windrush scandal, and as senior officials scaremongered about refugees, immigration, and freedom of movement, the Tories relished the opportunity to get one over on the ‘anti-racist’ left, while media talking heads (including people nominally on the left) repeatedly disingenuously questioned why the Left had a different standard on anti-racism when it came to the Jewish community.

The result has had a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian activism in the UK. Laws have been proposed, mirroring those passed in a number of US states, to ban support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to non-violently pressure Israel into following its obligations under international law.

Ministers have moved to pressure universities into adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism despite concerns that its examples—such as suggesting that Israel is a ‘racist endeavor’—would stifle freedom of speech and penalise pro-Palestinian activism.

The current leadership of the Labour Party, stung by the Corbyn controversy, has attempted to reposition itself as avowedly pro-Israel. In a speech last week to the Labour Friends of Israel, Keir Starmer repeated falsehoods about Israel’s founding, effectively denying the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland and claimed that opposition to Zionism ‘alone denies the Jewish people alone a right to self-determination.’

The week before they also joined in with the Conservative government and pro-Israel pundits in denouncing a fairly run-of-the-mill protest against Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, even backing a police investigation should it arise.

The fact that Hotovely’s political views are considered extreme even in Israel (she opposes mixed-marriages between Jews and Arabs and has invited neo-fascists into the Israeli parliament on the subject) and that she entirely opposes the creation of a Palestinian state is apparently not relevant—according to Nick Thomas-Symonds, ‘antisemitism has no place in our society’, and that’s all that matters on the subject.

It was inevitable that Labour would end up supporting the Hamas ban—not because they believe it will have any tangible effect either in Israel-Palestine or in combatting antisemitism in the UK, but because they fear being associated with the ‘anti-Western’ left and believe they have to take sides in the Israel-Palestine culture war.

The Conservative Party knew it too—Labour would either oppose it and be branded friends of terrorists and antisemites, or support it and lend legitimacy to the Conservative Party’s ‘anti-racist’ credentials. What any of it means for Israelis and Palestinians, is apparently irrelevant.

There is, of course, little for the Left to admire about Hamas. While the overt appeals to antisemitic conspiracy theories that peppered their original 1988 charter have been removed and the group tends these days to appeal more to Palestinian nationalism and human rights than theocracy, they are still largely hostile to women’s rights, LGBT people, and secularism.

If you can look at the situation in Gaza—where as a result of Israel’s blockade unemployment is around 50%, 97% of drinking water is contaminated, and food and medical supplies are in short supply—and think that the primary problem is Hamas, then you have an ulterior motive, plain and simple.

The real, day-to-day suffering that Palestinians face, combined with decades of dispossession, exile, killing, repression, and erasure, is the key issue. It is not a ‘complicated’ issue as so many seem to like saying, but it is something that needs to be taken seriously and on its own terms.

At the moment, British politicians apparently are simply not interested in doing so.