SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar said that Keir Starmer’s comments on Gaza lacked “empathy” and “humanity,” according to a report.
Sarwar outlined his frustration during a meeting with a pro-Labour Muslim group over Starmer’s backing for Israel cutting off humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
According to a leaked account of a meeting with MSPs and the Labour Muslim Network obtained by the Daily Record, Sarwar (below) also said a “repair job” with Muslim voters would be required “every day” until the next Westminster election.
Specifically, Sarwar was upset with Starmer over an LBC radio interview on October 11 in which he suggested Israel had the “right” to withhold water and supplies from Gaza.
The Labour leader was later forced to clarify his comments, saying he mean that “Israel has the right to self-defence” rather than “saying that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines”.
Sarwar’s meeting with the Labour Muslim Network came on October 16.
He said: “I recognise what you say around the hurt, particularly felt by Muslim communities. If anything, I would say you downplayed the hurt, rather than played it up.
“I can tell you first-hand how devastated people are right across the Muslim community. And that is not to negate or talk down the devastation felt in the Jewish community.”
He continued: “That humanity and empathy is, if we are being blunt about it, what has been missing from some of the statements which has caused so much of the hurt, where it feels as if there is an inconsistency, or a dehumanising, or not seeing the value of one life to be equal to another life.”
The Scottish Labour leader also said Starmer’s (below) Commons statement earlier that day had had been a “lot better” but that “ideally it should have been a lot sooner”.
He said that “empathy” had to be included in “every single statement” that is made from “every single Labour voice”.
“That empathy, which includes statements like ‘every life is equal,’ ‘every Palestinian life is equal to every Israeli life,’ ‘one life lost in Palestine, one life lost in Israel is one life too many,’ and I think that level of humanity has been the bit that has been missing,” Sarwar added.
“I made the point to senior colleagues – you can work out who they are – saying it shouldn’t take a Muslim voice in Scotland to be getting people to understand the impact on Asian communities across the country of what language is being said, but sadly that’s what it’s been, or that’s what it felt like.
“We have got to hope the [Starmer] statement today acts as a basis for the future direction. I think we have got to be cautious about that, though, but I think we have got to keep pressing.”
Sarwar is at odds with Starmer over Gaza with the Scottish Labour leader having called for a ceasefire – a position Starmer has thus far refused to adopt.
Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP Michael Shanks has also backed Starmer’s stance.
Elsewhere, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has faced heavy criticism for claiming an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp could be “legally justified”.
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: “We do not comment on leaks from private meetings.
“Labour is united in calling for an end of violence, the protection of civilians, the release of hostages and the delivery of vital humanitarian aid.
“We continue to support a two state solution, with a free, secure and sovereign Israel alongside a free, secure and sovereign Palestine.
“This decades long conflict is not about the Labour Party and should not be trivialised by trying to make it about that.”
