THE Labour Government has remained silent after the chair of the party's most prominent pro-Israel group attacked the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jon Pearce, the Labour MP who chairs the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) group – which has close ties to the very top of the UK Government, said his organisation believes that the ICC warrant is “morally suspect [and] legally dubious”.
“We wouldn’t have dropped Britain’s objection to it,” Pearce added in a column for the Jerusalem Post, which was written after a trip to Israel in which he met with top ministers including the country’s president Isaac Herzog, and first reported in the UK by Turn Left Media's Lewis Aaron.
Pearce further said that LFI opposes the UK Government’s decision to suspend 30 out of around 350 weapons export licences to Israel, and tacitly criticised Labour for restoring funding to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
LFI also does not reveal its funders, but in 2017, its now-director Michael Rubin was filmed saying the group and the Israeli embassy “work really closely together”.
The group did send an email confirming that Pearce is its chair and that it currently has three vice-chairs: MPs Sharon Hodgson, Damien Egan, and Mike Tapp. LFI then tried to recall that email, though it is unclear why.
According to a list which is no longer on the LFI website but can be viewed through the Internet Archive, some of Labour’s most senior ministers were members of the group.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, and Crime Minister Diana Johnson were all LFI vice-chairs before last July’s General Election.
Asked if those ministers still supported LFI and backed Pearce’s criticism of the ICC, all five of their respective UK Government departments refused to comment.
“If I were them, I would be deeply concerned that a fellow colleague had made comments that would associate me with suggesting that we're calling into question the International Criminal Court,” SNP MP Chris Law said. “That's being as mild as possible.
“They're probably not commenting because they don't want division, but at the same time, silence is complicity.”
“The bottom line for me is the UK Government needs to make a statement to say that we fully uphold international rules-based order and international law, that we are fully committed to the International Criminal Court,” Law, the SNP MP for Dundee and his party’s international development spokesperson at Westminster, went on.
“I think the UK Government should make itself extremely clear. And for those individuals that are in the Labour Friends of Israel group, I would have thought it'd be wise for them to make it clear that the views held by Jon Pearce are not their views.
“If you don't get that, that's deeply worrying and should be raised in parliament because when the Government goes silent on stuff, it causes real concern about whether or not they still uphold the values, in this case, of the ICC.”
Law said the issue was particularly pressing given Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC rather than uphold its obligations and arrest Netanyahu when he visited the country last week.
“What horrendous timing for Jon Pearce to write such a thing, because he's taking the side of leaders such as Victor Orbán or Donald Trump, which is not a great look, to say the least,” the SNP MP said.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has been evasive about whether Labour would live up to the obligation to see Netanyahu arrested should he set foot on UK soil, saying only that “there is a proper legal process that has to be followed”.
The ICC Act 2001 obliges UK ministers to see ICC warrants executed, with the “proper legal process” being only that it must be rubber-stamped by a legal official “satisfied that the warrant appears to have been issued by the ICC”.
Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds, and Kyle all attended an LFI event at the Labour Party conference last September, with The Independent reporting that it saw “one of the most significant and largest turnouts by senior ministers” of the entire conference.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner also attended, reportedly in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s place. Rayner, Reeves, and Pearce all spoke at the event, with Reeves thanking LFI “from the bottom of [her] heart” for changing Labour.
According to Declassified UK, Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds, Johnson, and Kyle have all visited Israel with LFI, and all but Kyle have accepted financial assistance from the Israeli state.
Other Labour ministers including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and Media Minister Chris Bryant have also gone on LFI-funded trips.
During Pearce’s visit to Israel late last month, he met with the country’s president Herzog, deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and Democrats leader Yair Golan.
After breaching a ceasefire agreement last month, Israel has ramped up its attacks on Gaza which experts say amount to genocide. Last week, Netanyahu said Israel was “cutting up” the Palestinian region with a new “security corridor” through its south.
