Before I left for the Your Party rally in Manchester, I carefully looked at myself in the mirror. My Star of David necklace and rings with Hebrew etchings were off, and I ran through, yet again, the alternative name and identity I had prepared in case anyone asked. After all, it’s not every day that a Jewish-Israeli woman sneaks alone into the meeting of a party that proudly describes itself as the ‘only anti-Zionist party in the entire country.’

The party’s obsession with Israel and Palestine was astonishing

So I tried to blend in. All I had to do was temporarily become a useful idiot: I enthusiastically collected leaflets from old ladies with genocidal slogans on their T-shirts, and nodded and clapped every time a speaker promised to ‘free Palestine’ and abolish Zionism, as if we were sitting in Khan Younis rather than an overheated room in the north of England. The confusion was understandable, since the only national flags on display were two massive Palestinian flags.

Among the trade unionists, independent councillors and activists, the main speaker was MP Zarah Sultana, who left Labour in July to co-found Your Party (a provisional name) with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, effectively becoming his number two.

Beyond reheated Marxist talking points that would have made even Lenin yawn (‘We are fighting for the fundamental transformation of society… That means workers controlling the means of production’, as Sultana put it), the party’s obsession with Israel and Palestine was astonishing. Sudan, which is currently experiencing........

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