Could UK MPs’ social-media activity be helping fuel antisemitism in Britain?

At what point does legitimate political campaigning become something more consequential?

That is a question Britain urgently needs to ask about the extraordinary social-media output of some Members of Parliament whose public campaigning appears to be overwhelmingly concentrated on Israel and Gaza, sometimes to the exclusion of almost every other international conflict or humanitarian crisis. There is nothing inherently wrong with campaigning for Palestinian rights. Nor should criticism of the Israeli Government automatically be labelled antisemitic. Democratic politics depends upon the freedom to scrutinise and condemn governments, including Israel.

But there is a legitimate question about what happens when one particular conflict becomes the overwhelming focus of a politician’s public communication, and when increasingly emotive and accusatory language becomes a central part of that campaigning.

Since the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, and particularly since Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana emerged as the leading figures associated with Your Party in 2025, Gaza has become a dominant theme of their extensive online presence. Their combined social-media reach is enormous, with Sultana alone having hundreds of thousands of followers across different platforms.

That gives such politicians something more than a political voice. It gives them a powerful broadcasting platform. But with influence comes responsibility.

Most British MPs initially condemned the Hamas attacks. Yet as the Gaza war has continued, references to the 1,200 people murdered and approximately 250 hostages taken on 7 October have become far less prominent in some political campaigning, while accusations of genocide, apartheid and collective punishment have become increasingly central to the rhetoric.

Those are not neutral words. They carry enormous emotional and political force. Nor are all of these descriptions uncontested. There are serious legal, academic and political disagreements about how concepts such as genocide and apartheid should properly be applied to Israel. That does not mean such arguments cannot be made. It means that they should be made carefully, accurately and with appropriate acknowledgement of the competing evidence and interpretations.

Social media, however, is not particularly good at nuance. A carefully qualified academic argument can disappear into the algorithm. “Israel is committing genocide” becomes the headline, the graphic, the repost and eventually, for some audiences, an unquestioned fact. And that is where political responsibility should enter the picture.

Social-media algorithms thrive on engagement. Emotive material attracts attention. Attention produces interaction; interaction produces greater visibility; greater visibility produces yet more interaction. The result can be a political echo chamber in which increasingly extreme material is encountered, shared and normalised.

Politicians with enormous followings are not merely passive observers of this process. They are active participants in it. That does not mean that an MP is responsible for every hateful comment made by a follower. It does not mean that an MP causes every antisemitic incident that occurs after they have posted about Gaza. Such a claim would be both unreasonable and impossible to establish.

But the opposite extreme is equally problematic. Politicians cannot reasonably argue that their words exist in a vacuum. If a particular form of political messaging repeatedly contributes to an environment in which Jews are collectively associated with the actions of the Israeli Government, then that deserves scrutiny, more so when the people doing the messaging have enormous audiences and considerable political influence.

There is also a striking question of proportionality. Since October 2023, the world has witnessed devastating conflicts and humanitarian catastrophes in Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nigeria and elsewhere. Millions of people have suffered through war, displacement, persecution and famine.

Yet Gaza has received an extraordinary level of political and social-media attention in Britain. Why is this?

Perhaps the answer is simply political conviction. Perhaps some politicians genuinely believe that Israel’s actions represent a uniquely important international issue. That is their right. But when one conflict receives vastly greater political attention than other catastrophes involving enormous human suffering, it is legitimate to ask whether there are other factors at work.

And this is particularly relevant when some politicians have themselves used language or shared material that critics have regarded as inflammatory, misleading or insufficiently attentive to the distinction between the Israeli Government, Israelis and Jews generally. That distinction matters enormously. Israel is a state. The Israeli Government is a government. Zionism is a political movement with many different interpretations. Jews are a religious and ethnic community scattered across the world. They are not interchangeable.

Yet political rhetoric can sometimes blur those distinctions, and once that happens, legitimate criticism of Israel can become something much more troubling. Antisemitism does not always announce itself with a swastika or an explicit declaration of hatred towards Jews. Sometimes it appears through conspiracy theories and a collective attribution of responsibility. Sometimes through the conspiratorial portrayal of Jews as uniquely powerful, uniquely controlling or uniquely responsible for events in which they have no involvement.

And sometimes it emerges when Israel is portrayed not simply as a government whose policies can be condemned, but as an embodiment of absolute evil, while those who identify with, support or simply defend Israel are themselves treated with suspicion. That does not mean that describing Israeli actions in extremely strong terms is automatically antisemitic. It means that the language and context matter. So do the associations of prominent politicians. Where elected representatives head, support or appear alongside controversial political organisations and campaigns, they should expect legitimate scrutiny of the rhetoric and behaviour associated with those organisations.

Likewise, where politicians express support for, or associate themselves with, individuals who have expressed support for proscribed organisations such as Hamas or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the public is entitled to ask precisely what is being supported, why, and whether the distinction between legitimate political advocacy and support for extremist causes is being maintained. Again, the principle is simple, association is not proof of guilt. But neither should association place politicians beyond scrutiny.

There is another uncomfortable issue that deserves greater attention, historical memory. The extraordinary attention devoted to the creation and subsequent history of Israel sometimes appears to exist in isolation from other enormous episodes of population displacement and communal violence.

The 1947 Partition of British India, to create a “homeland for South Asian Muslims”, for example, produced one of the largest forced migrations in modern history, with estimates commonly placing the number displaced at around 14–16 million and the death toll somewhere around one million.

That tragedy does not diminish the suffering of Palestinians. Nor does Palestinian suffering diminish the suffering of Jews. The point is rather that history is complicated, and political arguments become weaker when historical comparisons are selected purely because they support a predetermined narrative. Yet the Israel haters linger on the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, never mentioning the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.

Britain needs a political culture capable of holding more than one truth at the same time. Palestinians can have suffered terribly. Israel can be subjected to legitimate and severe criticism. Hamas can and should be universally condemned for its atrocities not just to Israel but to its own people who condemn them. Israeli governments can be held accountable for their actions. And antisemitism can be confronted wherever it appears.

These positions are not mutually exclusive. Yet Britain’s Jewish community is entitled to ask whether political rhetoric about Israel is sometimes spilling over into hostility towards Jews themselves. That question has become more urgent, not less. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in Britain during 2025, the second-highest annual total it has recorded.

Nobody should pretend that every incident of antisemitism can be attributed to political campaigning. Clearly it cannot. Antisemitism has many sources, far-right extremism, Islamist extremism, conspiracy theories, inherited prejudice, online radicalisation and the behaviour of individuals acting entirely independently of mainstream politics. But that does not mean political leaders should ignore the atmosphere in which their words are received.

Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and Green Party leader Zack Polanski have enormous political platforms. They have every right to use those platforms to campaign on Gaza, Israel and Palestinian rights. Nut not to the exclusion of other world conflicts. But enormous platforms bring enormous responsibilities. Yes, they cannot control every follower or prevent every hateful comment. They cannot be blamed for every act committed by someone who has encountered one of their posts. But neither should they be able to wash their hands of the consequences of what they repeatedly amplify.

The argument is not that politicians should stop criticising Israel. It is that they should recognise the difference between informing an audience and inflaming one. They should ask whether the material they share is properly evidenced and challenge misinformation even when it supports their own political position. They should distinguish between governments and populations. They should distinguish between Jews and Israel. And they should recognise that a political message does not cease to have consequences simply because the person who posted it did not intend those consequences.

This is especially important for elected representatives. They are not ordinary social-media influencers. They hold public office and have platforms that most ordinary citizens could never hope to command.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is not: “Are Corbyn, Sultana or Polanski perhaps antisemites?” That is far too simplistic and, without specific evidence, potentially unfair, despite the fact that they do on occasions espose antisemitic views. The more important question is considerably harder. Are some of Britain’s most influential political social-media voices helping to create an environment in which antisemitic attitudes can flourish?

If the answer is even potentially yes, that question cannot simply be dismissed as an attack on legitimate criticism of Israel. Britain is already struggling with antisemitism. Jewish schools, synagogues, community organisations and individuals should not have to wonder whether political rhetoric about Israel is going to be converted into hostility towards them. That they need high security fences and security guards, something no other ethnic minority has to have.

And politicians who command enormous audiences have a particular responsibility to think beyond what they intended to say. Because once something has been posted, it cannot simply be taken back. It can be copied, shared, distorted, weaponised and can reach people the original author never intended to reach. Or, for that matter, those very people the author intended to reach who are established antisemites.

So perhaps, in the age of social media, the question politicians should ask themselves before pressing “post” is not simply “What do I mean?”

It should be, “What am I helping to amplify?” Because with influence comes responsibility.