Labour's leadership has been seriously influenced by Labour Friends of Israel for a number of years, including in financial terms. This is well supported by evidence.

It and its acolytes were behind the undemocratic unseating and eventual expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn, who certainly had issues to deal with which he tackled in a particularly clumsy and leaden way, but in my opinion - as a Labour activist a long time ago and now squarely in the SNP camp, so something of an outsider with no axe to grind on this subject - was unfairly pillioried for his stance on Israel-Palestine, as were a number of other Labour Party members who were also harried and expelled. I know some American DU members (quite possibly some UK DU members too) think of him and his ilk as pariahs, but I've found the filter of US media coverage of events in Palestine is very different to those in other parts of the world, not least in the UK. The reality is that Labour under Corbyn was no more anti-Semitic than the general population, as a number of studies have shown, and certainly not worse than the Tories.

Meanwhile, a hideous blight of Islamophobia has been allowed to fester all but ignored in both Labour and the Tory Party, as pointed out exhaustively by the likes of Baronness Warsi, and this has come to a head in various communities because of the media coverage of the current phase of the long-term conflict. It's little wonder if substantial portions of the Muslim community wish a pox on both the Labour and Tory houses because the hypocrisy and craven twisting and turning in the face of events has been totally blatant and indefensible.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, our soon-to-be ex-First Minister Humza Yousaf is an observant Muslim who has gained respect across communities in recent months by embracing the Scottish Jewish community in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October atrocities and highlighting the plight of the Palestinian population by sharing the threats to and terror of his own Muslim in-laws who were visiting Palestine at the time and were stranded in fear of their lives until they ultimately managed to escape to safety.

So we have a different political landscape here, but there may well be warnings for the Democrats if they continue to support the Israeli government's wanton devastation of Palestine and its population.

I'm on record as having a general rule not to discuss Israel-Palestine issues on US social media as long and bitter experience has shown me it's a futile exercise that just excites pointless ill feeling and reactive accusations of anti-Semitism etc. without swaying opinion one way or another, let alone improving matters on the ground. I'm making a rare exception here as EarlG raised the question, and this is my honest response.