Israel supporters renew anti-Corbyn smears amid Labour turmoil

Amid the leadership turmoil in the Labour Party, pro-Israel lobbyists are rebooting their antisemitism smears to stave off even a mention of Jeremy Corbyn’s name.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Times News on 15 May that part of reunifying the left meant:

reinviting Jeremy Corbyn back into the Labour Party.

But Corbyn has a long record of consistently supporting Palestinian rights. So Israel supporters hate him. And many spent years trying to derail his leadership of the Labour Party. That means the mere mention of Corbyn now has sparked a renewal of rage in pro-Israel and Labour circles.

Former Israeli embassy employee, pusher of smears, and election loser Ella Rose-Jacobs

Ella Rose-Jacobs, national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), had a particular problem with the thought of Labour making amends with Corbyn. That’s unsurprising, considering that the JLM seemingly relaunched itself to fight Corbyn’s leadership and later proudly proclaimed it had helped to ‘see Corbyn off’.

As the Canary recently reported, Rose-Jacobs also once worked at the Israeli embassy, appeared in Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into Israeli influence in British politics, and helped to push antisemitism smears against Corbyn and his supporters. She was a Labour councillor too, until she lost her seat in this year’s local election.

This person went straight from working at Netanyahu’s embassy in London to heading the “Jewish Labour Movement”

JLM is an Israel lobby group that weaponises antisemitism to destroy critics of the Zionist entity

Doesn’t work anymore. Everyone knows what’s going on https://t.co/0LbAeAmYTe pic.twitter.com/xJhRtfi9vX

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) May 17, 2026

Ella Rose is currently part of an aggressive push back by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) against John McDonnell’s proposal that any new leader of the Labour Party should overturn Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion and invite him to return to the Party.

Ella Rose is the current interim… pic.twitter.com/2Fx2bxLjId

— MikeD (@mjdaly57) May 18, 2026

Rose-Jacobs also attracted attention for her dreams of physically assaulting Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker:

As journalist Asa Winstanley reported in 2022:

Rose had been hired by the JLM as director while she still worked at the Israeli embassy in London. The Electronic Intifada was the first to expose this link, in 2016.

In 2017 Rose was the subject of complaints by Labour members after Al Jazeera revealed in The Lobby that she had made comments implying she would like to physically attack left-wing anti-racist activist Jackie Walker.

“I can take her,” she told Al Jazeera’s undercover journalist, boasting of her prowess in the Israeli combat technique Krav Maga. “She’s five foot two and tiny.” Rose also said her critics should “die in a hole.”

Labour Friends of Krav Maga have been triggered https://t.co/vjzUGCWTGm pic.twitter.com/9XpMN2ZVEy

— Hon. PolProf of Agile Ceremonies (@CeilNoyle) May 17, 2026

Winstanley also wrote about the links between Rose-Jacobs, the JLM, the Israeli embassy, and the campaign against Jeremy Corbyn:

The Jewish Labour Movement, founded in 2004, was revived in September 2015, the same month Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader.

This was done in order to “battle” the new left-wing, Palestine campaigning leader, a transcript of an undercover recording obtained by The Electronic Intifada last month shows.

As part of this effort, [then JLM chair Jeremy] Newmark hired a new staff member, recruiting her out of the Israeli embassy.

In another secret transcript, obtained by The Electronic Intifada last year, former director Ella Rose admitted that her group worked in close coordination with the Israeli embassy and its agents.

“We work with [Israeli embassy spy] Shai [Masot], we know him very well,” she told an undercover journalist in 2016.

The JLM website says Rose-Jacobs:

also serves as a trustee of KeshetUK, having previously been a trustee of Yachad, the London Jewish Forum and the Union of Jewish Students.

Yachad has also played a role in targeting prominent voices speaking up for Palestinian rights.

Little risk of Corbyn returning to Labour, but you can sense the panic among Israel apologists

Other Israel supporters have also come out against the prospect of Corbyn returning to Labour. One was anti-Palestinian censor Mike Katz, a former JLM chair and one of Labour’s whips in the House of Lords.

A key part of Keir Starmer’s project as leader of the Labour Party, of course, has been its commitment to Israel and underplaying of its crimes. Historian David Edgerton recently wrote about the death of the party, calling it:

a party deeply committed to the alliance with the United States, and the one country with which the US has a special relationship, Israel.

It’s of little surprise, then, that prominent figures hoping to take over from Starmer are hardly clamouring for human rights champion Corbyn’s return to the party.

Sources close to Andy Burnham, for example, have already said the Labour leadership hopeful is against readmitting Corbyn. And considering Corbyn’s cutting critique of Wes Streeting, the former health secretary is unlikely to call for the former leader’s return either:

As Health Secretary, Wes Streeting deepened the privatisation of our NHS and handed over our data to Palantir, a company involved in genocide.

I am sure his friend Peter Mandelson is very proud.

Time to reinstate our NHS as a fully public service — and kick Palantir out!

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 14, 2026

In short, there’s little chance of Corbyn re-entering the party. But Israel supporters like Rose-Jacobs would love to keep it that way, showing a full commitment to warding off even the remotest possibility that this situation could change.

The problem is, the cynical smears of Israel apologists don’t work any more. Because the horrors of the genocide in Gaza have shown once and for all that supporters of Israel are very much on the wrong side of history, and Corbyn is very much on the right side.

Featured image via Getty Images/Brook Mitchell