During the years when Jeremy Corbyn led the UK Labor party, and anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks became a full-blown crisis, Chris Williamson became one of several members of parliament who attracted attention for his obsessive hatred of Israel, his paranoid beliefs about the power of the “Zionist lobby,” and his dismissiveness of the concerns of Jewish leaders. Since his expulsion from the party and departure from parliament, his activities have included a weekly radio show sponsored by the Iranian government called Palestine Declassified. Marc Goldberg reviews Williamson’s recent memoir, Ten Years Hard Labor:

From 2017 until his suspension in 2019 it is fair to say that Williamson represented for many one of the main symbols of Labor’s anti-Semitism problem. According to Williamson this is because he was “in the crosshairs of the Zionist lobby.” A lobby which he describes as “aggressive” and “fanatical.” He claims that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which found that Labor had behaved unlawfully to its Jewish members, had been “appropriated by the Zionist lobby.” What precisely the Zionist lobby is we are left to ponder. [The major institutions of Anglo-Jewry, along with the] Jewish Labor Movement, are all mentioned in the book as if they are a part of it.

Williamson’s major criticism of Labor is that it took complaints of anti-Semitism too seriously:

Williamson criticizes Corbyn because “rather than rebutting the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears, he indulged them.” He refers to a “fake ‘anti-Semitism crisis’” within the Labor party. In fact, the book is peppered with references to the “smear” of anti-Semitism and also claims it was “bogus.” The attempt to argue both that he thinks that the Labor party had done an excellent job of tackling the “scourge of Judeophobia” and that it was a “smear” at the same time appears to be contradictory.

Williamson claims that his fellow MP Naz Shah’s public apology for her own previous anti-Semitic discourse was “craven” and that one of her [controversial social-media] posts, implying that Jewish Israelis should leave their homes and live in the U.S., was “a perfectly reasonable and moderate observation to make” adding that “there was no way that I was going to fold like a deck of cards as Shah had done in the face of a coordinated smear operation by the Zionist lobby.”

At present, Williamson laments, “the Labor party is a victim of state capture. Much of its international policy is now effectively dictated by the state of Israel.”

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.