British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday promoted Shabana Mahmood to the position of Home Secretary, part of a major cabinet reshuffle following the resignation of Angela Rayner.
Other moves in the cabinet reshuffle include Yvette Cooper shifting from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary. Former Foreign Secretary David Lammy will now become Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.
Mahmood, who was born in Birmingham to parents of Pakistani descent, indicates on her website that she is “a passionate supporter of Palestinian rights” and, according to the Jewish Chronicle, has a history of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
She has caused controversy in the past when, in 2014, she forced a local supermarket to close after a protest over the claim it was “stocking goods from illegal settlements”.
The branch of Sainsbury’s in Birmingham was forced to close for several hours, she claimed, before she took to YouTube to call for a boycott of Israeli goods.
She told a rally the week after the Sainsbury’s protest, “I was with 200 activists outside Sainsbury’s in the centre of Birmingham. We lay down in the street and we laid down inside Sainsbury’s to say we object to them stocking goods from illegal settlements - and that they must stop. We managed to close down that store at peak time on a Saturday. This is how we can make a difference.”
Mahmood was slammed by Jewish leaders at the time, noted the Jewish Chronicle, including the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, but has stood by the Labour leadership’s position on Gaza since October 7.
In March of 2024, she called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and accused Israel of killing innocent civilians.
"I have always supported a diplomatic process to stop the killing of innocent civilians, get humanitarian aid in and get the hostages out," Mahmoud wrote at the time, adding, "But it is clear that diplomatic processes have not made sufficient progress. The conduct of this war has been intolerable, with a disproportionate level of attacks on innocent people that has rightly been the deliberations in international courts."
In an interview a month earlier, Mahmood spoke out in favor of a two-state solution, “Because a one-state solution does not make the people of Israel safe, it actually condemns them to insecurity and concerns for their safety in perpetuity.”
She added, “And it is an outrage to adopt a position that says that the people of Israel can have self-determination but the people of Palestine cannot. That is not acceptable and we cannot allow the continued degradation and denigration of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people.”
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)