A Labour MP has been forced to apologize after he sparked fury by wrongly claiming a video showed Israeli soldiers attacking two children.

Grahame Morris re­tweeted the video, saying it showed Israeli troops “beating up Palestinian children for the fun of it”. He said:

Marvellous, absolutely marvellous the Israeli Army, the best financed, best trained, best equipped army in the world caught on camera beating up Palestinian children for the fun of it. May God forgive them. What would Jim Royle say on an Easter Monday.

Except it was nothing of the sort.

Twitter users were quick to point out that the video he shared was not of Israeli soldiers, but Guatemalan troops, as reported by Al Jazeera in August 2015. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were quick to point out the error:

The only marvelous thing here are your lies.

These are not IDF soldiers.

Apologies would be in order. https://t.co/ImIY9nD8lX — Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 22, 2019

The left-wing Labour Party declined to comment, but highlighted Morris’s “apology” in response to another Twitter user who told him he’d “got this one wrong”. Morris then replied:

I am sorry for sharing a post which purports to show the IDF hurting children but it was in fact the Guatemalan Army. My error demonstrates the dangers of fake news online and I will be more diligent in future in checking my sources. — Grahame Morris (@grahamemorris) April 23, 2019

He has not deleted the original post, sent to his 29,000 followers.

The post was originally sent by Rachael Swindon – a Twitter account that brags about being blocked by around 80 Conservative MPs. It deleted the video after people pointed out it did not show IDF soldiers.

The Labour Party under leader Jeremy Corbyn has long been accused of tolerating antisemites in its ranks.

As Breitbart London reported, a recent survey showed more than half, 51 per cent, of Britons believe that the Labour Party has a serious antisemitism problem — up from more than one third (34 per cent) in July 2018.

The survey by ComRes for Jewish News also found that 48 per cent disagree with the statement that the party’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has “absolute determination” to eradicate the hatred of Jews from Labour, while over half (55 per cent) believe that his failure to tackle antisemitism makes him unfit to be prime minister.

Three weeks ago, the Jewish Labour Movement passed a motion of no confidence in Mr Corbyn over his handling of antisemitism.