British Labour Party Suspends Lawmaker for Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts

Last week, a councillor who was employed by Labour MP Naz Shah as a parliamentary aide was suspended from the party over antisemitic social media posts.

Three Labour councillors have been suspended after posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, one of which claimed that Israel was behind the so-called IS.

Among Facebook posts appearing on Mr Aziz’s account was one highlighted on the Guido Fawkes website.

Another of the suspended councilors, Nottingham City’s Ilyas Aziz, had suggested on Facebook that it might have been wiser to create Israel in the USA, and that Israel could be relocated “even now”.

Herzog said “the views expressed by Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London and member of Labour’s national executive, in which he claimed that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”, were particularly horrific, and unthinkable for a British politician in the 21st century”.

Yesterday, the bitter row escalated again amid fresh warnings that Labour will be hammered by voters for failing to deal with the issue.

Meanwhile, Israel’s new ambassador to Britain, Mark Regev, said language used in the past couple of weeks had been “very concerning”.

‘After the local elections a few people might prise themselves away from it. A lot of them are saying, ‘Why are we making excuses for this team all the time?’ You could certainly see some shift in personnel’.

She welcomed the United Kingdom leader’s announcement on Friday that he had set up an independent inquiry to look into anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks.

On Sunday Corbyn addressed crowds at the May Day rally in London, telling them that his party was “united” and stood “against racism in any form”.

And he said he would carry on if there was a challenge to his control of the party after the elections for councils and the London mayor, amid reports some Labour MPs are ready to mobilise against him.

Mr Livingstone’s comments – for which he has declined to apologise in a string of media interviews – were “extremely offensive” but he had been suspended within 48 hours like all those accused, she said.

“I joined the Labour Party because some of the bravest and strongest fighters against racism and anti-semitism were in the party”.

Unite union leader Len McCluskey said Mr Corbyn was the victim of “a cynical attempt to manipulate anti-Semitism for political aims” that was “got up by the right-wing press aided and abetted by Labour MPs”.

Jeremy Corbyn is “leading the way” in rooting racial discrimination out of the Labour Party, Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale has said.

“A news agenda dominated by Ken Livingstone hasn’t helped in that regard”, she said.

Corbyn’s handling of the anti-Semitism matter has prompted Labour’s shadow cabinet, concerned about losses in the elections, to begin plotting a leadership coup, the Telegraph reported, without saying where it got the information.