Another UK Labour member suspended for anti-Semitic remarks
David Watson said sanctioned for Facebook claims that Israel is arming IS and carrying out genocide against Palestinians
A row over anti-Semitism within the ranks of Britain’s Labour Party showed no signs of abating Friday, as the opposition party suspended yet another member for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish remarks.
A Labour spokesman confirmed that David Watson, a fundraising coordinator in the London area of Walthamstow, has been suspended pending an investigation, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
According to the JC, Watson posted items on Facebook claiming that the Islamic State group used weapons made in Israel, comparing Mossad to the Nazis and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.
He also reportedly wrote on the social media site that Zionism is a “racist ideology,” and that, “If I were a Palestinian, like most people … I’d probably want to be a guerilla fighter and liberate my people from a brutal and oppressive occupation.”
Local councilors on Friday blamed the row over anti-Semitism for the party’s poor showing in heavily Jewish areas of Manchester and Glasgow in Thursday’s local elections.
A string of Labour politicians have been publicly suspended for making anti-Semitic remarks, among them former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who said last week that Hitler supported Zionism before he “went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.”
Livingstone refused to apologize for the comments, and on Wednesday doubled down on them, telling an Arabic-language TV station in London that the creation of the State of Israel was “a great catastrophe.”
Britain’s Telegraph newspaper said last week that Labour has “secretly suspended” 50 of its members for anti-Semitic and racist comments.
The Telegraph report came as Labour chairman Jeremy Corbyn, a close ally of Livingstone, conceded for the first time that the party does have a problem with anti-Jewish sentiment, but insisted that it is “not a huge problem.”
According to the Telegraph, the public suspensions “are said to be just the tip of the iceberg.”
Corbyn has announced an independent inquiry into allegations of anti-Semitism in the party.
The Times of Israel Community.