UK Labour suspends Jewish donor who compared Corbyn supporters to Nazi militia

A major Jewish donor to Britain’s Labour Party has been suspended from the party a month after comparing supporters of party head Jeremy Corbyn to stormtroopers.

Michael Foster, whose family contributed more than $500,000 to the party in the last election, had written an op-ed in the Daily Mail newspaper in which he referred to Corbyn’s backers as Sturmabteilung, or SA. However, he claimed that he never used the word “Nazi” which was used in the headline by the newspaper.

Foster sued unsuccessfully to stop Corbyn from running again for the party leadership without first getting the backing of at least 51 members of Parliament, as prescribed by the party’s rules. Corbyn is facing a leadership challenge this month.

In the op-ed, Foster alleged anti-Semitism by Corbyn supporters.

“If you are like me, a Jewish donor to Labour, you are smeared as a Blairite conspirator, plotting to falsely use the accusation of anti-Semitism to damage the Left,” he wrote.

Foster also accused the Labour leader of wanting to bring down the rule of law and do away with democracy.

“Corbyn and his leadership team have no respect for others and worse, no respect for the rule of law. They clearly have no moral compass, and in Corbyn they have a leader who wants to abolish the House of Lords,” he wrote.

Foster further claimed that the inquiry into anti-Semitism within the Labour party was not impartial, and that Corbyn bribed human rights lawyer Shami Shakrabarti with a peerage so that her “detailed report into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was anything but independent.”

Immediately after the op-ed appeared, there were calls within Labour to expel Foster from the party, including two online petitions.

Foster was formally expelled from the party on September 7, according to the Guardian, for having breached a clause that bans “abuse of any kind by members or supporters.” This means that Foster will be ineligible to vote in the upcoming Labour leadership elections.

Similar accusations to those made by Foster were leveled against Corbyn and his party in an opinion piece in the Guardian written on Sunday by a Jewish former policy adviser to the Labour leader.

“We are left cold by a Labour leader who, some believe, seemed willing to trade a peerage for a favourable report into anti-Semitism,” wrote Joshua Simons.

Simons wrote that anti-Semitism will always be a feature of the British left, and claimed former stereotypes Jews as money-grabbing usurers was replaced by anti-Semitic sentiment toward Jews as Zionists.

“Labour is currently led by a team whose political identity is driven first and foremost by a visceral contempt for America and for Israel,” wrote Simons.

Yet the anti-Israel sentiment is a thinly veiled attitude against all Jews, he charged. Simons recalled an incident in which the use of the Hebrew language was deemed offensive by Corbyn’s aides for being too Zionistic.

“Without a hint of irony, one senior aide asked that I remove the greeting ‘Chag Kasher VeSameach’ from Corbyn’s Passover message,” he wrote, “for fear that Corbyn’s supporters might think the use of Hebrew ‘Zionist.’” The senior aide was later named as Seumas Milne, the Jewish Chronicle said.

Simons concluded, however, that young liberal Jews should not give up on the party. “Just as Jews across the world must continue to believe that progressive causes do not conflict with their own identity, young Jews in Britain should not give up on the Labour party.”

On Sunday, it was reported that Corbyn, invited this spring by Israel’s Labor leader Isaac Herzog to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem as an antidote to concerns over anti-Semitism in the British party, had turned down the invitation, pleading too many other commitments.