Ally of Antisemitic UK Politician Defeated Again by Pro-Israel US Lawmaker

Representative Shontel Brown beat former state Senator Nina Turner after she appeared alongside disgraced UK politician Jeremy Corbyn, whom former UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks labeled an “antisemite.”

By United with Israel Staff

For the second time since last summer, pro-Israel Democratic U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown defeated former state Sen. Nina Turner.

Only hours before voting began last week, Turner appeared in a video alongside controversial UK politician Jeremy Corbyn, who was forced to step aside due to a persistent antisemitism scandal.

After Brown beat Turner in July’s special election primary, JNS reported that she “overcame a 35-point polling deficit to beat progressive candidate Nina Turner, a former state senator who was endorsed by prominent left-wing Democrats like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

That victory “reaffirm[ed] that being pro-Israel is good politics as well as wise policy,” said Mark Mellman, President of the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, at the time.

Delivering a victory speech to supporters after her July victory, Brown thanked her “Jewish brothers and sisters” for their support, and referenced her 2018 visit to Israel.

“Turner’s affiliation with a range of far-left House members who endorsed her campaign was off-putting to Jewish voters who associate the Squad with hostility to Israel,” reported Jewish Insider (JI) after Brown beat Turner again in May.

“To the consternation of many Jewish voters, Turner has also enthusiastically aligned herself with Jeremy Corbyn, the controversial former U.K. Labor Party leader whose membership was suspended amid rampant antisemitism within his own ranks,” added the JI report, continuing, “On Monday night, just hours before polls opened in Ohio, Turner shared a video in which she appeared alongside the British politician to discuss the labor movement.”

Corbyn presided over the UK Labour Party during a period in which it committed “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination,” according to the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, and faced persistent accusations of promoting Jew-hatred.

“Under his leadership, and the semi-respectable sheen of anti-Zionism — let’s have a Rainbow Nation with Hamas! — the poison spreads,” wrote former Chief Rabbi of England Jonathan Sacks in The Spectator in 2019. “The libel that the Jews are the enemy of everything holy (formerly Christ, now socialism) has returned.”

Rabbi Sacks accused Corbyn of giving “support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate, who want to kill Jews and remove Israel from the map” and using “the language of classic prewar European antisemitism” in a 2018 interview quoted by Times of Israel.

“Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an antisemite as the leader of the Labour Party and her majesty’s opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr. Corbyn and those who support him.”