Yet another UK Labour Party official, Nottingham City councilor Ilyas Aziz, has been suspended for posting anti-Israel remarks on Facebook.
The anti-Semitism dispute bedeviling Britain’s Labour Party ahead of an election Thursday has continued with the suspension of a city councilor.
The party said Monday that Nottingham City councilor Ilyas Aziz has been suspended pending an investigation.
The move follows the suspension last week of two other Labour figures, including former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who was on the party’s executive council.
Aziz had written on Facebook that it might have been wiser to create Israel in America and that Israel could be relocated “even now.”
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has launched an independent review of anti-Semitism and racism within its ranks, after several recent revelations that several party members had made anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements.
Jeremy Corbyn. (Dan Kitwood/Pool Photo via AP)
Corbyn used a May Day rally to say the party “is absolutely against anti-Semitism in any form” after a tumultuous week that focused attention on the party’s attitude toward Jews instead of its campaigning efforts.
The issue flared up in the last week when Labour legislator Naz Shah was suspended for posting anti-Israel material before she was elected to Parliament. That prompted Ken Livingstone to defend her by saying that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had been a Zionist early in his political career.
Livingstone was quickly suspended from his role on the party’s executive council, but his provocative comments Corbyn to set up an independent review of anti-Semitism and other racism within the party, which was soundly defeated in last year’s general election by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Labour Party mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan, who is leading in pre-election polls, said the comments have made his path to victory tougher.
“I accept that the comments that Ken Livingstone has made make it more difficult for Londoners of Jewish faith to feel that the Labour party is a place for them,” he told The Observer newspaper.
Corbyn himself has been criticized for making anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks.
By: AP and United with Israel Staff