Labour councillor criticises inaction over ‘anti-Semitic’ member
Adam Langleben calls on the party to remove a woman labelled as 'racist, pure and simple'
Labour was asked to kick out an anti-Semitic party member accused on Twitter by a Labour councillor in Barnet this week.
Cllr Adam Langleben, who works for the Jewish Leadership Council, said the unnamed woman ran a Twitter feed called ‘GazaBoatConvoy’ and sent a flurry of examples of posts and tweets which he described as “racist, pure and simple”.
Langleben, of the West Hendon ward, said: “I put in a complaint in July and to date no action has been taken. She continues to attend meetings and take part in street stalls. I believe in due process and I had hoped that my formal complaint would lead to a swift and speedy conclusion… But it has not.”
Among the invectives sent from the GazaBoatConvoy account have been messages claiming Jews “wring shekels” out of the memory of the Holocaust, referred to as an “indoctrination programme”.
Others claim Jews “love money and are a bunch of crooks,” that Zionist Jews “kill and kidnap their way around the world” and that British MPs who support Israel are “manipulated by a lobby for the interests of a foreign state”.
Still others inveighed against the new National Holocaust Memorial and questioned the loyalty of Diaspora Jews, while one image evidenced what Langleben described as “going to great lengths to photo-shop the @HolocaustUK logo to call the Holocaust ‘Zionist Fairy Tales’ and other deeply anti-Semitic imagery”.
Patrick Hunter, vice-chair of Hendon Constituency Labour Party, said the images were “truly horrific,” telling Langleben: “You had no choice but to go public… I can only add my voice to yours in calling for @UKLabour to act now.”
Labour’s front bench has repeatedly said the party takes a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, with Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry on Tuesday repeating that “there can be no place in our party for anyone who holds anti-Semitic views or who denies the right of Israel to exist”. She added: “Any people who hold those views must and will be drummed out of our party.”
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