A member of the UK’s Labour Party apologized and resigned her position as aide to one of the leaders of the party on Tuesday after it emerged that she had written inflammatory remarks about Israel on her Facebook page.
Naz Shah shared a graphic in 2014—the year before she was elected to Parliament—that imposed a map of Israel onto the United States and said “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States.” The graphic adds that doing so will mean that “Palestinians will get their land and life back”; the “Middle East will again be peaceful without foreign interference”; and “Oil prices will go down, inflation will go down, whole world will be happy.”
Shah commented on the graphic, writing, “Problem solved and save u bank charges for 3 billion pounds you transfer yearly,” referring to the U.S.’s annual defense aid to the Jewish state. Shah’s post was first reported on the British political blog Guido Fawkes. Shah has since deleted all of her Facebook posts from 2014.
The Jewish Chronicle also reported that in 2014 Shah tweeted a link to a blog post that compared Zionism to al-Qaeda, and claimed that Zionism has been used to “groom other modernised men and women of Jewish descent to exert political influence at the highest levels of public office by using the guilt of the pogroms and offered a solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ in Europe.”
Shah is a member of the House of Commons’ Home Affairs Committee, which is currently investigating the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK.
“Naz Shah’s comments about relocating Israelis to the United States are simply appalling,” a Board of Deputies of British Jews spokesperson said in a statement. “The Board of Deputies of British Jews has sought an urgent meeting for clarification of her views on Israel and the UK Jewish community.”
“I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP,” Shah said in a statement. “I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.” Shah also resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretary to John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor and a longtime political ally of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn has been struggling for months against frequent accusations that he is not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism in his party. Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, said last week that a Jew voting for Labour under Corbyn would be like a Muslim voting for Donald Trump. Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for mayor of London, said two weeks ago that anti-Semitism in Labour was a “badge of shame” for the party. Prime Minister David Cameron called on Corbyn last month to address the anti-Semitism issue following the resignation of the co-president of the Oxford University Labour Club, who said that members of the club “have some kind of problem with Jews.” Local Labour activists Gerry Downing, who had written about the need to “address the Jewish Question,” and Vicki Kirby, a former parliamentary candidate who once tweeted that Adolf Hitler might be the “Zionist God,” were readmitted to the party under Corbyn, only to be re-expelled in March following public outcries.
Reports emerged last month that most Jewish Labour MPs were on Corbyn’s “enemies list.” Longtime Labour MP Louise Ellman, who is the vice chair of Labour Friends of Israel and was reportedly on that list, said two months ago that Corbyn “has spoken out clearly that he is against anti-Semitism but it is not just about words, there has got to be some action, and we haven’t seen enough of that.” Ellman has been the target of abuse from Momentum, a grassroots organization founded to support the opposition leader. Corbyn himself has been criticized for praising Hamas and Hezbollah and meeting with Holocaust deniers and promoters of the blood libel before reaching his current position.
Shah was elected in 2015 to represent Bradford West in Yorkshire, in the north of England. She defeated the incumbent George Galloway, who in 2014 declared Bradford to be an “Israel-free zone,” which led him to be questioned by the police for possibly inciting racial hatred.
For more on Jeremy Corbyn and the rise of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, read Western Europe’s Most Powerful Anti-Zionist, Liam Hoare’s profile of Corbyn, which was published in the October 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine.
[Photo: BBC Newsnight / YouTube]