A leading anti-Israel activist in Britain, Asa Winstanley, has been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation, in part for describing the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) as an “Israel Embassy proxy.”
Winstanley, a member of the Brent North Constituency Labour Party, writes for the notoriously anti-Semitic Electronic Intifada and has 27,000 followers on Twitter, The Jewish Chronicle reported Friday. News of the suspension came just hours after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced that it had begun proceedings against the Labour Party over its failure to stamp out anti-Jewish hate in its ranks.
Winstanley and other anti-Israel activists at Electronic Intifada have repeatedly dismissed concerns over sickening levels of anti-Semitism in Labour as an Israeli plot and attempt to unseat the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
After JLM held extraordinary general meetings on whether to disaffiliate from Labour, Winstanley called the group an “Israeli Embassy proxy.” The organization, he asserted, had engaged in “shameless sabotage of the party” by submitting a dossier that details anti-Jewish discrimination in Labour to the EHRC.
He added that “this is what Israel terms ‘lawfare’.”
Winstanley previously attacked the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism and, once Labour had adopted it, tweeted that “Israel is a racist endevour [sic]” to mock it. He had also signed a letter urging Labour not the adopt the definition.
A Labour Party spokesperson said on Thursday evening: “The Labour Party takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously and we are committed to challenging and campaigning against it in all its forms.
“All complaints about antisemitism are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”
Earlier in the week, Palestinian-American activist and leader of the Women’s March, Linda Sarsour, shared a tweet from Electronic Intifada, saying, “Actual hate groups pose as anti-racists, while @IlhanMN, the first Black Muslim woman in Congress, is smeared and threatened because she is prepared to stand up to the Israeli apartheid lobby.”
The tweet linked to an article on the organization’s website written by co-founder and activist Abu Abunimah, a leading advocate of the radical one-state solution.
The article shared by Sarsour claims that freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D – Minn.), who has been accused of promoting anti-Semitism, had been victimized because of her ethnicity and religion. Omar, the author charged, had come under fire “for speaking about the outsize influence of the Israel lobby, and simply for being a Black Muslim woman.”
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