Yet another activist of the British Labour Party has been suspended due to anti-Semitic posts on social media, the Jewish Chronicle revealed on Friday.
The member in question is David Watson, the fundraising coordinator for the Walthamstow Labour Party. A spokesperson confirmed to the Chronicle that he has been suspended pending an investigation.
He shared articles on Facebook alleging that the Islamic State (ISIS) group has used weapons made in Israel, comparing Mossad with the Nazis and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.
Watson also wrote in a Facebook status, “If I were a Palestinian, like most people … I’d probably want to be a guerilla fighter and liberate my people from a brutal and oppressive occupation.”
Another post saw Watson call Zionism “a racist ideology.”
Following the suspensions of Labour MP Naz Shah and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, he voiced his support for the pair, describing Shah’s post about relocating Israel to the United States as “supposedly anti-Semitic”.
When asked for a comment on his suspension, Watson told the Jewish Chronicle, “I’ve never made any anti-Semitic comments in my life, so I’m very surprised.”
Watson becomes the latest of a seemingly never-ending number of Labour members who have been suspended amid the anti-Semitism scandal in the party.
Several days ago, two local councilors for Labour were suspended pending an investigation into anti-Semitic comments they made online.
The comments by Miqdad Al-Nuaimi and Terry Kelly were outed by the Guido Fawkes political blog, which has been responsible for exposing most of the scores of other public allegations of anti-Semitism to hit headlines in recent weeks and months.
On Monday, the party suspended three members in one day over anti-Semitic comments, and later that day, sources in the party revealed that Labour has secretly suspended 50 of its members over anti-Semitic and racist comments in recent months.
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said following Watson’s suspension she was “very clear that we must show zero tolerance” to anti-Semitism in the constituency.
She said she would “expect and indeed be calling for the local leadership” to take action over the issue, adding, “Bigotry has no place in a party campaigning for social justice.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)