More anti-Israel stalwarts across Europe are coming forward to blame the Jewish state and Zionism for the defeat of Britain’s Labour Party in last week’s elections.
Chris Williamson, a former Labour lawmaker and ally of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, added his voice to the choir in a video he posted Tuesday on Twitter.
“A hostile foreign government has mobilized its assets in the UK – which Israeli diplomats call their ‘power multiplier’ – in an attempt to prevent a Corbyn-led Labour government” from being elected in Thursday’s vote,” said Williamson, who left the party earlier this year after saying it had been too apologetic about its anti-Semitism problem.
if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("/jpost-tech/")!=-1){ document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none"; var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://static.vidazoo.com/basev/vwpt.js'; script.setAttribute('data-widget-id','616dd69d1b04080004ac2cc0'); document.getElementsByClassName('divVidazoo')[0].appendChild(script); }else if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("/israel-news/") != -1 || window.location.pathname.indexOf("/omg/") != -1 || window.location.pathname.indexOf("/food-recipes/") != -1 || window.location.pathname.indexOf("/science/") != -1){ document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none"; var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://static.vidazoo.com/basev/vwpt.js'; script.setAttribute('data-widget-id','60fd6becf6393400049e6535'); document.getElementsByClassName('divVidazoo')[0].appendChild(script); }else if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("/health-and-wellness/") != -1){ document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none"; var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://player.anyclip.com/anyclip-widget/lre-widget/prod/v1/src/lre.js'; script.setAttribute('pubname','jpostcom'); script.setAttribute('widgetname','0011r00001lcD1i_12246'); document.getElementsByClassName('divAnyClip')[0].appendChild(script);}else if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("/breaking-news/") != -1){document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none";var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://player.anyclip.com/anyclip-widget/lre-widget/prod/v1/src/lre.js'; script.setAttribute('pubname','jpostcom'); script.setAttribute('widgetname','0011r00001lcD1i_12258'); document.getElementsByClassName('divAnyClip')[0].appendChild(script);}To “normalize Zionism” in Labour, the assets had been “using faith organizations, many of them charities, to promote the anti-Semitism narrative,” he added.
Jenny Tonge, an independent lawmaker who said in 2017 that anti-Semitism was rising because Jews were not criticizing Israel enough, wrote on Facebook that the British chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who accused Corbyn of mainstreaming anti-Semitism in Labour, “must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”
The Jewish News of London on Monday reported that 88 lawmakers penned a letter calling on the House of Lords to kick out Tonge, whom the Liberal Democrats suspended in 2016 over alleged anti-Semitic rhetoric, causing her to quit the party.
In Ireland, Kitty Holland, a journalist for the Irish Times who declared in 2017 that she does not “interact with Zionists,” apologized on Monday for writing shortly after the elections: “It’s a great result for Zionism. Monsters are roaring their delight.”
The tweet, she wrote, which she deleted shortly after posting, “resulted in a great deal of upset. I apologise sincerely for the hurt caused.”
On Friday, Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left politician from France who is often described as Corbyn’s counterpart there, blamed in a Facebook post “networks of influence from Likud,” the Israeli ruling party, for the Labour defeat.
Labour received 202 seats out of 650 in Parliament in Thursday’s elections, a 60-seat drop from its 2017 showing and its worst result since 1935. The Conservative Party under Prime Minister Boris Johnson received 365 seats, an increase of 48 seats.
