… but Tories and Lib Dems have their own problems
V THE CONSERVATIVE Party has suspended two candidates over allegations of antisemitism ahead of the election — as the Liberal Democrats were also forced to suspend a candidate.
On Wednesday, the Tories announced that Amjad Bashir, who is standing in Leeds North East, had been suspended from the party pending investigation and election support withdrawn after the JC revealed two days earlier how he had branded British Jews returning from Israel as “brainwashed extremists”.
On Monday evening the Conservatives
also suspended their Aberdeen North candidate, Ryan Houghton, over comments about the Holocaust.
The Lib Dems then suspended their candidate for Birmingham Hodge Hill on Wednesday. Waheed Rafiq had demanded in a post in 2014 that his friends boycott WhatsApp because he claimed it was “Zionist-backed”. He had also written: “Shocking to see how the Jewish government call them self [sic] Jews when they are wiping out all the people of Gaza”.
In an earlier post, he wrote: “Please note Jeff Rothschild is the Vice President of Infrastructure software and thus also a shareholder in Facebook. There are other non-Zionist apps such as the Telegram Messaging App… It’s better encrypted, much safer and thus better than WhatsApp.
“Never forget WhatsApp is Zionist backed so all we do and say is monitored and can leave us vulnerable to be exploited later.” In another post from
2014, he shared an image from an antiIsrael demonstration with a Star of David flag and the words “Genocide, Apartheid, Holocaust”.
After the suspension of the Conservatives’ Leeds North East candidate, Alex Sobel, the Labour candidate for Leeds North West — who is Jewish — told the
JC: “Following the offensive comments on British Jews by the Tory candidate for Leeds North East and comments about Holocaust ‘fabrication’ from the Tory candidate for Aberdeen North, the Conservative Party must act on antisemitism within their ranks.”
Amjad Bashir, the former Ukip MEP for Yorkshire and Humber, made remarks about British Jews during a European Parliament debate on Gaza in 2014.
Mr Bashir said: “As far as brainwashing by the rabbis and the politicians are concerned — I can testify to that. Young men are going over from England where I come from — people of the Jewish faith who my grandchildren have grown up with as decent young men. But they have come back as extremists — as people that are brainwashed. They will not listen to reason. There is something very peculiar and wrong going on in Israel.”
Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl said: “We would urge the Conservative Party to consider the suitability of allowing someone who has publicly aired such repellent views to stand as their candidate anywhere, let alone in a constituency with a vibrant Jewish community.”
Mr Bashir — who has denied claims he was once a member of George Galloway’s former Respect
Party — wrote to the Conservative
Friends of Israel group to apologise and offered to travel to Israel to learn from citizens living there. After the JC revealed his comments on Monday, Mr Bashir said: “I deeply regret the comments I made around brainwashing — this was borne from a personal experience but it was
Lib Dem candidate Wajeed Rafiq (left) and Tory hopeful Ryan Houghton completely wrong and I apologise unreservedly for it.”
There was widespread fury in the Leeds Jewish community. Mr Bashir’s election agent, Dan Cohen, said he would not be doing any further campaigning for him. Mr Cohen said Mr Bashir had been appointed by the central office as the Conservative candidate for the election. Angelo Basu, who chairs the Leeds North West Conservative Association, told the JC: “From a personal perspective, I can’t begin to express my disgust and disappointment at the comments from our Leeds North East candidate and am confident this view is shared by my colleagues.”
Meanwhile, Mr Houghton issued a statement after his comments about the Holocaust were exposed by the National newspaper, saying they were taken
“out of context”. He said he had been discussing the work of Holocaust denier David Irving: “After watching one of his lectures online, I had referenced his view that part of the Holocaust had been fabricated or exaggerated”. He said that it had been an online discussion on freedom of speech and that there “followed a discussion about the now disgraced historian David Irving started by other members”.
He added: “At the age of 20 on an online forum, I took part in a range of political discussions. These included terrorism, LGBT rights and antisemitism.
“I apologise unreservedly for any hurt now caused by these comments and have been in contact with members of the Jewish community in Aberdeen.”
He was suspended from the party on Monday evening and an investigation was launched into his comments.
People of Jewish faith... have come back as extremists’ I can’t begin to express my disgust at these comments’
This has already been one of the most depressing election campaigns in living memory . That antisemitism is, for the first time in our nation’s history, an election issue is not so much depressing as appalling. But in some ways worse is that it is not a bigger issue, with Labour repeatedly managing to divert attention away from its institutional racism. The Labour leadership has no compunction in lying about the party’s tolerance of antisemitism. In Tuesday’s debate, Jeremy Corbyn was blatant in his dissembling over the issue, as we report on our front page. And he was, once again, allowed to get away with it. Too few journalists marshal the facts to hold Mr Corbyn or his allies to account. Too few journalists even know the facts.
But this week has been salutary in another respect. Labour propagandists argue that there is antisemitism in other parties and that the focus on Labour shows that it is ‘weaponised’ to attack the party, as if the existence of Conservative racists somehow undermines exposure of their own party’s racists. There is indeed antisemitism in other parties. There always has been and, as history teaches us, there always will be. This newspaper exposes antisemitism wherever we find it. This week two Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat candidates have been revealed as having made grotesquely antisemitic comments. They have rightly been suspended. But no one is fooled by the Corbynites’ attempt to use these examples to excuse their own record on the basis that the parties are all as bad as each other. No evidence has been produced to show that the LibDems or Tories are institutionally antisemitic. So much evidence exists against Labour that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is now investigating the party.