Calls to suspend councillor who shared post claiming Priti Patel was ‘hatched’ in Israel
LABOUR IS facing calls to suspend a councillor who posted a message claiming Priti Patel, now Home Secretary, was “hatched” in Israel.
He also shared a post of a highly offensive cartoon branding Israel a “bloodthirsty racist Zionist war machine”.
Newham Borough Councillor Suga Thekkeppurayil shared the “war machine” post from the “Let’s Save Palestine” account, which included a cartoon of headless corpses and dismembered bodies in Gaza.
The cartoon also showed UK and US broadcasters ignoring the butchered bodies and focusing their cameras on a crying baby in Israel.
The post, published in 2014, said: “This is still how Western media routinely cover Operation Genocidal Edge, committed by the blood-thirsty racists Zionist war machine”.
In 2017, he posted on Twitter that Ms Patel “could be the next PM of the UK” but was “hatched in the (sic) Israel”.
Cllr Thekkeppurayil also shared a Guardian opinion piece in March 2019 that said Jeremy Corbyn had “nothing to apologise for, being the first Labour leader to oppose Zionism on moral grounds”. The former Labour leader was suspended from Labour in October last year after refusing to apologise in the wake of damning findings from the EHRC that the party acted unlawfully in its handling of the antisemitism crisis.
Cllr Thekkeppurayil, 53, also posted an article from the hard-left paper The Canary in September 2018 that suggested that Labour politicians were using antisemitism as a weapon to derail Mr Corbyn’s socialist agenda. The East Ham Central ward councillor has posted additional messages suggesting that Israel is influencing British politics.
Former Labour Minister Lord Austin, who quit the party in 2019 in protest over its antisemitism crisis and now heads the anti-extremism campaign group Mainstream UK, said: “This cartoon is not only extremely offensive but would also appear to be a breach of the IHRA definition that Labour has signed up to.”
He added: “This councillor should face immediate disciplinary action.”
Two suspended Labour councillors, Noah Tucker and Preston Tabois, who serve on neighbouring Haringey Council, were readmitted last week.
Their six-month suspension followed claims that they had shared antisemitic comments as well as various conspiracy theories online.
A Labour spokesperson said: “Labour takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate action is taken.”