COUNCILLOR SUSPENDED OVER TWITTER CLAIMS:
A LABOUR councillor has been suspended for shockingly offensive anti-Semitic tweets, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The discovery of Aysegul Gurbuz’s vile comments is the latest in a series of anti-Semitic scandals to hit the Labour Party.
The 20-year-old student is alleged to have called Adolf Hitler the ‘greatest man in history’ and said she hoped Iran would use a nuclear weapon to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.
Miss Gurbuz, who is Muslim, became Luton’s youngest councillor when she was elected to the High Town ward last year.
But last night Miss Gurbuz was suspended after the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism found a series of disturbing posts on her Twitter account from 2011 to 2014.
One tweet, written in January 2013, said: ‘The Jews are so powerful in the US it’s disgusting.’
Another post, in October 2012, said: ‘Ed Miliband is Jewish. He will never become prime minister of Britain.’ And Adolf Hitler was praised as the ‘greatest man in history’ in a tweet in October 2011.
Miss Gurbuz last night denied she had written the tweets and claimed her sister may have posted them.
A Labour spokesman said: ‘Councillor Gurbuz has been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation.’
The suspension is the latest antiSemitism probe within Labour ranks. Labour peer Baroness Royall is already leading an inquiry after Oxford University Labour Club’s cochairman resigned, claiming a ‘large proportion’ of its members had ‘some kind of problem with Jews’.
In the past weeks, Labour has twice suspended the deputy chairman of its Woking branch, Vicki Byrne, for posting anti-Semitic tweets, and suspended councillor Khadim Hussain, former Lord Mayor of Bradford, for sharing a Facebook post that said: ‘Your school education system only tells you about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists that were killed by Hitler.’
Louise Ellman, one of Labour’s most senior Jewish MPs, claimed last week there had not been enough done to tackle the party’s antiSemitism problem. Labour’s London mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, said anti-Semitism was a ‘badge of shame’ in a speech on Wednesday and urged Mr Corbyn to act.
The Labour leader responded that he would immediately investigate ‘any form of anti-Semitism’ and it would be ‘cracked down upon’.
Miss Gurbuz is in her final year at Warwick University, where she is also events organiser for the student union’s Friends of Palestine society. She told the Campaign Against AntiSemitism: ‘It was a joint account I had with my sister so I don’t know if she’s gone out and tweeted that, but I’m absolutely appalled right now.
‘Where I live we’ve got very good cohesion with the Jewish community... I’m absolutely shocked.’
Miss Gurbuz did not respond to our calls for comment last night. Jonathan Sacerdoti, from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘These tweets are anti-Semitic. They appear on Aysegul Gurbuz’s personal account and there is no defence for that.
‘Anti-Semitism is rising in Europe and the UK, and the regular antiSemitic tweets and opinions emanating from the Labour Party have failed to elicit any meaningful response from Jeremy Corbyn. How many more cases must we see before Labour take action?’
Trevor Holden, chief executive of Luton Borough Council, said: ‘This will be referred as a matter of urgency to the council’s independent standards committee to allow a full investigation to take place.
‘The council expects the highest standards of councillors and will not accept any behaviour which could undermine community cohesion.’
‘How many more cases before Labour acts?’