Demands for Starmer to sack Labour MP over his ‘antisemitic’ website
It is difficult to see how he can justify his involvement with the site
A LABOUR MP has been exposed as a director of website that has published allegedly antisemitic material.
Grahame Morris was revealed by the Mail on Sunday to be one of those behind Palestine Deep Dive (PDD).
The MP for Eastington in County Durham had failed to declare his directorship to parliamentary authorities.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is now facing calls to take action and withdraw the whip from Mr Morris.
PDD is described as an “education company” publishing material on Israel and Palestine.
Research by Labour Against Antisemitism revealed that Mr Morris was a founding director of the site.
Last May, the website published a blog by former South African politician Ronnie Kasrils claiming “Israel’s racism” had “let loose the pogroms so reminiscent of Czarist times and Kristallnacht in Germany, 1938”.
It also published an interview with a cartoonist in April last year in which the artist alleged Israel was “preventing [Palestinians] from getting the vaccine for coronavirus as a Holocaust”.
The piece was illustrated with a cartoon of a hook-nosed Israeli soldier appearing to rub a syringe to make a fire.
In a 2020 video interview with Pink Floyd star Roger Waters, PDD featured the claim that BBC’s Panorama programme had helped run a “smear campaign” against Labour.
It later offered an apology, accepting that “some opinions” advanced during the interview about the BBC, the programme and the journalist, John Ware, were “incorrect and have caused personal offence”.
Elsewhere in the clip, which has subsequently been deleted, Mr Waters accused Israel of murdering children, adding it was an “absolutely routine part of the policy of the Israeli government”.
“It’s part of their basic policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide and apartheid,” he said, later claiming that Israel was shooting Palestinian footballers in the feet.
In another PDD interview in November last year, Mr Waters said that Israel “took the general election from Jeremy Corbyn in 2019”.
Sir Keir, he added, was “completely controlled by the Israeli lobby, everything that he says shows you that.”
The Mail on Sunday reported that Mr Morris had confirmed that he was a trustee of PDD but that he had failed to declare his directorship to parliamentary authorities.
Mr Morris said that although he was a director of PDD’s board of trustees, he was not involved in its editorial decisions.
He apologised for not registering his directorship in the Commons.
Mr Morris previously apologised for “sharing a post which purports to show the IDF hurting children but it was in fact the Guatemalan Army,” on Twitter in 2019.
Calling for the whip to be withdrawn from the MP, Labour Against Antisemitism’s Alex Hearn said:
“It is difficult to see how Mr Morris can justify his involvement with this website.
“We continue to believe that Keir Starmer’s statement in September that Labour had closed the door on antisemitism was premature.”
Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl told the JC: “Not only is Grahame Morris on the board of trustees of a website which has published disgusting antisemitism, he has also failed in his duty to disclose this directorship to parliamentary authorities. Labour must act swiftly to take appropriate disciplinary action.”
The PDD maintains that it has not “knowingly” published material that might be considered antisemitic. Were this ever to be the case, “it would be removed”.
A spokesperson for the CST said: “The prevalence of antisemitism in the Labour Party under its previous leadership has been well-documented and confirmed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and denying these facts only compounds the harm that was caused.
“Members of Parliament and respectable journalists should not be associated with a website that provides a platform for such offensive and untrue conspiracy theories.”