Anti-Semitic death threat against UK MP
A Jewish member of the British Parliament was put under police protection following an anti-Semitic death threat against Ruth Smeeth on Facebook.
A Jewish member of the British Parliament was put under police protection following an anti-Semitic death threat against Ruth Smeeth on Facebook.
The message repeatedly called Ruth Smeeth a “Yid” and said, “the gallows would be a fine and fitting place” for the Labour Party lawmaker to “swing from”, The Jewish Chronicle reported last week. It also expressed strong support for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is in an election battle to remain in his post.
Smeeth, 37, told the British media that she holds Corbyn personally responsible for the actions of his supporters.
“I expect Jeremy to show true leadership, which means calling out individuals at times by name to say what they are doing it is unacceptable,” she told Britain’s Sun newspaper. “He must stand up and say enough is enough, and he has done nowhere near enough yet.”
Smeeth, who represents a district in Stoke-on-Trent, the largest city in western England’s Staffordshire County, reportedly has received 25,000 abusive or anti-Semitic posts. She has had panic buttons and CCTV surveillance cameras installed in her home, the Chronicle reported.
Corbyn, who has called Hezbollah and Hamas “friends”, has been accused of fostering an atmosphere of -anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
According to the BBC, the threat to Smeeth was issued soon after she fled the launch of Labour’s report into -anti-Semitism in tears after being accused by an activist of colluding with the right-wing press.
Meanwhile, a British lawmaker who was suspended from the Labour party earlier this year for anti-Semitic comments posted on social media is being investigated by police.
Naz Shah, who was readmitted to the party in July, could be charged with inciting religious hatred, an offence punishable by up to seven years in prison, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
Shah, 42, one of nine Muslims in Parliament, was suspended in May for sharing a post on Facebook suggesting Israel’s Jews should be relocated to the US and tweeting the hashtag “#IsraelApartheid” and a quote saying, “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” Another post called on her friends to back a poll -criticising Israel.
The posts had appeared in early August 2014, during the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. Shah later apologised.
Shah was one of at least 20 Labour figures who had been either suspended or kicked out of the party amid intense public scrutiny over the proliferation of anti-Semitic and vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric after the 2014 election of Corbyn to lead the party.
The West Yorkshire Police opened an investigation into the social media posts after receiving several complaints, the Mail reported. The investigation reportedly is in its final stages. The full investigation file will be handed over to the Crown Prosecution Service within days, according to the newspaper.
A spokesman for the British -not-for-profit organisation, Campaign Against Antisemitism, told the Mail that the Labour Party still has not come to grips with the problem of anti-Semitism in the party ranks.
“If it is true that there is an ongoing police investigation into anti-Semitic hate crimes allegedly committed by Naz Shah, and Labour was aware of it but decided to end her suspension before the police investigation had concluded, then this is yet further evidence of the party’s abject failure to grasp its anti-Semitism problem,” the spokesman said.
JTA
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