The UK Labour party might have to suspend one of its National Executive Committee (NEC) members over his anti-Semitic remarks.
In an audio recording, published by The Jewish Chronicles, a Labour NEC member Peter Willsman claims the open letter about anti-Semitism within the party has been written by “Jewish Trump supporters.”
“Some of these people in the Jewish community support Trump,” Willsman is heard saying, according to Sky News. “They’re Trump fanatics and all the rest of it.”
“I am not going to be lectured to by Trump fanatics making up fast information without any evidence at all,” he said.
According to the report, Willsman claimed the allegations of “severe and widespread” anti-Semitism within the party are false.
“So I think we should ask the 70 rabbis: where is your evidence of severe and widespread anti-Semitism in this party?” he says in the recording, referring to a group of 68 rabbis who wrote the open letter.
One can also hear him calling on NEC members to raise their hands if any of them had encountered anti-Semitism within the party.
“I’m amazed,” he says as several people apparently do so. “I’ve certainly never seen any.”
The Jewish Labour Movement has filed a formal complaint over the comments by Willsman and called on the party to suspend him. However, Willsman issued an apology and did not face any punishment.
“I accept that what I did say, and the way I said it, fell short of the requirement, which I accept, for discussions of contentious issues to be conducted in a fully civil and respectful way,” Willsman said in an apology, according to the Independent. “I deeply apologize for any offense caused to those present and those to whom my remarks were reported.”
Several Labour members have lashed out at Willsman for his demarche, including Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, who called the NEC member a “loud-mouthed bully,” and Labour MP Luciana Berger, who called the audio recording “sickening to listen to,” according to the Sky.
“The fact that it took place in a meeting of @UKLabour’s sovereign body the other week, after all, that’s happened is a disgrace,” she wrote.
The party has come under fire for anti-Semitism in recent weeks after it decided to amend the very definition of anti-Semitism in its new code of conduct; the new definition varies from the internationally-recognized definition by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism includeseleven “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism” (with a notion that this is not a comprehensive list), and Labour’s new code of conduct apparently omits four of them.
The party itself, however, insists the code goes further than IHRA’s definition, and that the omitted examples are actually incorporated elsewhere in the document, according to the Independent.