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Jewish leaders celebrate defeat of ‘Jew baiter’ George Galloway
Galloway lost his Rochdale seat by around 2,000 votes
July 5, 2024 09:43
Galloway lost his Rochdale seat by around 2,000 votes
July 5, 2024 09:43Jewish community leaders have celebrated the defeat of anti-Israel firebrand George Galloway in Rochdale.
The Jewish Labour Movement Chair told the JC: "This is a tremendous result. Galloway is a one-trick pony, a pedlar of vicious hate who never sticks around after winning a by-election to serve the people who elected him. Politics is so much better off without him as an elected representative."
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “George Galloway has an atrocious record of baiting the Jewish community.
“He has previously and infamously declared Bradford an ‘Israel-free zone’. He said of his previous election loss that ‘the venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating’.
“He claimed that the institutional antisemitism within the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn was really ‘a disgraceful campaign of Goebbelsian fiction’, in reference to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist. He was sacked by TalkRadio over his views.
“He has also described the atrocity carried out by Hamas on 7th October as a ‘concentration camp breakout’ and referred to Hamas terrorists as ‘fighters’.
“Given his track record and the situation currently faced by Jews in this country, it seems unlikely that many in the Jewish community will be mourning his departure from institution that makes our laws.”
Galloway, who was attempting to hold his Greater Manchester constituency, was defeated by Labour’s Paul Waugh, the former political journalist for the i newspaper and Huffington Post.
Waugh topped the poll with 13,047 votes, Galloway came a close second with 11,508.
The controversial broadcaster did not turn up to the count in Rochdale.
Galloway retweeted a claim that said the election "has been rigged against George Galloway from the start".
He won in the Rochdale by-election earlier this year. At the time, he declared “Keir Starmer – this is for Gaza” when he won. An estimated 30 per cent of voters in Rochdale are Muslim and the former Big Brother contestant had been attempting tap into the apparent hostility among some Muslim voters to Labour’s position on the Israel-Hamas war.
Speaking on the BBC, former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock called Galloway “repulsive” and a “chancer”.