Labour urged to suspend councillor who posted that Priti Patel was ‘hatched’ in Israel - The Jewish Chronicle

Labour is facing calls to suspend a councillor who posted a message claiming Priti Patel, now Home Secretary, was “hatched” in Israel. He also shared a post of a highly offensive cartoon branding Israel a “blood-thirsty racist Zionist war machine”. Newham Borough Councillor Suga Thekkeppurayil shared the “war machine” post from the Let’s Save Palestine account which includes a cartoon of headless corpses and dismembered bodies in Gaza. The cartoon also shows UK and US broadcasters ignoring the butchered bodies and focusing their cameras on a crying baby in Israel. The 2014 post says: “This is still how Western media routinely cover Operation Genocidal Edge, committed by the blood-thirsty racists Zionist war machine”. Cllr Thekkeppurayil also shared a Guardian opinion piece in March, 2019, that said Jeremy Corbyn had “nothing to apologise for being the first Labour leader to oppose Zionism on moral grounds”. The former Labour leader was suspended from Labour in October last year after refusing to apologise in the wake of damning findings from the EHRC that the party acted unlawfully in its handling of the antisemitism crisis. He was readmitted just two weeks later but has still not had Labour’s parliamentary party whip restored. Cllr Thekkeppurayil, 53, also posted an article from the hard-left paper The Canary in September, 2018, that suggested Labour politicians were using antisemitism as a weapon to derail Mr Corbyn’s socialist agenda. The East Ham Central ward councillor has posted messages suggesting that Israel is influencing British politics. In 2017 he posted on Twitter that Ms Patel “could be the next PM of the UK” but was “hatched in the (sic) Israel”. Former Labour Minister Ian Austin quit the party in 2019 in protest over its antisemitism crisis and now heads the anti-extremism campaign group Mainstream UK. He said: "This cartoon is not only extremely offensive but would also appear to be a breach of the IHRA definition that Labour has signed up to. This councillor should face immediate disciplinary action." Two suspended Labour councillors, Noah Tucker and Preston Tabois, who serve on neighbouring Haringey Council, were readmitted last week. Their six month suspension followed claims that they had shared antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories online. The JC has contacted Labour for comment.