The Women’s March has replaced three of its leaders after widespread calls for them to resign for condoning “antisemitism” and “hateful racist rhetoric”.

Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour stepped down from the board of the Women’s March on Monday, the group announced.

Both were dogged by their association with the Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, who has compared Jewish people to termites. 

A statement on the group’s website announced the appointment of 17 "new movement leaders" to its national Women’s March Board.

It added: “Founding Women’s March Board Members Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour will transition off of the Women’s March Board and onto other projects focused on advocacy within their respective organizations.”

Last November Teresa Shook, who first conceived a Women’s March on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, called out Ms Sarsour and Ms Mallory for allowing “antisemitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs.”

Ms Mallory attended an event in February 2018 where, according to the Anti-Defamation League, Mr Farrakhan said: "Satan is going down.

"Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through. You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that’s where they are headed."

Neither Ms Mallory nor Ms Sarsour apologised and the Women’s March was criticised for failing to distance itself from Mr Farrakhan.

The Women's March was quick to claim Ms Mallory's and Ms Sarsour's departures were only because their terms were up.

It thanked Ms Sarsour, Ms Mallory and Bob Bland, who is also leaving the board, for their “ground breaking work and sacrifices towards equal rights".

“The organization has not cut ties with the three departing board members; their terms have ended. As with any organization that has a governing board, there are set term limits imposed upon its members,” it said in a statement.

The incoming board is expected to elect new leadership.

However concerns have been raised already about one of the new board member's anti-Zionist views.

Zahara Billo, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, wrote in 2015 on Twitter: “I’m more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally Ill young people the #FBI recruits to join ISIS.”

More recently in 2018 she tweeted that she was “weary of fellow Muslims who collaborate with or normalize Zionist. This is not where and how we achieve liberation.”

She also called Zionism “racism.”

She said: “If you support apartheid racism and Zionism by Israel, I don’t think that we can work on civil rights together in the US.”