Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Britain’s Labour Party Suspends Columnist Over Anti-Semitism

As part of its crackdown on anti-Semitism, Britain’s Labour Party suspended the party membership of a columnist from Ireland who apparently said Israel was using the Holocaust to receive money.

John McAuliffe, an international member of the British party, columnist at Digital Journal and the Cambridge Globalist, was suspended this week after allegedly posting on Facebook a message in which he described the genocide as “the most useful political tool of the Zionist government in Israel to establish a financial racket in the West, whereby Israel receives an unlimited sum for the duration of its existence,” The Jewish News reported Monday.

The suspension, made known to the Jewish News by a Labour spokesperson, is the latest in a string of punitive measures against members who have made anti-Semitic hate speech.

Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected Labour’s chair in September, on April 11 told the BBC that anyone making anti-Semitic statements “is auto-excluded from the party.” This policy was announced amid intense media scrutiny of Labour in connection with several incidents of hate speech against Jews, which critics trace back to Corbyn’s past support for enemies of Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah. He has called activists for both anti-Semitic terrorist groups his “friends.”

One of the six cases of anti-Semitism exposed within Labour since March involved Vicki Kirby, a party activist who suggested on social media that Adolf Hitler might be a “Zionist god” and that Jews have “big noses.” She was suspended. In another, Aysegul Gurbuz, a London-area politician, was suspended and later resigned after her Twitter account was found to feature praise for Hitler and for Iran’s plans to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Jonathan Arkush, the president of Britain Board of Jewish Deputies, said these cases, perceived inaction by Corbyn, and his failure to distance himself from Hamas and Hezbollah mean that most British Jews distrust Labour.

In his Facebook post, McAuliffe wrote: “The large level of poverty in Israel among Holocaust survivors shows they don’t care about the emotional impact they are trying to generate. It is about money and military technology. This further paints a clearer picture of the divide between Zionism and Judaism, and their incompatibility.”

The Jewish Labour Movement has put forward a proposal to change Labour rules to make it easier to permanently exclude those who express anti-Semitic or Islamophobic sentiment.

Labour is currently investigating claims of anti-Semitism at its Oxford University branch.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.