A Luton councillor has been suspended from the Labour party over claims she glorified Adolf Hitler in a series of anti-semitic tweets.
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“We have suspended, we will suspend, any member that behaves in that way”. One member, Vicky Kirby, was suspended for the second time for posting that Jews have “big noses” and “slaughter the oppressed”.
Jonathan Sacerdoti, director of communications at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Our investigations team found these antisemitic tweets on Aysegul Gurbuz’s personal account”.
And in January 2013, a tweet said: “The Jews are so powerful in the USA it’s disgusting”.
She also expressed her support for Iran using a nuclear weapon to “wipe Israel off the map”.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which exposed the offensive messages, Ms Gurbuz “said that her sister had probably tweeted the tweets, and that she had no recollection of them”.
The tweets in question were made before Gurbuz was elected to Luton Borough Council in May 2015.
In an interview last month with Sky News, Labor Party Chairman Jeremy Corbyn denied rumors of anti-Semitism within his Party.
He has come under increasing scrutiny following a string of revelations about anti-semitic remarks made by Labour councillors and his own brother, Piers.
She claimed “multiple people” has access to her account, adding: “I am horrified to read back what was written and I apologise for them in their entirety”.
“It was a joint account I had with my sister so I don’t know if she’s gone out and tweeted that, but I’m absolutely appalled right now”, she told the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.
Cllr Gurbuz, 20, is now a student at the University of Warwick- where she volunteers as the event co-ordinator for the student union’s Palestine Society.
A council spokesperson said the case would be referred “as a matter of urgency” to its standards committee for a full investigation.
Last week, Louise Ellman, one of the Labour party’s most senior Jewish MPs, said that not enough was being done to tackle the party’s anti-Semitism problem.
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She was suspended by the party at the weekend but this morning she quit as councillor.
