This week’s anti-Semitism row was aided by Labour MPs who oppose Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, said McCluskey.
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However, since then it has emerged that Labour has secretly suspended 50 of its members over anti-Semitic and racist comments.
Last week, a councillor who was employed by Labour MP Naz Shah as a parliamentary aide was suspended from the party over antisemitic social media posts.
Ilyas Aziz, a city councilman for Nottingham in north-central England, was suspended on Monday, hours after the Guido Fawkes website posted screenshots of his Facebook posts, including the 2014 one calling for the relocation of Israeli Jews.
They follow the suspension last week of Ms Shah and the former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who was suspended on Thursday after claiming that Hitler supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.
Ilyas Aziz said Israel should be relocated to the USA, while Salim Mulla claimed Israel had created ISIS.
In other posts he appeared to liken Israeli actions toward the Palestinians to those of the Nazis against Jews, referred to Israel as an illegal state, and made comments about “Zionist invaders”.
However, Labour defiantly defended Mr Corbyn’s past dealings with Palestinian militants and Holocaust deniers, reserving his right to continue a dialogue with them and rejecting calls to distance himself from anti-semitic groups.
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But Mr Regev said the Labour leadership were “deluding themselves” if they believed the party did not have a problem with the issue.
Sixteen Labour members have been suspended pending investigations into alleged anti-Semitism and racism, according to Sky sources. Earlier this week, Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, admitted her party’s campaign in Scotland had been damaged by the anti-Semitism row.
“If there is one, there is one – but I’m not having sleepless nights about this”, Mr Corbyn said.
Shadow global development secretary Diane Abbott, a close Corbyn ally, suggested the leader would be able to see off any challenge.
Now, I’d ask the following question: If you’re progressive, you’re embracing an organization which is homophobic, which is misogynistic, which is openly anti-Semitic, what’s progressive about that?
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Mr Livingstone’s comments linking Hitler with Zionism – for which he has declined to apologise in a string of media interviews – were “extremely offensive”, she told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, but not part of any wider pattern.
