UK’s Jeremy Corbyn promotes MP who called for moving Israel to US
Naz Shah, who was suspended from the Labour party after a string of old social media posts surfaced in which she made several anti-Semitic remarks, becomes shadow equalities minister.
A British member of parliament who was suspended from the Labour party after a series of anti-Semitic comments she once made has been appointed by the party leader Jeremy Corbyn as shadow equalities minister.
Naz Shah was forced to leave the party in 2016 for three months pending an investigation that the party leadership was pressured into carrying out in light of accusations that it had ignored anti-Semitism that had permeated the Labour party since Corbyn took the reins in September 2015.
Shah was singled out for voicing explicit expressions of anti-Semitism in social media posts that only later surfaced.
In 2014, Shah uploaded a graphic depicting Israel’s border on a map of the US accompanied by her caption: “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States, with the comment: "Problem solved."
Furthermore, she posted another comment using hashtag #IsraelApartheid adding: “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
Naz Shah
Further outrage was sparked when it emerged that the Bradford West MP had once called on supporters of Palestinians to vote in an online poll on IDF actions, while claiming that "the Jews are rallying" to fiddle the result.
Despite her claims, Shah denied throughout the entire controversy that she was anti-Semitic, instead accepting that what she had uploaded was anti-Semitic content—something which she attributed to her being “ignorant” about discrimination against Jews.
In an interview with the BBC's World at One at the time, Shah insisted she "wasn't anti-Semitic" but conceded "what I put out was anti-Semitic".
A campaign to convince Jews that she was not anti-Semitic appears to have yielded results as the UK Jewish community’s leading voice welcomed her as a “friend.”
Following a meeting with the Board of Deputies leaders in Bradford during which she expressed her desire to win back the favor of the Jewish community, the Jewish organization’s leader praised her for her efforts.
"Naz Shah is one of the only people involved in Labour's anti-Semitism crisis who has sought to make amends for her actions, and for this we commend her and now regard Naz as a sincere friend of our community," Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush said.
