British Lawmaker Says Israelis ‘Like a Rash’

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(JTA) — The European Jewish Congress is demanding that action be taken against a British lawmaker at the European Parliament, who compared Israelis to a skin disease.
“We can give you a list of all the things we attempted to do, the Israelis are all over this place like a rash,” MEP Martina Anderson from Northern Ireland last week during a meeting at the parliament in Brussels on May 25.
EJC President Moshe Kantor on Monday called on European Parliament President Martin Schulz to take disciplinary action against her.
“Once again we hear deeply offensive statements about Jews from a European public figure and we demand action,” Kantor said in a statement. “The comparison of Israelis, or more precisely Jews, to a disease is incitement and has its roots in neo-Nazi and far-Right discourse.”
“Thus demonstrating once again that the far-Left and the far-Right too frequently speak the same language and use the same terminology when referring to Jews or the Jewish State.”
Anderson represents the Sinn Féin party, which favors independence for Northern Ireland from Britain and that used to be affiliated with the now-disbanded IRA terrorist group, whose full name was the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
She is a former convicted terrorist with the IRA.
She served part of a life sentence after being convicted in taking part in a bombing of a hotel in Brighton, England in 1984 and planning mass bombing attacks on 12 English resort towns.
“Anderson’s views are rooted in a bloody ideology that was shaped when the IRA and the PLO were partners in terrorism and bloodshed,” Kantor continued. Her views and statements “should be condemned and we call on the European authorities to take a stand as strongly as if they were made by a member of the far-Right.”
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