British Lawmaker Says Israelis ‘Like a Rash’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(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.”
Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.
But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses — take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
