A British activist from the political hard Left has come under fire for critcising Holocaust Memorial Day for not being inclusive enough.
Jackie Walker, an insider close to Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist leader of the Labour Party, was heckled and booed at an event where she made the suggestion.
Speaking at an event specifically designed to tackle the anti-Semitism endemic in the UK’s political Left, Walker said: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all peoples who’ve experienced Holocaust?”
Other attendees were quick to point out that it already is.
But Walker stuck to her guns, saying that “it is not circulated and advertised as such” – essentially implying that it had been co-opted by Jews at the expense of other victims.
Had Walker deigned to visit the website for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, she would have come away with a different impression.
The first survivor quoted on their site, which is clearly devoted to a number of different genocides, is a Roma. The second is from Cambodia, the third from Rwanda, and only the fourth is a Jewish woman – Auschwitz survivor Lily Ebert.
In response politicians and prominent Jewish figures called for her expulsion from the Labour party, where she is co-chair of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group.
Walker made further controversial comments at the meeting, which was recorded and published by the Huffington Post, included criticising the accepted definition of anti-Semitism as not something she can “work with”.
The incident is a new chapter in the Labour party’s anti-Semitism crisis, which has been running for months.
It has seen MP Naz Shah suspended for suggesting the population of Israel should be deported en masse from the Middle East and the former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone suspended as well, for insisting that Hitler was a Zionist.
The party launched an official inquiry in an attempt to tackle the problem, but it soon descended into farce.
A Momentum activist reduced a Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, to tears by accusing her of betraying the party at the launch of the anti-Semitism review.
The report itself, conducted by Shami Chakrabarti, was widely condemned as a whitewash – a perception confirmed by her being promptly rewarded with a place in the House of Lords.