Jewish Agency Urges External Probe of U.K. Labour

Citing a BBC report on U.K. Labour head Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged mishandling of an investigation into anti-Semitism in his party, Jewish Agency chairman Isaac Herzog urged an external probe on Thursday.

In a letter to Corbyn, Herzog describes the party’s treatment of the allegations as “scandalous.”

“It is difficult to grasp the reckless and dismissive manner in which party institutions treated members who distributed anti-Semitic imagery or engaged in anti-Semitic slander,” he wrote, adding that the “leniency and laxness displayed by the party’s institutions towards members who spread anti-Semitic tropes and cast anti-Semitic aspersions is mind-boggling.”

Herzog’s statements came on the same day that the Huffington Post’s U.K. edition revealed that the Labour Party had expelled shadow Brexit minister and deputy leader of the Labour Lords Dianne Hayter after she compared the “bunker mentality” of Corbyn to the “last days of Hitler.”

Hayter had alleged that the party refused to share vital information with the National Executive Committee on party finances, membership figures and anti-Semitism data shared with the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation.

“That declaiming of intelligence, the refusal to share is an absolute symbol of the bunker mentality,” stated Hayter.

A Labour spokesperson said: “Diane Hayter has been sacked from the front-bench position with immediate effect for her deeply offensive remarks about Jeremy Corbyn and his office … To compare the Labour leader and the Labour Party staff working to elect a Labour government to the Nazi regime is truly contemptible, and grossly insensitive to Jewish staff in particular.”

Hayter will keep her elected position as deputy leader of the Labour Lords, but will be removed from her shadow cabinet position, according to the Guardian.